Getting anxious

2 weekends ago, Pooka and I were getting a bit anxious for spring to really hit. We have had spring like moments, but nothing that is here to stay. Pooka and I were ready however and decided to get a start on a few things.

Cilantro to be compared

First we started some cilantro. They are only in 2 little pots (which I somehow forgot to get pictures of) but we did one pot of each to see how they compare. These may live in the house for a bit before we take them outside. The upside is we will have cilantro sooner than if we waited for the front bed to be ready.

One of 2 raspberry bushes Pooka bought with her own money

Next we decided to do something with Pooka's raspberry bushes. I will be honest, Daddy and I had no idea where we wanted to put these, especially long term and we didn't have a bed for them to go in. We decided this year they will live in pots where we are figuring out where to put them.

No sign of the stargazer bulbs

We ended up grabbing the pots that held my stargazer bulbs last year. There was no real sign of them yet this year, and seeing at least 4 times over the winter they had water frozen to the top of them, I figured it may be a safe to call them done. So Pooka dug some holes, and I put in her bushes. 

Ready to rock and roll

I am hoping the pots will be big enough and that it allows us to get some bushes but maybe not go to full size this year. We will see. I know nothing about raspberries so I guess it is time for me to break out my gardening books again and see what I can learn. The good news is less then a week later and both have leaves either budding out, or they have started to peak out already. I am taking it as a good sign. 

Accepting the world

Try as I might, I think I have finally lost the battle for the cilantro plants. They have flowered pretty heavily, and I am going to let them go to seed and then harvest the coriander.

Flowering cilantro

It was time to start growing some replacement plants. That means more pots that I start over again. Yesterday that was our only goal.

Back to filling pots

This time, I wanted to make sure to try restarting the pak choi. Something is loving it int he bed and the seedlings are having a hard time, so I will restart it and hopefully move it. We are also trying a new kind of cilantro from Seeds for Change. Hopefully we can actually get the saved seeds to work next year.

Seeds ready to go in the dirt

In the end, we planted 2 of each type of cilantro and 2 pak choi. Now to wait for it to grow so we can see how different the two forms of cilantro are.

Now to wait.

Flowers

In some cases, we are just starting to get flowers, like the mystery squash, the pepper plants and this eggplant.

eggplant flower buds

 

 In other places, we have too many flowers. Some spinach has bolted. the cilantro and I are arguing on if it can go to seed, and well, I think I may of lost the bok choy. Apparently they don't like being transplanted. Good to know, I am thinking of ripping them out and replanting some new seeds there.

Flowering bok choy

Here is to hoping for good flowers and not bad ones.

Our little seeds are growing up

This week we have been super busy here at the science garden. We have started to seriously transplant the larger plants into 6" pots to "hold them over" until they can go outside. Some I am hoping to get outside sooner rather then later, others well, they will need to wait a bit longer.

Peas, beans and sunflowers..oh my..

As you can see, we have been transplanting alot. This table shows all the sunflowers, Pooka's saved seeds from last year as well as the commercial "mammoth" sunflowers.  The differences between them is another post.  This also has our pea plants as well as some of the green beans. I am hoping in the next week or so it will get warm enough I can start taking some of them outside to get better light.

Snowing on the peas

I tried briefly on Wednesday to put plants outside. I had the newly transplanted sunflowers and the peas outside to get some of the precious sunlight. I had noticed it was clouding over so I pulled the sunflowers in. Not 5 minutes after I had put the sunflowers in the house we got snow, in MID MARCH. At least he peas didn't seem to mind.

Green beans with the seed starters

This is the front room. It is a bit crowded currently with seed starters still floating around and the green beans that are living on that table. We had 8 green beans that were ready for tranplant out of 9. I noticed yesterday it looks like the 9th is starting to sprout as well.

More transplants withs the tomato and pepper seeds

Here is the third table we had to put up this week. We were running out of horizontal surface in front of windows. In front you see the tomato and pepper seeds, but in the pots are the Growum's tomatoes and half of the cilantro starters from Growum's. All seem to have taken to their transplant well, but I do worry they may not be getting enough sun there. Come on warm weather so we can move some things outside.


Flowers

Remember the flower Pooka got from her birthday from her Great Aunt. Well it flowered this week, giving us a very pretty red bloom. Pooka loves that it is red since red is one of her top 2 favorite colors (purple being the other one). I swear its a red, even if the picture makes it more orange looking. It has been nice to have a real spark of spring while we wait for the real spring to come.

It is done

On Sunday, we finally did it. We got all our seeds that are going to be started inside started. I thought I had it done Saturday, when Pooka and I finished starting all our herbs.

Pooka and I had picked up these peat pots at the grocery store for $1 each. I hate paying full price for things if I can avoid it. The sad thing is, they didn't come with any seed starting pellets or dirt. So we had to make a small trip out to get seed starting dirt. However, I could only find this size bag, which was a bit bigger then we wanted.

