Sprouty, sprouty, sprout, sprout

The seeds we started last week under our new lighting system began sprouting a couple of days ago.

Woo hoo.

This is the first time we've tried starting seeds indoors. (Tip O' the hat to Marc at Garden Desk for the inspiration: http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/2009/01/indoor-seed-starting-doesnt-have-to-be.html. )

The first bit of green (cukes and zukes) popped up just five days after I started them. In the next couple of days tomatoes (three varieties) and jalapenos began showing themselves. Today, I raised one of the lights for the first time. Had to make room for the vigorous zuchinis.


Except for the light fixtures, everything was scavanged from around the shed and yard. For years we've had a heavy-duty stainless steel rolling shelving unit that we scrounged from a neighbor who moved. It's served mostly to store junk. Now, the top shelf is perfect for starting seeds.

We didn't have any watertight trays the right size to fit under the lights, so I made one from 2x2s and a scrap of rubber pond liner. (I tried to throw those liner bits away several times, but Dr. Spouse wouldn't let me. Sometimes, marrying a closet packrat has a positive side.) I even found chain to hang the lights from the shed rafters.

I've thrown out old plastic seedling cells in the past but never got all of them. Thank goodness. They're plenty useful now.

The 2' by 3' tray is a bit smaller than the 4-foot flourescents but it works fine. The watertight pond liner gave us the perfect way to water: pour it into the tray and let the soil wick it up to the seeds. As you can see, that works just fine.

You can see the frame, pond liner and the light reflecting in the water

After forgetting to shut off the lights the first two nights, I broke down and invested $15 in a timer. Nothing comes easy in my life. The first --and cheaper -- timer I bought took two-prong plugs. Of course, our lights have three-prongs. Thank God, our locally owned hardware store is five minutes away.

We're into a steady warming period -- with daytime highs in the 60s and 70s, it's already Spring here -- and the unheated shed has proven to be the right place for this project. (We don't have basements in South Louisiana.) Lights don't bother anyone and the messy combination of soil and water ain't a problem out there.

Because we can easily control moisture content and provide more light than Mother Nature, we'll keep this system going for a few weeks, even after these seedlings are out in the garden.

Now, I'm off to read up on the care and feeding of seedlings and about hardening off in preparation for planting.

Accidental artichokes

I was hustling into our farmers' market last Saturday with plans to get milk and maybe something green before I had to hustle back out. (A deadline was pulling me back home.)

Zipping in, that's when I saw them: a tray of artichoke seedlings out on the plant peddlars' table. That stopped me in my tracks. I glanced, I looked, I remembered my deadline then continued to the local dairy truck set up at the other end of the block.

With milk in my certified-organic, free-range mesh shopping bag, I stopped to buy fresh broccoli (our own bed was well picked over) and paused here and there before I returned to the plant peddlars'.

Then, I went nuts ... just a little.

I bought four "Green Globe" seedlings. At the time, I considered four plants as restraint. I wanted the entire flat. I chatted with a couple of little old ladies hovering by the table. Yes, they are real. Yes, they grow in South La. Yes, they do fine in the right-sized container.

Cash exchanged for plants ($8, total) and plants in a bag, I was home in plenty of time. I announced to Dr. Spouse that I had a surprise: artichokes. Great.

Four?

Where are we going to put them?

Some quick research (the Internet can be useful) showed me I had overreached: ideally, they need 12 to 16 sq. feet EACH. That's a lot of space to dedicate in our raised-bed garden. And, they'll need another year before they bear. I realized that I could squeeze two into a corner spot but what to do with the other two?

I tried give one or two away with little success. Too big, friends said.

Then I had a realization: think outside the box. Or, more accurately, think outside the raised bed.

We've already decided to rip out a bed of yellow flag iris (more on that project in coming weeks) and put in okra. I can plant at least two of the 'chokes outside our bedroom. The bed is raised with good soil, great drainage and full sun. The southern exposure means they'll do great in our mild winters. I just need protect them from trampling dogs.

Now, we've decided to plant a couple of watermelons out front and put more okra in with ornamentals here and there.

Maybe buying too many artichokes wasn't an accident.

Asparagus wishes

A friend's comment got me back onto something I looked into several years ago: dedicating one of our beds to asparagus.

We all love the stuff, even the girls. We're growing more and more of what goes on our table. So what's to stop us? I need more info.

There's plenty of guidance on raising asparagus in colder climates. No, I mean COLD climates, because almost all of this nation is colder than South Louisiana.

