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..

Fatalii's up and garlic too

My new Fatalii seeds sprouted the other day, but I'm a bit of a slacker in getting the pics up and posted. I put six in the propagator, but so far only two have come up, and one of 'em had a bit of a problem getting it's seed coat off.. and she's a bit deformed right now as a result. In either case, here they are:

Yeah, you can't really even see 'em there. Right in front of that label, it's just barely out of the soil. But, it's alive! And here's that garlic:

Elephant type

German 'hardneck' type

So yep, looks like that Organic Elephant garlic from the store even made it over the winter, in addition to the German White from the garlic guy in New Hartford.

I just got the propagators emptied out of the Hot Cherry and Jalapenos as well, and now all the ones i'm going to be keeping for sure are in the 4 pack seed trays now and looking REALLY good.. I'll get some pics of that up in a bit. The green Bell peppers are just starting to pop up too, and I only need two of those for the salsa experiment I'm doing.. the Brussels Sprouts are planted in the propagator as of yesterday, and we'll keep an eye on them for an appearance next week as well.

The raised beds look about the same, snow covering wise, even though one has the hoop house on top of it.. but yesterday when I poked a finger in the soil there, the one with the hoop on it seems to be all freed up already, whereas the open bed has a layer of ice or frozen soil still in some places just under the dirt surface. Curious.. maybe that hoop house thing is working after all.

Score! Brewery Mod..

Went to the dump the other day and found a set of kegs off to the side, that apparently had been owned by a homebrewer before me, because they had the tops cut out already and one of them even had a ball valve and, get this, a stainless steel false bottom installed in it. What the! I grabbed that thing in about 3 seconds flat and it was in my car, paid for, and we were out of there in no time. When I got home, this is what I had:

Bargain!

After that, it was a matter of taking apart my existing mash/lauter tun and reconfiguring mine to essentially be just like this one, but with this SS false bottom installed in my kettle. Why not just use this kettle? This one has a weldless ball valve installed and it was a 3/8ths size, whereas I use 1/2 stuff throughout. The conversion was easy enough though.. here's a pictorial of the conversion:

Parts needed. Total $2.45

Gut the old setup..

Dip tube construction..

Add a collar to stop the false bottom from floating up.. 

Stopper demonstrated

Finished install!

Now, I just need to brew with the thing.. direct fire RIMS system achieved!

Quick update.. big change!

Made a big change to the operation today. My Jalapeno's are coming up all leggy, stretching for the lamps.. knew I had to get 'em higher up to the lamps quick, but with the other big plants under there, something had to go. So, with that in mind.. I went out and found the ol' chicken heat lamp setup in the garage and figured I'd give that a whirl. I hooked up this lamp to the same timer as the T5's so they'll all go on and off at the same time, and now I've got this:

The whole propagator got moved up to the lamps again like its supposed to be, and the big jalapeno's and basil got moved off to the left side there, under the chicken lamp, which now has a 23w florescent light bulb in it. Like this:

Once I had the propagator up there, I left it alone for a while to see how things would go.. I just went to check on it a sec ago after a couple hours in its new location and saw the leaves of the peppers starting to curl back, so I figured I'm too close.. so I just dropped 'em back down a couple inches and we'll see how that goes now.

In other news, here's the back yard as it stands.. still thawing:

Garden update: trouble with transplants!

So here's the overall view of the stuff so far. Still all peppers so far.. hot peppers, that is. I'll be putting some bell peppers in a propagator later today, but they're not in here yet.  You can maybe see I still didn't have the heart to toss those Jalapenos, and in fact potted them up into HUGE pots (well, comparably..) they're like, 5 inch diameter pots, I think they call 'em 1 gallons.. not sure though. I had to prop up the whole propagator setup on a few 2x4's to get 'em even close to the lamps. No sign still from the Habaneros, and the Fatalii's are still sleeping as well. I have had mucho success with the new batch of Jalapenos so far with 17 of the 18 planted seeds germinating just fine, and I think 80% of the Hot Cherries have also popped up as well.

Overall of the curent setup..

Here's a closeup of the Hot Cherry peppers that I pulled out of the paper towel germination cup setup that i had going on. I was using that method that I'd heard good things about to test germination rates and just get a feel for how that operation worked. I learned a couple of things. One, it's super easy to set that whole thing up and running, literally wet a small piece of paper town and put some seeds on it, then cover it up so the stuff doesn't dry out and you're done. Like yeah, that fast and easy. I also learned that stuff germinates super fast when you can see the rootlet popping from the seed casing after just a few days.. I would say, if you don't have a fancy self watering propagation setup like mine, or the APS units I've seen on the 'net in various places that are so popular, I'd say the paper towel idea is a good bet, because it keeps the seeds evenly moist and then you can tell for sure which ones are going to pop out and then you can transplant some known good seedlings. The downside that I found was that pulling the tiny little delicate buggers off the paper towel was a bit of a pain in the neck, and then getting them situated in the new seed starting media in the six-pack style containers was also a chore. I did it with these five plants just fine, but there was a bit of swearing and carrying on involved. I'll say it was a *lot* easier just pricking out the other seedlings from my dirt propagator setup from the Super 7 and transplanting those guys. That was seriously no brainer work. I also have some to the conclusion that if they won't pop up in the Super 7, they're just not going to pop at all. I thought maybe the original Hab's in there were unhappy in the machine there, so I tried the paper towel method with 10 seeds.. I have yet to have one open up. Clearly, my Habanero seeds are shot this year.. which, come to think of it, are really last years seeds. So, yeah.. I lucked out with one good one, but that looks like all the habanero's I'm gonna get this time unless I go buy some started plants. Then again, who really needs more than one habanero plant.. sheesh!

Hot Cherry transplants

And finally, here's a glimpse of the huge (heh.. yeah) pots I put the Jalapeno's into in the back left corner here, and you can just catch a view of the little Habanero in the lower right corner. Still looking good right there! There's actually pods forming on the Jalapenos now.. and I'm not sure that's a good thing for them to be doing at this early stage of the game. I think they got stressed out along the way and they're making a break for it with seeds now. I guess I screwed those guys up a bit.. well, that was the whole point of this experiment in January anyway, right? To learn a thing or two for the real event..

Big Jalapeno's back there.. tiny Habanero up front on the left.