As we set our clocks ahead one hour, finally, a glorious spring day, the birds know it, I feel it, and my plants are budding forth. There's a few things I want to talk about today.
I first posted this to Kitchen Gardeners International, a socially aware networking group regarding how to move towards a more self sustainable society by encouraging Barack to plant a home "victory garden" on the White House lawn. You can see that effort here
First of all, I was up last night perusing around the internet and looking at my usual haunts when I happened across this story:
Be a Citizen Scientist. Apparently, now that we have a new Administration in the US, the USGS is spearheading an effort to encourage citizens to notate and report seasonal changes so they can track climate change. The groups is called the USA National Phenology Network, and they just got start on the web on Monday.
Phenology is the study of recurring plant and animal life cycle events, or phenophases, such as leafing and flowering of plants, maturation of agricultural crops, emergence of insects, and migration of birds. Many of these events are sensitive to climatic variation and change, and are simple to observe and record. As an USA-NPN observer, you can help scientists identify and understand environmental trends so we can better adapt to climate change.
You can hear an interview on NPR with the project's executive director, Jake Weltzin, who explains "how tracking these trends can help scientists better understand climate change". I think that since the Obama Administration, who is pro-science and not in denial regarding climate change, took charge, a lot of pent up energy even in the various government agencies is now being released. I joined, and you can participate as well. In the interview, Jake goes into more detail how gardeners are a valuable resource for tracking stuff like this, so please sign up! In a year they will include tracking birds and the like. IN the meantime, they are looking for at least 100,000 members, maybe we can double that! Seems right up our alley if you ask me!
Secondly, It was warm yesterday, but not as warm as today (it was gorgeous today). So I ran to the garden center and bought 8 six packs of lettuces of various kinds, and a six of bunch onions. I planted everything except the onions yesterday, sprinkling the hole with crushed eggshells and worm castings. So here's the bed:
I squeezed in this six pack today:
Today, Tom and I went to Mountain Feed and Farm Supply in Boulder Creek (sorry no official web page), a funky little S&F that also carries myriad products for gardening, bird feeding, and feeding your critters. This is a treasure in the mountains, so if you live around here, I highly recommend it. We bought some excellent fertilizer for our plants, and we also bought micorrhiza, a fungus that you dip your root system into, to enhance root growth, and give your plants more immunity.
We bought the granular form, which they had in bulk. A 1/2 lb goes a long way, because you just pop your plant out of the six-pack or container and dip the roots in the fungus, then you plant!
'Xcuse my dirty hands, I WAS gardening. :)
So we planted this tomato, after dipping it in mycorrhiza, cutting off all but the top most leaves, sprinkling worm castings in the hole, egg shells, and two aspirin (Salicylic acid helps the immunity of a plant), using aged compost as well as potting soil to bury it up to it's neck. I also popped in a Greek Oregano, already of a healthy size and it's beginning to scent up my greenhouse with it's perfume. This is a Green Grape Tomato, and it's a heavenly cherry tomato. I learned a lot of these tips, btw, from Cynthia Sandberg, a master Tomato and veggie grower, who you can learn from here. You can get her excellent booklet on growing Tomatoes here, and scroll down for her booklet on growing tomatoes. I already knew about mycorrhiza, but it was good to get my research confirmed.
I've discovered that I forgot bone meal for a container tomato. Cynthia informed me in an email tonight that bonemeal is important for bloom production and a calcium resource. I KNEW I was forgetting something. As this is not something you can easily add after you've planted your plant - unless you want to experiment, and I might - the bonemeal I should have added will have to be replaced by a high phosphorous liquid fertilizer that and is at least 3-5-3 or 5-10-5 or 2-4-2. But that is not optimal. NTL, I'll need to be fertilizing this plant with this at least once a week, but none for the first month, according to Cynthia. So for container gardeners, remember this!!
Though I will be putting fishheads under the tomato plants I plant in my garden bed, I decided not to do that with this cherry, as it's in the greenhouse and the prospect of rotting fish in a black 15 gallon pot, does NOT appeal to me. It's too cold to put this cherry in the ground yet, so it will be in a nice warm place and it already HAS flowers. :) Yay! I may get these before we get anything else. I just hope it stays warm enough in the greenhouse!
In the meantime, there are many signs of spring in our yard. First of all the grass is growing nuts, and we haven't been able to mow with all the rain, but these little surprises revealed themselves as Tom and I took a photo tour of the yard:
This is my first attempt at phenology.
Our hops have hopped out of the ground! Hurray!
This is Fuggles hops,
and this is East Kent Goldings - btw the names of Hops are normally from the region they come from. In this case, East Kent, in the British Isles. Further btw, there is a worldwide hops shortage, do your part if you love beer, grow hops! Those rhyzomes will be appreciated even if you don't brew):
We have more hops, but the camera didn't capture their growth all that well.
Here's another sign of spring:
And as you can see our grass is growing out of control. :) That's our crabapple, and we were worried it wasn't going to make it, especially after both the cat AND the dog decided they wanted to dig around it's base. We've fixed that now with chicken wire around it, and mulch.
Another sign of spring, my snowpeas:
Here are some more in my greenhouse:
Got a fav. recipe for Snowpeas you would like to share? I stir fry them in sesame oil that has been heated with crushed red pepper and garlic. YUM!
Something munched this, but at least this Hyacinth is blooming!:
And my Irises are being showy:
So while the official date hasn't occurred yet, my plants apparently aren't away of that date. They are happily growing now!
Hope you enjoyed, and happy Spring!