Let there be light...

After just 3 days, I checked the tomato tray to find this. Plants abounding and they were already getting rather spindly while they reached towards the light. That first row you can see is the Pooka tomatoes which were apparently VERY viable. Seeing how quickly they had started reaching made me worry that they were not getting enough light. Especially with how cold and dim it had been recently. I mentioned this to Daddy, which got him thinking.

After only 3 days we have tomatoes.. lots of tomatoes

The more I talked to him. The more we both started wondering about a grow light. I told him my research (which was always in the "someday" category), said that all we needed was a florescent light kit and a chain. I was really on the fence about it, but and we decided to do it. Now, this light will spend 8 months of the year helping light our dim basement, but during seed starting, it would be removed and brought upstairs.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted, but really, I told Daddy "it just needs to do this" and he ran with it. A quick run to the local home improvement store, and $38 and about an hour and a half later. We had light. Daddy set it up for me with the seed starting table and put the light on a timer.

The finished product (Please pardon the mess, We are honest here)

Daddy took some scrap lumber in garage and built a free standing stand since we did buy the 4 ft light. We decided since this was proof of concept, if it indeed works, next year we can knock together a better table then the old blue card table we have been using. The light itself is hung from a chain which will allow us to move it up and down as needed. And when we are done, everything can be torn down and stored until next year. We placed a timer on the light so we don't have to worry about remembering to turn it on or off. We only had to buy the light, the bulbs, the timer and the hooks. Everything else was already on hand. Now to decide if this really helps as much as we hope it will.

Let there be light. 

A child's imagination

Sometimes things just happen. Like over the winter Brother was putting dishes away and one of my favorite tea mugs fell from the cabinet. This is a cup that was given to me by a dear friend and it was great for my magic sleepy tea another friend makes me (it helps me get to sleep).

The cup missing the broken part

I looked at the cup and was sad. Pooka swore we could reuse it so "Mommy wouldn't have to get rid of it." I was skeptical, but didn't want to drink out of a superglued cup, so I set it aside to figure out come spring.

A new house for fairies

Spring comes, and I found the cup in the garden cabinet. Pooka looked at it and said it was a house. We turned the cup over, and the broken part did look rather doorway shaped. Next thing I knew Pooka was looking for the perfect place in the front bed for the baby fairies to live. After a bit it came to rest at the bottom of my lilac tree since she said that it needed the fairies to take care of it. I will admit it has had some transplant shock, but its holding on, and maybe this is what it needs. Maybe.

Holy Tomatoes

I can officially say that yesterday I got the last of the tomatoes in the ground. I now have over 30 tomatoes in the ground. I started so many planning for some dead loss, but have yet to have more then one or two die.

We have a bit of a method to putting tomatoes in the ground, so I thought I would show it to you. We did about 4-7 tomatoes a day for awhile to get through them all.

Most of our tomatoes

First we would check that there were no flowers on the tomato plants.  A couple did have flowers but we pulled them off so the plant could concentrate on roots when it was first planted. I don't have a picture of that step, so lets move on to step 2.

Step 2 is to pull back the mulch and dig a really nice deep hole. We were trying to stay with the square foot gardening method of one per square foot, and our bed here was 2 feet wide which allowed us to go 2 deep with them. Since they are in the sunniest spot in our yard, I am not as worried about the back ones not getting enough sun.

Nice deep hole.

Step 3 is a bit gross. We have been saving egg shells for awhile. Once we cracked the egg, the shells went into a glass jar with a lid (These were unprocessable jar and a lid that had been processed once before).  As long as they were mostly dry when you put them in the jar, it worked well. However, this step I did not let a Pooka do since it involved eggs.

egg shells from the fridge

I brought our egg shells out to yard and after I dug a hole I would take a couple of the shells out the jar and crunch them into smaller bits. These bits were dropped into the hole. The egg shells will break down and give the tomatoes some extra calcium through the summer to help prevent blossom end rot (that nasty black spot on the bottom of the tomatoes).

Crumbled egg shells

The next job was Pooka's. We bought some Dry milk and marked it for the garden. This container will never be in the kitchen so if I get a bit of dirt in it, it won't hurt anything. This helps again with the blossom end rot as well as giving the tomatoes an initial burst of calcium to get established with.

Special garden container of milk

Pooka would take a handful or two and throw it in the hole as well. She loved to make it "snow" milk.

Adding milk

Then we would take the tomato out of the pot and lay it on its side. in the hole. This allows the tomato to develop more roots along the buried stem which should help the tomato find plenty of nutrients.

Add a plant

Then if I had any stem that I could bury a bit more I would bend back toward the center of the hole and cover it before replacing the mulch. This should help the tomatoes to be firmly rooted and hopefully produce a ton this summer. Then replace the mulch. We did notice that the mulch has been doing great at keeping the soil moist like we had hoped it would.

Cover the plant back up

The last step is to walk inside and wash our hands with a good soap. Then we cross our fingers and see what Green Thumb and her friends can do to get us a great tomato harvest.

An Early Mother's Day gift

Tuesday Daddy was home playing Mr. Mom. I had to be into work early, so he decided to take a whole day off and maybe get some things done around the house. Apparently one of the things he wanted to do was get me a new lilac from my Grandmother's house.

Happy Mother's Day to me

You see, I asked for a new one for Mother's day since only one of mine from last year survived. Well he came through. Apparently the one he uprooted was a bit bigger then he thought it was.

I came home from work to find it sitting in a pot on the sidewalk by the front porch. I was so surprised, I forgot poor Lucky in the car.

