Garden Prep and Seedling Transplant 2012

What a good week it's been, with a focus on seed planting and transplanting those started Feb 14. How quickly they mature.

We're planting every way possible this year. Up on the roof in the unheated greenhouse, I winter sowed some cress, tatsoi, and parlsey...and some Amish snap peas from Seed Savers Exchange. The greenhouse hits 80 when the sun is out, but otherwise it's cold.

See the peas starting to pop?

(yeah I know it's a rotten photo, but thrilling nonetheless)

A good February chore: cleaning the fabric tapes we now use in our SIPs to wick up water from the reservoir. First I brush off the dried roots and potting mix, then into the laundry with soap and vinegar.

The agretti germinated near 100% in a homemade portable microgarden sitting on a low-heat mat, which Art picked up for nada at a resale shop.

This week I started fennel, leeks, and chives in two portable microgardens, covered each with a produce bag, and nestled them together, vying for space with the agretti on the warm mat. At Root Simple, Nance Klehm shows an easy recipe for making coconut coir seed-starting mix.

Then it was over to Bruce's, where the seeds we planted Feb 14 were ready for transplanting. He's been tending and befriending them on his grow stand (shop lights+shelves).

I used screened compost to fill small recycled spinach containers (at right, with holes melted in the bottom for drainage courtesy of the ever-useful soldering iron) and pot up those fragile greens, which will buck up under Bruce's lights and be ready for hardening off in the next couple weeks. Then they'll go out into the cool spring air they love.

 This lacinato kale seed (Wild Garden Seed)

is from 2009, but germinated like a champ

Carl kept me going

with many kisses

I can tell I'm going to like this tronchuda cabbage (Bountiful Gardens)

Ready for transplanting:
Aztec spinach and the lovely chards, erbette and ruby red

Who started all these seeds!

More Transplanting, More Growth

Last Friday Bruce and I transplanted a lot of tomatoes and eggplant out of their tiny homes and into larger ones.
 

A scant month from now they'll be hardening off outside in preparation for planting.

Bruce started some rosemary from seed and some from mother plant cuttings, with rooting hormone.

 

The basil and pepper transplants from ten days ago are thriving. Seed-starting offers the chance to try a vast selection of varieties you'd never see for sale.

Carl keeps a watchful eye on it all...

Growing Food Connects Neighbors

 

Sunday was one of those days that took on the rhythm of growing and the connections it fosters. 

Here's an example. New friend Brad (below) saw this blog and said: I want to do that. Lacking tools, he emailed Bruce to see if he'd share some for drilling out a few SIPs. Brad wasn't sure where Bruce lived but gave it a shot.

And it turns out they live a scant five blocks apart. Here's Bruce and Brad, with his newly produced five-gallon SIPs (buckets secured from Whole Foods), standing in front of the partly shingled chicken coop.

I met Brad when I arrived to start transplanting the 200+ seedlings that needed to go into larger pots, among them a diverse selection of basil (below), pepper, and eggplant.

He generously volunteered to assist (muchas gracias), and we quickly established a groove, forking up seedlings, labeling grow cups, and re-establishing plants for their final four-week stint under the indoor grow lights. Click this photo to see a trio of extra-vital pepper seedlings, thanks to Bruce planting three seeds for every one requested.

He hedged his bets and as a result we have many extras to share.

In the middle of this, other friend Brad (who blogged this week about his expansive SIP-laden rooftop), stopped by to say hello with own his tiny sprout in tow. (Is GRG being taken over by Brads? We can only hope.)

Talk turned to SIP growing, a hot pepper called Lucifer's Dream (thanks for the seeds, Debbie), seedling sharing, new-friend Brad's southern-exposure deck, old-friend Brad's rooftop cold frames. And homebrew, a project both Brads are immersed in.

Is there a summer tomato-tasting, homebrew toasting in our future? Most excellently, yes.

In this way and many others, 
growing food not only infects us but connects us.

Cool-Weather Greens 2011: Hardening Off + Salad Ready (Already)

Hard to believe just two weeks ago we transplanted our tiny seed starts into these larger containers.

 

Yesterday we walked to Bruce's to pick up the results of two more weeks under light in a room-temperature house. Yow! They must have grown a third of an inch a day. Time-lapse photography would be fun here.

Next we'll take our hardy transplants and harden them off, a process nicely described here by Johnny's Seeds via Washington State University. (If you don't live in a cold-weather climate, I suspect the term is meaningless, but as noted at the link, hardening off is both a season extender and important for intensive gardening.)

These plants will be happier once acclimated to their preferred temperature range, about perfect right now in Chicago, with lows just above freezing.

Click to enlarge the

 beautiful joker lettuce...or is it jester?

Here's a side-by-side shot of seeds started on the same day--outdoors by me using the winter-sowing method (right) and indoors by Bruce. Quite a difference, though our still-tiny starts in the box will surge with the increased light.

Thanks, Bruce!

Transplanting Seed Starts: 10 Reasons It's A Powerful Experience

1--Working with friends on the 2011 food supply.
Jessi, Bruce, and I transplanted seedlings last weekend. See the plants in their tiny cells, ready to move up to larger pots? We used a fork to gently lift them (from under their roots) and tuck them into their new homes, in threes. Just two weeks ago Bruce started the seeds under lights.
 


2--Viewing the energy in a seed.
Look at those vigorous roots: the extraordinary power of seeds on display. Nice job, Bruce, helping the seed fulfill its destiny in 13 days.

3--Because these fetal kale will look like this just weeks from now, ready to be hardened off, face the spring chill they love, and get planted in SIPs on our roof.

4--Plant diversity. 

We're growing some exciting new-to-us varieties this year, including Jester and Joker lettuces from Wild Garden Seed, Garland Serrated Chrysanthemum Greens (aka Shungiku) from Hudson Valley Seed, and vitamin greens from Bountiful Gardens. You'd never find these plant starts at a store in Chicago--I'm not sure anyone even sells starts for cool-weather greens.

5--Even if you have no tillable soil, transplants thrive in SIPs.
It's a beautiful thing if you have an in-ground garden that gets enough light to grow food. Most of the cool-weather seeds we're starting would come up on their own eventually in such a garden. But if you've got no well-lighted soil to dig, dig this: SIPs + cool-weather greens=massive amounts of vitamins in early spring, when lettuces, collards, and kale grow best.

6--Anticipation keeps hands moving. 
As usual, Bruce planted a couple seeds for every one we requested, resulting in lots of extras, meaning Jessi will have more varieties to try in her patch of the Hermitage Triangle Community Garden just across the street. Everything in the photo below was grown in a SIP.

 7--Checking on the chicks. 
Talk about a growth spurt. Click to enlarge, and note Bruce added a tree-branch perch at the back of their brooder.

8--People bring food to share.
Nice thing about people who grow food: they always seem to have something to share. Jessi's banana bread, my spring pea soup, and unshown, Bruce's pot of dal.

9--Loving the locals.
Good dog Carl! (Is he getting big or what?)

10--Comparing methods.
We promised to update you on the progress of the seeds planted using the winter seed-sowing method, discussed in this post. 13 days ago, on Feb 13, Bruce planted the seeds we just transplanted. I winter-sowed some hardy cool-weather varieties in my punctured spinach boxes on the same date and was excited to see the first sprouted seeds--arugula--on Feb 25. 

So, not far behind but for our purposes--planting out in SIPs--we need the accelerated indoor growth  to Get Those Greens onto our plates sooner. But I'll be harvesting these babies too. 

 What are you growing?