Well, it's been about a week since we planted the forty Beefsteak tomato seeds. The seeds were three years old, so I started them a bit early and planted all of them because I figured they were at the end of their best before date.
Well, so far so good!
Twenty-four of the forty have already popped up, so we are good, even if that's all we get. Provided I don't kill them before harvest. We almost lost a bunch last year, but we were away for a month. We're only leaving for ten days this summer, so the mortality rate is looking even better. I am going to plant some onions and peppers too, so we can preserve a bunch of spaghetti sauce and salsa using all homegrown ingredients. This is going to be our first year of not having to buy cases of tomatoes for canning (hopefully).
Speaking of asparagus, one of the three crowns has shot up a fourth spear.
This excites me. What I find really cool is that you can notice each new spear being larger than the last. I'm contemplating keeping them in containers this year so I can bring them in under lights for the winter. They say not to harvest it until the third year, but if I keep them growing the whole time, it should be good by the second year.
Does anyone have any experience with this? It can't hurt to try, can it?
Oh yeah!
I wanted to ask some advice on raised beds.
We have access to all kinds of free river rock and I was thinking of making some rock wall raised beds, but then wondered if it's too much weight or if there were any other concerns before starting that project.
Also, we are taking down some garbage poplar trees this summer, so we thought maybe throwing a bunch of the logs and brush in the beds as sort of a hugelkultur raised bed would be a good idea, but we've never tried it, so figured we'd ask here to see if there were any ideas.
Anyhow, the snow is melting pretty fast and the excitement is ramping up. There's a couple of pails full of deer poop in the yard, so I'll be making a new worm bin to see how that works, and the deer have been keeping the front compost bin just low enough that we always have a bit of room for more.
We hope your spring is springing,
Chris and Gerri
Rock walls work great for raised beds, look pretty too.
Right on. I love the look of them, but they are a lot of work and it would suck to build it and find out there was some "rule" about not using them. We're really lucky here for free, abundant resources. There is a bay about twenty minutes away that fills up with driftwood logs all year long, so we will be collecting some of that to work with as well.
Rocks actually work well, cause they heat up in the day and when you get cool nights the rocks will keep the soil warmer longer into the night. They do suck to build however as far as the lifting goes haha built about a dozen last year alone for customers as i do landscaping / yardscaping as a career in summer.
That's a great point. I guess using darker rocks on the outside would be even better for heat retention. Thanks for the info.
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let me know and I can post an invite link here for you!
Sure, that sounds great, thanks. We're always looking for new friends.
Thanks for the post, I look forward to following you over the course of the spring and summer to see how well your plants are doing.
Right on. Keep your fingers crossed, and if they work out I'll send you some seeds.
Laws permitting, of course. By the end of the summer there may be no seed sharing allowed, judging by the way things are going.
Tomato seeds like to hang on for years. It’s not surprising that 3 yo seeds sprout. Well kept seeds will survive for years.
Some advice... those sprouts need more light.
And the asparagus... plant it outside. The root systems are massive and need the room.
Good growing and success with all your gardening endeavors!
Yes, I have already put them in bigger pots once and they are going into even bigger ones this weekend. Unfortunately there is still over a foot of snow here, so I can't move them outside yet.
I was going to move them into Rubbermaid totes. Would that be enough space for the roots? Just until we have a permanent spot for them.
As for the tomatoes, I am moving them to the four foot sunblasters later tonight. I didn't realize they were going to sprout so fast and our other two footers haven't arrived yet.
Thank you so much for the advice.
Growing big root systems in a container means digging a huge hole when you plant them out. It should be OK to leave them in the current containers until your weather settles down.
Okay thanks. So much for bringing them inside in a tote for the winter. Oh well, at least I won't have to explain that monstrosity to my wife. I guess you saved my hide.
I appreciate the help. It's nice when people stop me before I wreck things.
Gosh, you've got a lot going on! I wish I had room to be so busy! There's only so much to be done in my tiny yard. All your tomato posts won me over. I need them in my feed! Followed!
Thanks! I wish I had more room. We are on a 1/6 acre lot in town. My grow room also houses the worms, canning, soap and freezer. There's just enough room for one person to work and you can reach everything from the centre of the room.
In a few years the oldest will be off to pursue her life and I call dibs on her bedroom.
We're on a little over 1/8. But we're doing what we can!
That's all you can do. We are just picking away at it. This summer will be garbage tree removal and then we can work at planting food-bearing trees. We have several black poplar that do nothing productive and litter everything with their fluff and sap. Might as well have apple trees there.
I have been doing some thinking about rock raised beds. I will not be using rocks per say but thinking about using Air Crete blocks to build mine with. The heat retention on the cooler nights would be great.
Cool. The only reason I would use rock is because it's free and readily available. I hadn't even thought about the heat retention before, but @ewasteguy1 mentioned it and then I was sold. We are just off the Alaska highway, so every little bit helps.
Check the content of your air crete blocks before using them, make sure no chemicals are used in the process of making them that could leech back into your soil and roots.
Yeah, that's a good point. I don't even know what air crete is. I guess I'll go look that up.
Im not sure what it is myself either, ill have to look it up aswell, But myself i always stick to natural building materials when possible... Rocks, dead fall trees for logs, Use a chainsaw home mill attachment to make squared off rough lumber aswell to build raised wooden beds for seniors that cant get down to garden anymore, once the snows melted off i plan to do a nice tutorial on making the raised wooden ones, But in your case, Rocks are great, The darker the better, But sandstone rocks, like the crumbly ones,, or pourous rocks i find dont make the best for the sides as they lose their heat quicker then a nice dense rock. flat rocks are perfect they stack nicely. Or if flat ones arent easily findable, large but irregular shaped rocks versus round work well too, play jigsaw puzzle and stack them a couple rows deep and just layer them piecing them into each other how they fit best. as for space fill. I simply find some really clay rich soil which is nice about saskatchewan clay is everywhere. any how i get a nice pile of clay wet and mix small gravel into it until it get stiff and clumpy and pack that between the rocks to fill the cracks and gaps. and once your done, walk around it with a tiger torch and get it nice and warm. makes almost like cement. seals well and once it drys its like cement, some of the walls ive done are working on being 10 years old and still arent crumbling.
Oh, that's awesome. We have a pretty crappy clay here, but I will ask my buddies that work building roads in the bush. They might come across a site that has some good stuff. Most of the rocks are round, but I was going to use mortar and sand to build it up a few feet. There is a spot that has a lot of shot rock from a mountain, and we plan on going camping near there this summer, so we'll take the trailer in and pull any good squared off pieces out with the quad. It's almost like granite, so it should be pretty good if we can get to it without the quarry guys catching us. It's in a blast site that they are getting riprap for the dam face, but the blasting is all done now.
The driftwood trees that float in will be really good for the beds, I'm thinking.
I looked up air crete and it looks pretty amazing. I'm going to research more, but it looks like it's just really wet cement mixed with dish soap foam. I don't know what the chemical composition is, but whatever is in Dawn dish soap and the cement you use.
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STOPInteresting. I see deer poop all the time. Why not pick it up and put it to use.
That's what I figure. It's herbivore poop, so it should be fine aged in an outdoor bin. I throw it in the compost bin usually.
I like what you guys are doing. Maybe I will get settled enough to play around with some green things soon.
I had this bright idea a couple of years ago to plant in soil bags stacked on the ground. It worked pretty well.