Earthbox filled and Smart Pots up and running..

Took some time yesterday and the day before to fill the Earthbox up with the mix I'll be using this year for all my containers out of the beds. It's called ASB Greenworld Growers Mix, and it's a pretty standard Peat based mix, pH balanced to just slightly acidic and filled up with a bunch of Perlite too.

Jalapenos installed. That's gonna be a lot of growth in a small space..

So that's the mix, and there's the Earthbox. The Earthbox company says, seriously, to put in 6 Jalapenos in that thing.. so, that's what I did. Last year I just ran with two Hab's in the box and they grew like gangbusters... but they're saying I should have done six plants arranged like shown in the pic above. the only problem I see now is the slow release food I've put in there is good for three months, but these things will probably grow and produce well into the month of September. I might have to open the top and re-fert the thing in August some time. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I also filled up the #15 (15 gallon) fabric Smart Pot and installed the potatoes just under the soil. They're already chitted and wanting to grow.. it won't be long before they pop right out of there and reach for the sky. I got 5 of 'em in the big pot, per their instructions as well. In the photo below, you can see the #15 pot int he middle, surrounded by the smaller #7 pots, which will each be holding one chile peper plant. I've got one plant in each, except for the lower left pot right now, which is reserved for a Tobasco chile that's just not quite big enough to be outside just yet.

Potato in the middle, surrounded by chiles. 

Also, I finally located the horseradish plant that was missing for a while out back.. but here it is. Coming up strong in the herb garden area which I put down all that manure on last fall. That trick seems to have worked well.. the chives are growing like wildfire too. I'll probably put out some basil in a couple more weeks.. I should start some up today in the basement, I guess.

And finally, above, a pic of the upper bed as it now stands. Garlic is strong, Brussels Sprouts doing well, a bunch of Bell, Jalapeno, Hot Cherry chili's all in place.. starting to look like a garden, finally. :) My dad says that this stuff should not be here so early in the season, and that they're all going to die in a wicked cold snap.. but we'll show that old man how it's done. Clearly, he has not read Elliot Coleman's book, the Four Season Harvest. Read up, old man! It's time to learn some new tricks! ;-)

Bits and pieces.

Been a while since I've written.. things are still growing, no real setbacks. The potato project is actually coming along faster than I figured it would.. I got some organic potatoes to grow in the Smart Pots I got, and just left a few out.. and I'll be darned, they sprout really fast. Like, in just a few days fast. "Normal" sprayed potatoes would have looked god and stayed un-sprouted for considerably longer.. and I guess that's why they spray 'em. I have heard pros and cons for using organic potatoes for a 'seed' as opposed to ordering "seed potatoes" from a reputable gardening source. Disease, proper growth, is this thing you're planting *really* what it's labeled? Hybrid or no? But you know, it don't matter that much. The other 2/3rds of the bag of spuds was turned into the best whipped potatoes you'd ever laid eyes on and the Smart Pot can be used for something else if it doesn't work out just right.

The marigolds I put in tiny starter pots last week have already started to come up.. I'm pondering putting some of my peppers out into the raised beds this weekend

Here's some pics of things as they stand:

Cascades hops. Just a week since I last took their photo.. now have leaves!

Brussels Sprouts, survived the storm last night. 

Peas

Onions. Still clinging on! They loko so sad, though..

Dehydration..

Here's the new-to-me dehydrator my momma handed down to me.. it had some stuff that came with it, new in the bag.. from *1981* purchase date. Righteous! There in the last photo I took some apples and ran 'em through the blender real quick on the puree setting and let it rip for a bit till it turned into a paste.. you slap it on the teflon pages that come with this thing and leave it there til it's pretty good looking. I got 'em a bit too dry and they came out a bit too tough, but not too bad for 5 minutes work of involvement. 

Apple sauce fruit leather in progress..

I plan to try tossin' a few hops on these trays later on in the summer, and doing up some mad chili's in here to preserve those as well. All those chille's I had last year that got lost due to no good preservation method.. (sigh).

In other news..

Sa's scallions she put in the herb garden last year..

Cascades hops, just coming up.

German White garlic

The transplanted onions, three days later.

So, the onions are still alive, and look mostly OK. There's a couple in there that look a bit sad, but then again, I just yanked them and half their roots out of a tofu container and really ticked them off. This transplant was a bit more irritating to these plants than most of the others I've done. This is also the first time I've transplanted anything from under the lights indoors to the outdoor hoop house. We'll see how it goes..

Drats, killed 'em dead!

I had an extra Jalapeno that was taking up too much room and was also partially injured due to a previous accident here.. that, and a basil plant that was kicking around as well that wasn't getting any bigger in it's Dixie cup. Decided to see how 'hardy' those guys could be in the hoop house overnight. The answer: Not hardy enough. Both looked pretty much dead this morning when I took a glance at 'em. They were still standing tall last night at midnight when I got home from work, but this morning, all droopy and bent over. Pretty much killed. Heh! So much for *that* experiment.