Daddy asked if we just wanted to plant it straight into it's spot in the ground to hopefully get it well rooted. Since it's spot is in the front bed full of garden soil with some extra potting soil thrown on the lilac from the pot, we are hoping it takes. So Pooka, Daddy and I are out there, me still in my work clothes getting my plant into the ground.



Please don't die

It went in with little issue. We did stake a bit of a cage around it to make sure it grows straight at least until we are sure its well rooted. Here is to hoping that it doesn't get too much of a transplant shock. I did ask Pooka if she could ask Green Thumb and the fairies to take extra special care of this. I really hope it it holds on okay. Cross your fingers for me please.

Hello Peas and friends

Now that all the seeds were started, I realized that the pea plants were going to need more then a pellet fairly soon.  If you remember, it was already 8" tall in 6 days. Well by the time we transplanted it, it was closer to 10" tall.



8" tall in a few days

Well, I knew the pea plant wasn't going to last in that pellet much longer, especially since it was more then likely going to fall over and not get back up. So Pooka and I got some potting soil and decided to plant.












Clearance pots are good


 Earlier in the week we had been out and found these brown pots at Meijers for $1 each. I knew I would need some this size for that akward stage when the plant is bigger then a seedling, but not quite ready for the garden (especially if the winter continues to linger). Now it is true that I have pots very very similar to these in the shed, but remember, the shed is still snowed in currently.



 

Add a coffee filter


Add our signature coffe filter to the bottom of the pot. I am not 100% sure it works, but it has seemed to do really well for us, I don't have many problems of losing dirt, and I know they decompose into the soil, making a bit more compost with a reason.

A bit of potting soil.

Add a bit of dirt to keep them fed....

The bigger pea plant

Finally, we added the pea plants in 2 pots,                            

2 bok choy plants

The bok choy in 2 pots. They look a tad worse for the wear, but I did just water them with the spray bottle.

Lettuce anyone

and the 2 grow um's lettuce into pots. Now I do admit the lettuce and bok choy (once we had started to transplant them, turned out to not be as ready as we thought. However, they are still alive, so I am counting it as something.





The 2 pea plants also got a nice bamboo stick to crawl up. And how is the larger of the pea plants doing, well look for yourself. Here it is, over 12" tall and reaching for the stars. I think I need to get a meter stick.









Sunflowers awaiting their turn

 

What is next you ask... Well I think next the sunflowers will need a similar treatment as the pea plants. I think Green Thumb has returned from her vacation is is ready to be back at work.  But more about the sunflowers in another post.










Making a friend a home

About 3 weeks ago, Pooka came to me and said "I have an imaginary friend. Her name is Green Thumb and she lives in the garden with 10 friends". I shook my head and wondered where this idea came from. The best I can come up with is that someone told Pooka that she must have a Green Thumb from the way her garden grows.  Well, not understanding this, she decided it was a fairy that lived in the garden and helped it grow. 

About a day or so later, I was surfing the interwebs and came across this tutorial on Tiny Fairy Villages. Apparently the blogger turned wooden bird houses into a fairy house. So I asked Pooka if Green Thumb needed a house. She said yes and then told me about all 10 of Green thumbs friends, some of which were babies. 

Doors have been added

We realized that one house wouldn't be enough so we bought a couple. These were original birdhouses that I took a utility knife or a small saw for the big one and cut straight down to the floor on either side of the bird entrance. Pooka also asked if the big house could have some windows (a quick bit of drilling accomplished this). One other thing I did differently from the original post was I took the "stick" that the birds sit on and glued it in the holes the where the ropes were to hang it. I then sanded it level on 2 of the houses and left it on the 3rd as a chimney. 

Ready to paint

I then gave them a quick coat of white spray paint and (yes there is a 4th house now).  Instead of painting these myself, I wanted Pooka to make the houses. She had some shaped stamps from another project and a ton of brushes. It took over an hour, but she loved the results.

Waiting on Varnish

 These are the finished houses. They are very Pooka covered in color. I gave them 3 coats of varnish to protect against the elements. Sadly the varnish did give it more of a yellow color, but at least I know they will stand up to being watered or whatever.

All that was left now was to put the houses out and then Pooka put Green thumb and her friends in their houses. She said they all loved them and that now they can help the garden grow even bigger. It might be a good thing Daddy didn't hear that part. He is still threatening a blow torch if he hears anything say "Feed me". 

2 little houses in the container garden

Pooka decided the 2 little houses fit in her containers quite well. Her beloved cilantro got a house and she said that since my Stargazer was new, it might need a bit of help to grow bigger.

Green thumb house

Green Thumb's house is now living next to her Green bean plant and the Cherry tomatoes. That space was kinda empty since everything we had put there died, so I thought it was a great idea.

The Ruby Strawberry house

This little red house is in the middle of the pepper plants. Pooka hopes that putting it here we will finally have a peppers. we have flowers but right no fruit yet. Hopefully later this weekend we will see something



Pooka had to walk each of the fairies to their house and show them the door. It was so cute watching her place fairies in there. It should also help Pooka telling me Green Thumb is lost in the yard and she has to go find her. I have a feeling Green Thumb may still get in a bit of trouble.


This was alot of fun to do with Pooka and it helped her keep a bit more interest in it. Total time was about a week, but there was alot of work, glue it, leave it, come back and paint, leave it, ect. As it is, Pooka also painted a little Castle for Green Thumb to live in her room on nights it is too cold for Green Thumb to stay outside. Pooka while she loves science has a bit more of a creative side, so we encourage it where we can. This is just one more way we use Art and Science together to make a Pooka smile.