It’s winter in the North Country, which means the gardening season is over and done with. Or is it? There are a number of plants that you can start early and grow indoors for planting in the garden in the spring when the weather is warm enough. This can save you a lot of time waiting for your plants to grow. It can also save you the money of buying your plants at a greenhouse. But before I get to what plants you should plant, I should cover how to start seeds indoors. You should have some type of seed-starting kit. These can be purchased at any hardware store. You can also make one yourself, using clear tupperware containers, and peat discs. Peat discs are discs of dehydrated peat moss that you can start seeds in. They can be readily obtained at a hardware store or greenhouse. Water the dry peat discs and wait for them to expand to their full size before planting your seeds. If you’re planning on planting large plants, such as tomatoes, peppers, or herbs, or you expect to be growing them inside for an extended period, you should instead purchase peat pots and seed starting soil mix. The peat pots are literally just pots made of peat, that you fill with the seed-starting soil. They are biodegradable, so you can stick them right in the ground in spring. Whichever you decide to use, you should place your plants near a well-lighted window, or purchase a full-spectrum grow light. And now, without further ado, here are the six best plants to start indoors. TomatoesTomatoes come in hundreds of varieties suited to any grower or cook out there. They start readily indoors given a warm windowsill and some soil, but they need a lot of time. You should start them six to eight weeks prior to the last frost date. PeppersCucumbers
Celery
Basil Marigolds
Those are the six plants I would recommend. If you have any further questions, or have your own thoughts about planting times, please don’t hesitate to comment below. Happy planting!
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If you’re like me, you love blackberries. They are one of my favorite fruits and certainly my favorite berry. Several years ago, I was delighted to find a patch of wild ones growing in my backyard. Since then, I have been cultivating this patch; though they are wild, they do require some maintenance in order to reach their full potential. Blackberries typically grow in partial shade; they like the sun, but not too much. If you have a part of your property that is shaded by trees of any type, it is probably a good spot. They don’t mind acidic soil. It isn’t necessary to rake around them every autumn, but one should not allow the leaf litter to pile too high. Blackberries typically flower in June in the Northeast, and you can expect fruit in July and August. Blackberries are open pollinated and rely on bees, so it’s a good idea to plant brightly colored wildflowers nearby to attract the bees to your property. Because blackberries typically grow wild in the Northeast, there’s a lot of variation among them. You'll see the ubiquitous black type, of course, but you may also find red, pink, and even golden berries. These are all perfectly safe to eat, and delicious. Blackberries don’t require much fertilization to thrive. A bit of epsom salts and some basic fruit and vegetable fertilizer (either liquid or solid) will suffice if you’re concerned about nutrition, but don’t overdo it. Pest control isn’t too much of an issue with blackberries. Their main pests are Japanese beetles and rose chafers, and these can be mitigated for the most part. I have had almost no issues with either. Deer and rabbits may take a liking to the berries, but are generally more interested in the leaves. At least once every two years, in the autumn, you need to cut down your blackberry brambles to the ground in order to get the best yield out of them. The aging brambles can develop fungi and rot, which is unsightly and will ruin your crop. They grow at an astounding rate; by July the next year, you can't even tell they've been cut. And that’s it. Simple, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons I love blackberries; they require almost no maintenance! Just pick and enjoy! Well, here we are at the end of the growing season for Northern New York and New England. It’s been quite a year for many of us; there is a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world, but gardening must go on. This year, I grew most of my standard crops. These include Boston lettuce, carrots, potatoes, squash, and peas. In addition, I also