Seed starting supplies

Each pot got some dirt, some seeds and a popsicle stick marker. I had some extra colored ones left over from last year, and we had just enough to use all the peat pots for herbs.

The Dill ended up going into the extra tins with the parsley from the Growums. I figured it was already in use, might as well get my money out of it.  With that, I started to water all the peat pots and realized I forgot something to put them on since the pots would leak a bit of water being made of peat and all. So out came some of our cheap plastic serving trays for bread or family gatherings. But I didn't feel like having my serving dishes tied up long term.

Planted seeds, with no way to hold water.

We went out Sunday to get some cheap aluminum roasting pans. These will be put in the garden drawer once we are done and we can save them for next year (with the muffin tins). Although I was silly and got the roasting pans with lids. Oops... At least the lids are still useable for holding the pots as well.

If you can't tell, apparently last weekend my brain took a vacation and left me here. I was not thinking things through very well. Which is why it was no surprise Sunday when I went to put the herbs in their new roasting pans that I realized that I forgot to plant the snapdragons.

Forgotten Snapdragons

Now I was really kicking myself since snapdragons are one of the 3 flowers I will grow, and with the 100 days till bloom, they take awhile. So here it is, Sunday, no more peat pots, plenty of seed starting dirt, and seeds. I could of gone back into town out for containers, but frankly, I was being lazy.


A red cup with a hole

However, this tower of plastic cups was sitting there. They were about the same size as the peat pots, but they wouldn't do much for drainage. Enter a nail that we popped through the bottom. However, I realized that the dirt would fall through the bottom, but we had the coffee filters sitting right there, and a Pooka got to cut them in half. It was the perfect Pooka job. The cut coffee filters are perfect in our cups and let water drain, but don't let the soil out.

Half a coffee filter later

Long story short (too late, I know), it is done. We now had a bunch of cups full of snap dragon seeds. However, it had the same "Water can get everywhere" issue as the peat pots.

Finished Snapdragons

Fortunatly, the roasting pan and lid had a bit of extra space. Now all our seeds we plan on starting (while it is still snowing) are in dirt, many have already sprouted and in some cases have been transplanted. Now to sit back and relax, or not since that pea plant is getting too big to not have a pot. But that was a project for a different day (or at least a different post).

Herbs and snapdragons all ready to go.

 

Talk about confusing

Like many people, we have been hit with late winter storms. In fact, if you look out the back door right now, you will see well at least 4+ inches of snow. That doesn't count the ice that came before it.

Rosemary, Lavender, Audrey's empty pot

Basically, our dog loves it, Pooka went out and played in it this morning for a few minutes before deciding it was cold.  I am okay with it, (but I desperatly need a snow day), but it reminds us that winter is not yet over. Although one would think heading into March we would be past most of it. The rosemary in that small red pot is pretty much dead, the lavender in the green pot may come back and the stuff in the tan pot was the dirt from Audrey, so I have nothing to worry about in it.

On the flip side you walk into the house, and you see spring everywhere. Pooka's Grow um seeds are very busy sprouting left and right. Daily I go through and turn them 90 degrees since they are reaching for the sun outside.  Here you see the lettuce, bok choy, Peas, broccolli, cilantro all fairly well established. The basil is just starting to really grow.

Half the grow ums.

At the other end of the table you will see the rest of the Grow ums.  The oregano has tiny tiny sprouts. I didn't see them but Pooka did since she takes her magnifying glass to them daily to watch for changes. This is her favorite part, she loves planting the seeds on top so she can watch the roots come out and go into the dirt. I also placed the clearanced herbs here so they are all in the same spot.

Rest of the grow ums and clearanced herbs

We have been very busy around here. We also got most of our veggies seeds started. I was worrying that the peppers would take too long to germinate, so I wanted them done early. Pooka and I did it very rushed on a Saturday night in those 16 cell starters. Those are an interesting contraption and I will get a post up on them later.

Seeds seeds at least they are started.

Then I realized I was well into the window to start tomatoes. Except I didn't realize till after I started to hydrate the pellets, did I realized I grabbed the 72 cell starter instead of the tomato starter, so Pooka and I just went with it and spent an entire afternoon on Monday starting the tomatoes, sunflowers, and well everything else. Now we wait. I still need to start the snapdragons, and most of our herbs, but those will go into peat pots probably this weekend. Right now, Pooka is having plenty of fun watching her plants change and grow, and I am running out of places to put seeds. Plus, I think if I have to use a third card table, Daddy may have something to say about it.

Cilantro, Cilantro

As the cooler temperatures came rushing in, I had to move the Cilantro into the garage for a few days. This was less than ideal because the window box planter it was in would not fit in the house very well. It was meant for outside and now we had the extra chore each day to pull the box onto the drive way to get some sun, then put it back inside the garage at night. So Pooka and I spent part of the other day repotting it.

