Weekend Plans for the Garden

This afternoon when I got home from work, I put some hay out for the cows and then walked into the garden.  I pulled a big, fat cabbage and brought it inside.  I think we'll make cole slaw with this one.  We made egg rolls with the last one and have been just cooking some cabbage down in a cast iron skillet.  We haven't made sauerkraut yet, but that may be in the works as well.

I stepped out on the patio to check and see if the tomatoes in the cold frame needed some water.  A few days ago, I mixed up some fish emulsion with water and gave them a good foliar feeding as well as drenching the potting soil.  The tomatoes have responded favorably!  These indeterminate, heirloom tomatoes are growing like mad.

In fact, I need to get them in the garden this weekend so they don't get root-bound.  I looked at pictures of previous years and these tomatoes are the biggest at this stage than we've ever had.

I checked the 5 day forecast and believe it or not, it looks like the chances of rain are lower than they've been in the past weeks.  Perhaps the garden will dry out and allow me to get these planted.  It has been about 3 months since I planted these by seed.  It is high time to get them transplanted into the garden and begin planting all of the spring crops.  So far the onions and potatoes are planted.  I can't wait to get started!

Upper 70's Today Means Spring is on the Way

The weather has changed on us the past several days with temperatures climbing into the upper 70's.  After transplanting all of the tomatoes and peppers into individual containers, I got the itch to pull the cold frame out of the attic.  I set it up on the back patio and began to move all the plants that had spent the last 45 or so days of their lives under a grow light.  Now they'll spend time under the best grow light - the Sun!

Nothing under the grow light...

Our cold frame is made from some old wooden-framed windows that someone was throwing away to make way for some double-paned, energy efficient ones.  A friend rescued them for me and gave me five of them.  I transformed them into a cold-frame that protects our young plants from the cold and wind while I "harden them off" and transition them to the outdoors.

I purchased four medium sized hinges to connect two windows together and then did the same for the other two.  That way it folds up neatly and can be stacked in the corner when finished using.  One window fits on top.  The hinge allows you to open it from any angle to water the plants.

Here are all of the tomatoes and peppers packed into the cold frame.  You couldn't fit many more plants in there! 

I'll continue to water them and look after them daily and check the weather reports.  Some day a few weeks from now, I'll work up some rows and move them into the garden soil.  Tomorrow I'll probably spray them with some fish emulsion to make them 'green up.'  They have a little yellow tinge to them.  Spring is on its way...

Hardening Off the Tomatoes and Peppers

The last time I posted about our seedlings, I had thinned them out by separating and re-potting those that had more than one seedling growing in a seed pot.  I carefully labeled each container and was able to separate the intertwined roots without losing a single plant.  The only problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that I now have more pepper plants than I can eat.  It didn't take much searching to find several people who will give the extra pepper plants good homes!

So after I thinned them out, I put them out on the back patio in order to 'harden them off.' Hardening them off involves gradually introducing them to cooler outdoors weather and wind.  The operative word there is gradually.  If you do it too fast, you risk shocking your tender plants.  I have a cold frame that I put hinges on and built out of some windows out of an old home.  Someone was throwing them away and had them stacked by the road.  Now they have been re-purposed.

In the first nights, I had a heat lamp shining hot, bright light inside the cold frame, keeping the plants inside warm.  There is a window on the top of the cold frame and while not airtight, it keeps out the wind and retains the warm air inside.

After a few days, I removed the heat lamp and replaced it with the fluorescent grow light that I had over the plants when they were inside the house.  This slowly acclimates them to the variation in temperature and prepares them for the days to come.

In lifting the top off of the cold frame, you can peer down and see some of the peppers and the tomatoes and eggplant.  I had already removed a flat of peppers to plant that I'll show you in a minute.   If something looks a little strange with the tomatoes, I'll show you why.  Gardening is a trial and error thing.  Once the plants get their second set of leaves, I'll spray fish emulsion on the leaves as a foliar feeding.  When plants are young, the label calls for putting a diluted amount of fish emulsion in the sprayer. That would be 50% of the normal amount of 1 Tablespoon per gallon of water.  So I mixed up my little gallon sprayer with water and 1/2 tablespoon of fish emulsion.

It caused the peppers to turn a bright blue green color and literally jump up out of the soil.  It was by far the best looking pepper seedlings I've ever started.  The tomatoes, by contrast, were hurt by the fish emulsion, even though it was mixed at the same concentration.  The tender leaves on the top were burned by the fish emulsion and turned the leaves a yellowish-white color.  It reminded me of damage that the rice herbicide, Command, causes plants to be unable to carry out photosynthesis and thus, they die.  Fortunately for the tomatoes, they recovered from the fish emulsion damage and put out new green growth.  I have made a note for next year that while peppers thrive with a 1/2 Tablespoon to 1 Gallon water mixture, tomatoes cannot handle this.  I'll experiment with a 1/4 Tablespoon mixture next year.

These are the peppers that I put out in the garden this past Saturday.

If all goes as planned, I'll move the tomato seedlings out to the garden this weekend. Once those are in the ground, I'll start working on planting corn, beans, squash, cucumbers and a myriad of other delicious vegetables we like to plant.

Hardening off Tomatoes

With the weather warming up, it's about time to start thinking about moving our tomato plants into the garden.  The onslaught of rain that we've had over the past couple of weeks, however, has made the garden seem more like a swamp.  That's okay, though. While the ground is drying out, we'll move them out from under the grow lights in the utility room and outside into the 'hot-house' or cold-frame I made by putting a couple of hinges on some old windows that someone was throwing away.

I moved out half of the tomato and pepper plants from under the grow light and put them in the cold-frame that I set up on the back patio.  The process of hardening off just gets the plants acclimated to the variety of outdoor weather that includes warmer days, cooler nights, wind and rain. I'll put half of the plants in tonight and the other in on the next night.

Here are the remaining tomatoes that we'll leave under the lamp just as insurance. I'd hate to move them all outside and then have them all crash.

I watered them real good, but notice that the leaves on the tomato plants are yellow.

I think they are telling me that they need some fertilizer and I have just the stuff to give them what they need to green back up and grow.  I use fish emulsion, which is essentially ground up, dried fish. I add a tablespoon of fish powder per gallon of water into a garden sprayer.  I pump it up and will spray it on the tomato plant leaves tomorrow once I have all the plants moved outside.  The downside to this stuff is that it stinks.  If you don't use it all in one spraying and have some leftover, I'd suggest dumping it out.  If you leave the fish emulsion fermenting in your sprayer for even one day in warm weather, you will have a powerfully smelling stew of nastiness on your hands.  (Experience talking.)

The following day I moved the rest of the plants into the cold frame.  They filled up the whole area.

Now that they are outside I sprayed them with the fish emulsion.  Hopefully, in a couple of days we'll see a nice transition from yellow leaves to healthy green ones.

In a few days, I'll remove the glass sides from the cold frame.  Then, as soon as the garden dries up, I'll get these plants into the ground in the garden.  The weather is supposed to be really nice this week.  Can't wait for that!