grew parsley, which I elaborated on in an earlier blog. Boston lettuce grows extremely well around here, and always tastes delicious. My problem being, I bought double the amount I’d need. You see, earlier in the spring, my sister’s rabbit (my main customer for lettuce) died suddenly. So I had all this lettuce but nothing to feed it to except myself and my family. Unfortunately, a lot of it went to feeding my worms. Oh well. For potatoes, I grew a blue type; bluish skins and blue flesh. They have an interesting flavor and texture, but they’re not very good for baking. Most other dishes, however, benefit from them, and they are actually healthier than those with white flesh. Peas are pretty much peas; you can’t really go wrong with them. Every time I plant them I get a great yield, and they are super easy to care for. My one mistake was that I did not stake them. You see, last time I grew peas, I did stake tem, but they refused to climb the stakes, so I thought “well, I guess peas don’t climb.” Wrong; some do and some don’t. My carrots did not do well at all, due to poor planning on my part. I typically plant lettuce and carrots on different days of the year, and I like to companion plant them. This was not a good idea. I accidentally dug up the carrot seedlings while planting the lettuce. So there will be a dearth of carrots this year. This year, I planted butternut squash. Last year I planted acorn squash. While I had an impressive yield of squashes this year, I don’t think I will plant butternut again. They take an extremely long time to ripen as compared to acorn, and with our growing season being as short as it is, I simply can’t afford that. Next year, I may plant zucchini. Of course, I always plant a hedge of marigolds around my vegetables to deter any pests that might find them attractive. Marigolds are useful, hardy plants and that every gardener should grow. In summary, I’d say 2020, for all the mayhem, was a good year for gardening. I posted some time back about my experience with worm farming. I touched briefly on what not to feed worms and the difference between worm food and worm bedding. If you haven’t already, you should read that post. Anyhow, I would like to expand on that subject here, for the edification of budding worm farmers. Most worm farming websites will tell you that worms will eat almost anything and there are only a few things they can’t/won’t eat. Well, from my experience, the list is somewhat longer than I initially thought. Pretty much any worm farmer will tell you never to give worms meat or any meat products (cheese, milk, yogurt, etc.) or anything oily or greasy. They’ll also tell you that worms do not eat foods like onions, garlic, or chives; basically anything hot and spicy is out of the question. This is all accurate, however, there are a few other things I’d add. Worms seem to like some vegetables more than others. Lettuce seems to be a perennial favorite, but only if it’s wilted. They really like food that’s already rotting; the ickier the better in my experience. Make sure your veggies are good and wilted before you feed them to the worms. They can’t digest anything acidic, so lemon and orange peels are out. They also seem to have no love for banana peels. I’ve fed them banana peels a few times, and they just ignored them for several days until they attract flies. Not good. I also seem to have trouble convincing them to eat apple cores, strangely. Perhaps they just need to rot some more. They love peaches, though. Also, celery seems to be hard for worms to digest. If you want to get them to breed, put some oatmeal or oat bran in the worm farm; they gobble that up like it’s going out of style. Use sparingly, however, as it might start to ferment. That’s a general rule of thumb for worms. One should never overfeed them, or the food will ferment faster than they can eat it. That’s just a smelly, unpleasant mess that you don’t want to deal with. Trust me. So far, those are all the things that I know of that earthworms will not eat. If I think of any more, I will be sure and update this blog to reflect that. Until next time, happy gardening. So my parsley plants are just about ripe now, and I will soon go about harvesting them. Parsley, you see, is more than just a garnish to go atop meat dishes. Parsley is both a culinary herb and vegetable. “What!?” you exclaim. I’ll explain it. Parsley is known to impart a somewhat spicy, savory taste to certain foods, but it also possesses an edible root, not unlike its relative, the carrot.