That garlic is still looking pretty good, but still seeing only 4-6 shoots per square coming up from the 9 that were planted in each square. Hmm..

A little dirt pulled aside (dirt, or llama poo? Yikes!) from the top of the hops bed shows some green hop bustin' up action in the Cascades department. Interesting. With the 6-12" of snow predicted for this Friday, I just covered 'em back up with a pile of leaves and hope that works well enough to keep the new guys safe for this week.

All the tomatos from the propagator were transfered over to the 4 pak seedling trays, the Roma's and the Cherry's.. here's a pic of those in furious action. They're all lined up on the wet mat in the propagator still, but that's just temporary.

Roma and Cherry tomato seedlings.. 

The onions are doing well too.. they got ejected from the propagator's wet mat too, but they seem to be happy enough on their tofu trays. :)

Onion babies. Almost time for a haircut!

That's all.. gotta go prepare for the big storm now to set us back another few weeks. Drats..

Garden update.. snow, wha?

Just had a bit of a snow dusting last night. they were calling for 3-7" of it, so I threw some plastic sheeting over the top of the bed that doesn't have a hoop covering it and held it down with some bricks. As it turns out, all unnecessary.. merely an inch of snow at best landed out there, and it's mostly already gone as of this morning.

In other news, the onion "sets" I'm trying to grow are coming up like gangbusters, and the very first Roma tomato's have poked their heads up through the soil-less mix in the propagator.. we're getting close now! Lookin' forward to getting some of these plants out of my house and into the greenhouse.. I need more space under the lights! :)

Here's some pics of the babies:

Roma's just peeking out.. bad pic!

Fatalii's gettin' huge!

 I also have decided to keep the green jute twine for the dividers in my SFG setup.. I was looking for a way to replace them with a more visible and solid divider that wouldn't droop like the lines do when they stretch.. but I like the ability to move the lines around if I need to get in there and not disturb the surrounding area, like would be a problem if I had solid connected dividers. I was going to work some kind of self-tensioning thing together, with maybe some weights that would pull the lines taught as they stretched, but then I came up with another ingenious and simple remedy.. just don't tie a knot in one end of the damn string and pull it tight if it get's slack and wrap the thing tight around itself to keep it down. What the! Well, hey, it works.. sometimes, the simplest things..

Onions, in need of a haircut.

That's all for now..

Garden update..

The onions are coming up.. I'm growing, I think, 36 of 'em in these tofu containers I drilled some holes in the bottom of. I'm gonna grow 'em up to about the size of a dime in these and then transplant 'em into the raised beds to finish them off.  I just need a few to do the project that this garden is designed for, which is mostly small green salads, and a few jars of salsa, with everything grown entirely in the back yard. I just planted the Roma tomato's in the prop's this afternoon for their part in the game. Otherwise, the peppers (green and hot) are already well under way, the onions are right there in the photo, and the garlic is already breaking ground. What else is there in salsa? Cilantro, sure.. that's gonna go in the herb garden later on.

Here's a shot of my one and only Habanero this year.. I put a bunch in the propagator, but only one came up. There's a shot of it back in the day here, remember this?:

That's how she was back in the day, a month or two ago.. she's a bit bigger now:

Nice and stocky.. that'll be a good plant, I think. My Fatalii's are also coming along well now in the 4 pak containers. Along with the rest of the kids in there, check 'em all out:

Everything in there right now is a pepper, and all chili peppers, save for the Bell's in the right front portion there. Speaking of peppers, this poor Jalapeno is totally stressed out from being in a too small pot. The little bugger is sending out flowers already..

The big one: Ditting!

A funny thing happened on the way to Borders the other day.. I saw this, and needed to own it!

Next to the Europiccola to show scale.. 

That right there is my new temporary coffee grinder. It's a Ditting model KR1203. It's a bean grinder designed to operate in a retail shop like a Starbucks or similar, that goes through 25-60lbs of beans a day. It weights *88* pounds. It makes my Faema MPN look like a play toy. I got it for a song, and figured I could sell it for a few bucks more than I paid for it. It's quite an animal, I have to say.. it grinds a cup of beas in literally seconds and spits it out the bottom chute with no mess and no fuss.. it's a bag fill design with a single chute exit, so there's no doser to mess with. A real joy to play with. I'll be sad to see it go.. but Craigslist is calling me already. Rats! Here's a couple more pics I took of it.. just so I can remember her fondly.

Standard 20lb propane tank for comparison..

Standard 54lb Boxer dog for comparison.. oh, and my Faema bean grinder as well. 

Standard 38.4lb child for comparison..