Homegrown vs. Commerical

Here is the cilantro before. Remember how we did the experiment to see how well our home grown seeds would do compared to commercial seeds.  The left side is our home grown seeds and the commercial ones are on the right. Well as you can see the commercial seeds did much better then our home grown ones. I guess we will keep the homegrown seeds for coriander instead.

Clearance pot with a new hole

First I found some pots. This one I found for $2 at our local home improvement store. Gotta love clearance. However, it didn't have a hole in it. So Daddy put one in it with the drill and a masonary bit. We probably wouldn't of bothered with this blue planter if it had cost more. I didn't want to risk drowning roots.

Cilantro headed inside

Doesn't that $2 pot look so much better with a small plant. It is will hold the home grown seeds.

Ready to live inside

The pot from the purple basil plant got reused to hold the cilantro. It will be great having cilantro in the house for cooking all winter, or at least until my black thumb kills it. We have never had much luck bringing plants inside. However, up until this year, I would never of said we had much luck with plants outside and look what that turned into.

Seedlings.

I have had a few people ask me why I am still starting seeds. I told them that from all I have read (interwebz which lie and books) that carrots, radishes and cilantro like cold weather. Well, I realized today that I haven't updated you on any of the happenings there since that very long day and the baby carrots.

Well tonight, Daddy was making Fajitas (with peppers from the garden) and spanish rice (with tomatoes, poblanos and oregano) when he asked how the cilantro was doing if we had any he could use. Not knowing the state of the cilantro, I looked and sure enough, we have baby cilantro.

Store bought Seeds vs home grown

In the preliminary results of our test, it seems the store bought seeds are doing much much better then our home grown seeds. I am curious if it will stay this way, but for now, I am letting them grow and we pulled some of the baby cilantro leaves for the rice.

Radishes                                         Carrots

This however got me realizing that I never updated you all on how our seeds were doing. As you can see from here, the radishes (on the left) are doing quite well while the carrots are already getting good sized (right). I am not really ready to pick anything, but I am already warning Kiddo that he will be taking funny colored carrots to school.

Pooka asks daily when she can start harvesting them. I told her soon enough, she is going to be tired of carrots.


And we cannot forget the young clearance dill . This was a complete swag due to the cheap price of it It has already started to sprout and seems quite happy. Here it to it getting big enough to handle the winter or being small enough to come in the house. I am not sure which to look for, but Pooka was quite happy to see it having grown and being above the dirt.

Baby Dill. 

Now all that is left is to see when can harvest it all.

Harvesting and planting seeds.

Ready to hang up. 

When we returned from our vacation, we noticed the last cilantro plant was ready to be pulled and hung out to dry so we could collect the seeds. The seeds were trying to fall/grow into the snapdragon plants. And I don't feel like trying to pull them out of it.

Shake shake shake...BANG.

While we were hanging the new one up to dry, we noticed the older cilantro had dried out and the seeds were ready to harvest. I forgot to get a before picture, but we put it in a  paper bag and let Pooka shake it and bang it on the floor, the tool box, whatever. She had alot of fun with this step.








Once it was well separated from the stalks (Well most of them). Pooka and I sat down and sorted the seeds  out. We used coffee filters as our plates since that is what I had on hand in my gardening supplies. It would of worked a bit better on paper plates. But that's a live and learn moment.

Before

After

After they were sorted out, we planted them with a bit of the debris to act as a fertilizer. I used the same container they had been in before, and on the left side I used commercial seeds that I had bought previously (not thinking to harvest my own) and on the right are our home grown seeds. This should give us a good control group to see how well we did.

Commercial vs Home Grown

Colorful carrot mix

 Since we had the dirt out, I promised Pooka that this fall we would start some carrots. In true Pooka style, we can't grow just orange carrots. We have to grow colorful carrots because we all know how Pooka's love color.

Good luck little carrots

We got the seeds into their new pots as well. Hopefully we will have alot of carrots to take to school in lunches. I am not sure how Brother will feel about having purple carrots for lunch tho. 

So that's it. We have seeds going into the ground in August. This seems counter intuitive, but we will see what we can get.

The Life Cycle

Remember back when I talked about how the heat had won against the Cilantro. Do you see something missing? 

One sad little Cilantro

We pulled out the flowered/seeded Cilantro. Pooka was not as upset as I expected telling me "Its part of the life cycle Mom". I did some research online and it said to take the cilantro and hang it upside down in your garage so that it could dry out. So that's where our cilantro is now.

Hanging around

I promised Pooka in a couple of weeks or so that we can replant the seeds we are getting from her cilantro and regrow it with the other fall veggie we are trying this year, carrots. Stay tuned to see how this works out for us (and cross your fingers the coriander doesn't get lost on the garage floor before we can get into a bag for Pooka).