Parsley roots are not as large as carrot roots, but they make an excellent addition to soups, salads, casseroles, and stir-fries. The flavor of parsley root is somewhere between a carrot and celery. It’s a bit hard to describe, but if you like either of those vegetables, you will enjoy parsley roots. Some seed companies will try to sell you “rooted parsley” but don’t be fooled; all parsley is rooted. Some parsley plants have larger roots than others, but this depends as much on your soil type as it does on the variety. Sure, you can buy rooted parsley and it won’t hurt anything, but don’t think you’re getting anything unique. Also, it’s my opinion that curly-leaf parsley is a waste of time; they have virtually no flavor, and the texture is unappealing. They’re really only bred for decoration. Flatleaf is the way to go. Parsley leaves can be preserved by drying and freezing (though I’ve found drying is generally better) and the roots can be easily frozen. According to Healthline, parsley has a number of health benefits. It is rich in antioxidants, promotes bone health, and has anti-cancer and anti-bacterial properties. Probably something you should consider adding to your diet. In general, parsley is easy to grow. The plants prefer full sun and will grow in poor soil. They are not susceptible to many pests; rabbits and deer will sometimes eat them, but I’ve only had that happen a few times. Plant them with marigolds and you probably won’t have to worry about it. Insects tend to leave parsley alone. In general, I’d recommend parsley to any gardener, regardless of experience level. This past April, my one source of free fertilizer, my sister’s rabbit, died. While it was an emotional blow to all of us, I had to find another source of fertilizer for my garden. Initially, we talked about just getting another rabbit, then an idea hit me: a worm farm. Several years ago, I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, where he visited an industrial worm farm. Organic waste goes into the worm farm, the worms eat it, and then they poop it out. Worm castings (poop) is one of the best, purest sources of fertilizer there is. The idea of turning garbage into usable compost was captivating. Worms are cheap, easy to raise, extremely low maintenance, and useful for a lot of different things. So, with the help of the stimulus money graciously given to me by Uncle Sam, I purchased a worm farm and some worms to put in it. It wasn’t quite as easy as they made it out to be in the brochure. My first mistake was buying a worm composter over the internet. While this wasn’t the worst idea I had, I would’ve saved myself a lot of time, money, and aggravation if I had just made a worm composter myself out of some tote boxes or a couple of five-gallon buckets, which is what I eventually ended up doing. When my first worm farm arrived, I assembled it wrong. Thinking that the lid was part of the base, I put it on the bottom, which was a terrible mistake, as it caused the whole thing to mold. The mold was toxic to the worms, and I awoke one morning to a mass of dry worm corpses on the floor, as they had crawled out during the night to escape the poison fuzz. But even after I’d assembled it correctly, I still had at least three escapees a week. That’s bad for business. The thing did its job okay once I assembled it correctly, but it was way more expensive than it was worth. After a couple of months, I just took two five-gallon buckets, which you can buy at any hardware store, drilled drainage holes in one, and put it inside the other. It cost me almost nothing, and I’ve had no escapees since. My second mistake was buying two different species of worms. Now, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just go out in the yard and dig up some worms. Well, composting worms and wild worms are two different animals. Yard worms don’t survive in captivity. Usually, buying two different species would be a good deal, but no! The two species I ordered were red wigglers and European Nightcrawlers. Nightcrawlers are deep burrowers, while red wigglers generally stay closer to the surface and eat leaf little and things of that sort. If you want nightcrawlers, you should have an established worm bin.
The third and final mistake I made was that I mistook food and bedding. I ordered a sack of worm food, thinking that “oh, worms just eat their bedding, so it’s the same thing.” WRONG! Wormfood and worm bedding are two totally different things. Typically, you make worm bedding out of old newsprint, or shredded leaves, something that doesn’t ferment. Wormfood, on the other hand, is much higher in nutrition and will ferment. This particular type of worm food was grain-based. It started to turn into beer in a matter of days, and then vinegar a day or two after that. This is bad, as worms can’t live in anything acidic. There were many escapees, which I don’t have to tell you is also very bad, and the smell was horrible. Worm farms should have no odor, so I knew something was wrong. I hope all you folks who are thinking about worm farming will learn from my mistakes and not make them yourselves. Until next time, happy gardening. |
AuthorI'm Ian Wilson, a slightly eccentric amateur horticulturist bumbling his way through the garden. Archives
October 2021
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