I remember my grandmother north of Detroit growing tender, tasty asaparagus from beds that she maintained for decades. Granny's still around but those beds are long gone. Her advice won't apply down here.

I understand that the rules are different for asparagus in the deep South. I know we won't have to plant as deep but I have yet to find answers to other questions about row width and plant spacing.

I scoured the Internet with no luck. I cruised the LSU AgCenter's web site and found plenty of info on pesticides. They're good folks at the AgCenter but mostly nozzle-heads.

I emailed our county agent with questions.

I'm looking forward to planting asaparagus in our garden but also to get friends involved in gardening. They said thet don't know one end of a shovel from the other.

If I can get them started on asparagus, we all know what can follow.

Mission Creep and Brutal Nature

Dr. Spouse has a perfect term for what I ended up doing Sunday: Mission Creep.

We had a good bit of rain Saturday and working the soil Sunday was out of the question. I did promise her that I would move a couple of barrowloads of good dirt (store-bought, I must admit) into one of our 4-by-8-foot vegetable beds. Dr. Spouse wanted to plant some spinach and the neglected bed needed more dirt.

(Happy and tasty cauliflower and broccoli in two of the raised beds)

I planned to prune back the muscadine vines; something that we'd never done. In the spirit of our getting more serious and focusing more attention on the productive parts of the yard, I wanted to tame those wild vines. They produced a decent crop last year but I botched the jam making process.

I also wanted to complete the tear-down on the crumbling playhouse. It will be resurrected as 6-by-8-foot hen house. I must complete that in the next several weeks if we are to join a friend in ordering chicks.

(C., our youngest, helps clean up during the playhouse tear-down)

I ended up ruling out moving more dirt into our neglected blueberry bed. The dirt was too wet and heavy to struggle with. I was as much concerned with my back as the rickety wheel barrow.

On the bottom of my list was sorting and bagging the last batch of charcoal. (Not just the latest but the last batch. More on that later.)

But those plans fell by the wayside. Moving dirt into the vegetable garden, I kept passing our huge bed of canna lillies. It's in a crescent about 30 feet long and 6 feet across at the deepest part. When bought the place a decade ago, cannas were scattered here and there. When they got in the we dug them up and either moved them ore potted them.

Several years ago, I used a rented tiller to create that big bed. I stuck down some canna rhizomes and pretty much left them alone. That's been much of our operation around here: you what we have and follow with benign neglect.

Some winters we'd clean up the frost-burnt leaves and stalks before new growth started. Some we didn't.

In passing on Saturday, Dr. Spouse asked me break out the trimmer and whack down the skraggy canna remains. We'll one thing led to another -- the trimmer balked after a fine start, for one -- and I ended up spending a few hours raking out the bed.

... And cutting a trench around the bed to keep the grass out of the cannas and the cannas out of the grass.

... And extending the trench down to a shallow retention pond to ease drainage. (This is South Louisiana, after all.)

... And moving barrow loads of canna debris, turf and dirt over to the compost and carefully forking them into a bin. (That's gonna be some good stuff in a few months.)

(Here's the lawn-canna dividing trench about halfway done with vegetable garden in background)

One thing led to another and we ended up with a fairly tidy canna bed and a bin full of quality compost-to-be. (The pruners never got within 20 feet of the muscadine vines. But hey, I've got a four-day weekend coming up. I'll put that on the list.)

At one point, Dr. Spouse came over to check on my efforts. I puffed out my chest and bragged on my labor. She muttered an appropriate level of appreciation and was about to head back to her toil in the vegetable beds when two of the dogs came ripping through a shady, treed area we call a woodland "garden."

Grim and Lucy were in hot pursuit of something down in the leaf litter. Judging that we'd seen a nearby mole tunnel that had been recently dug up, we jumped to a conclusion. They dug furiously past the leaves, into the soil and under a wrist-thick root. They dug with hackles up and growling at the other dogs who tried to push into the action.

Suddenly they stopped. Lucy, a low-slung bassett mix, quivered from nose to toes. Grim, a tall pit bull mix, had his ears at alert. Just as suddenly, they zoomed in one something a foot to the left. In seconds, Grim won. He had mole in his mouth. We heard the death squeak even before we saw the pink nose and feet.

We find mole carcasses on a regular basis in the yard but this was the first mole hunt we'd witnessed. It carried a certain small thrill, watching those dogs being the predators they are deep down inside.

I felt a pang of sorrow for the mole but it was, afterall, a pest. The pang was fleeting.

On the other hand, as Dr. Spouse pointed out, the grubs were cheering.

(Moles eat grubs, for those of you who don't know.)