Seeds and Ends

Well, the heat finally found a victim I was willing to surrender. For awhile now, the cilantro had been trying to bolt to seed. I had fought it, being out there every day pulling flowers off it, telling it that I refused to let it go. Once the week plus of 100 degree heat hit, well, I couldn't justify frying my feet on the deck to save it and let Nature take its course. Nature came all right, and this is sadly what is left. The upside is that when cilantro produces seeds they are actually called coriander (something else we can cook with). Which we are thinking to replant at least some of once the weather cools a bit. Daddy is looking forward to being able to roast some for cooking. In the meantime, we have one little cilantro plant. Apparently it had reseeded itself when I wasn't looking.  

Pooka is sad over the state of her cilantro. It was the first plant she was able to harvest, and had given some to everyone for Mother's Day. She was so proud of that plant, she tried to give some friends of ours fresh cilantro for their wedding. Seeing the new plant helps, but when I told her we could replant it when we plant her carrots in the fall, she was better. I think she is already thinking about getting all dirty making a new pots.

The cilantro or more precisely Coriander.

Today we harvested another cucumber. We have had some so far, but we have yet to be overwhelmed, partially due to the fact that both Pooka and Brother LOVE LOVE cucumber. They will eat it raw with or without dip. However, today we harvested this little guy. Pooka's comment "Mommy, It looks funny. What happened to the end?" I told her that's just the way it decided to grow. Pooka: "Well, can we ask the rest of the cucumbers to not grow like that, I don't like the funny end."

The "interesting" cucumber

In the beginning

So yeah, I wasn't going to go there. I guess as my first post, this would be a good time to kinda go over whats going on up till now. I'm Mommy, and I have a 4 yo Daughter we shall call Pooka. She's a sweet and curious girl so when she asked to know more about plants, well I obliged.

So Pooka and I started a garden (which seems easier then starting this post). Most everything began as seed that Pooka placed on seed starters. Some took, some didn't. Some took much better then others. But in the end, we have plants.

We currently have out there from seed:

Big Tomatoes (Real scientific there huh)
Green beans
Cherry Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Sweet Peppers
Green peppers
Broccolli
Cilantro
Sunflowers
Morning Glories
SnapDragons



Since then, due to either not growing from seed starters, or wanting instant results, we now have:

Parsley
Oregano
Basil
Strawberry plant
2 Pablano pepper plants




And today I went to the store to buy some chives and came home with a second Strawberry plant for $3. Its perfectly fine, but its starting to get  to the end of the time for planting them and the nursery wanted them gone. And seeds for chives which may or may not grow, but its better then the empty pot we had for green onions (We think Daddy accidently watered the onions too hard and threw them out of the pot).

Something we litterally started 2 days ago was celery.  I heard that you could grow celery if you just chop the end off (as you normally would for breaking it down) and place it in the ground. So I did. We are waiting to see what happens there.

So far the results are kinda spotty. We have only gotten 2 Green Beans (Off a plant I had started to give up as a casualty of me, but its coming back) and alot of cilantro out of the thing, but everything is blooming like mad.  I guess I should try and remind myself here that its still early. That it's only the first Tues of June (as the tornado sirens reminded me this morning). This is earlier then I have gotten things before, but I think its also I am actively watching it instead of throwing in the ground then wondering what that is a month later. That whole watched pot thing. Although the Cilantro is flowering so I may end up with Coriander as well.


Oh and this is a picture of Pooka's first Morning Glory, it lasted about 4 hours before a rain storm came and beat the tar out of it. There are other buds on the plant as you can see in the picture. (Let the record show, I don't know why we planted a flower that I can't eat. That darn thing is a pain since its tried to climb the cilantro, the deck, the tomatoes. I am pretty sure if Pooka looks at it too long, I will need shears to get her out. Its behaving better with a trellis, but I have my eye on it).

Now to be completely honest, I don't know a darn thing about what I am doing and I am hoping here that Mother Nature will make up for where I seem to kill things. I know Pooka has a green thumb since I couldn't grow a thing before she started helping me.

If you have any advice, I would love to hear it. Granted most of these pictures show containers, but alot of the bigger plants (tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers) are in the ground in a quasi-raised bed/planting bed all around my deck. Even with our yard being larger, we have a big dog and 2 kids so play space is essential (And if I put a giant garden in it, it means everything in it will get trampled at least once.)

Oh and anyone with a good Kid friendly/safe pesticide or repellent I would appreciate. The peppers are getting  picked on since they are still small (Gotta remember to start those earlier). All I can say is the leaves are being eaten, and there are some small type of bug flying around. Beyond that, no clue.

Maybe next update will have pictures of the peppers and the landscaped planter bed. Don't know when that will be, but apparently I have a blog now. Thanks for checking us out.