Fall garden update

Thinking of closing this blog and posting exclusively to circles in Google+ now. There's more control over who gets to see what you publish, and comment management and interaction in general seems better over there. The first is important to me since I discovered several sites stealing content that I had created in my other life and making money from it. Infuriating, and I can't afford a lawyer to go after them. So far I haven't found any Dirt Gently content similarly stolen, but you never know.

There was an overnight frost warning issued last night, but my balcony stays pretty warm because it's attached to a large brick wall. The only plant I took inside before bedtime was my pepper. It's generated lots of beautiful fruit, but for some strange reason they're all orange. They were grown from the seeds of Hungarian chili pepper that I bought last year; the peppers were all yellow then. Guess it was a hybrid. I hope these orange ones are tasty.

Hungarian chili peppers of unknown heritage

The chicory plants I grew from seed are thriving a little too well in the big cedar planters. They're well over four feet tall each, with abundant foliage and flowering stems. The roots are huge and gnarly. I was originally inspired to grow them because I saw them growing in abandoned lots, weedy backyards, and on the side of the mountain, but they were much smaller because of grazing and lawnmowers I guess. As much as I love the flowers, I'm worried that they will take over the planters, and I don't know if pulling them will solve the problem because they can regrow easily from root fragments.

Huge-ass chicory

Big gnarly chicory roots

Also doing a little too well are the violets I transplanted from the common backyard of my apartment. I found dozens of these violet seed husks all over the planter, all the product of a single plant.

Beets! There's a big juicy one, but so far the other roots look a little scrawny. They've been catching up this week and putting on some size, though.

Most of the spinach I started around the beginning of August had bolted and so I had to compost them. The remaining seedlings were pretty scrawny, but I planted them out anyway in September. They haven't done much, and when I looked today, flower buds!

Lavender and rosemary continue to bloom, and so does a solitary sacred basil plant that I somehow missed when I harvested all of my basil. I love the clove scent of sacred basil. Aren't the rosemary flowers cool?

Lavender

Rosemary

Tulsi basil

Seeds of the blackberry lily continue to ripen. Can't wait to see the pods pop open to reveal little black beady seeds. It's why I grew these.

Belamcanda chinensis seed pods

The black pasque flowers and Caucasian bellflowers I potted up are going gangbusters. The foliage of each plant is a handspan in size, and they're putting out new leaves all of the time. They ones I transplanted are still small, though, and those bellflowers are showing yellow leaves. I'm not sure what the problem is.

Wintersown Pulsatilla pratensis ssp. nigricans and a dime in a pot

And a sibling plant in my recently-built cedar planter.

Campanula bellidifolia in a pot ...

... and looking sad in a planter.

Next to the bellflowers are Liatris spicata. They didn't flower in this, their first year, but they did develop some caudexy-looking above ground bulbs.

Here are some velvetleaf seed pods.

And some nasturtium blooms.

Harebells!

Harebells

On the back balcony, kale is going crazy. I can't give enough of it away. I think a soup with lots of kale in it is in order once it's time to chop those beasts down. The squirrels seem to love it too. They made a nice salad with kale and the collard and bok choy seedlings I transplanted in August.

Monster kale

The squirrels have been freeloading ...

... and making buckwheat, clover, and kale salads.

And finally (for today), a sweet potato that's sprouted. Wondering what I should do with it.

Gratuitous Garden Macros

Because, why not?

Yup, my wintersown spinach and bok choy bolted in situ when I didn't get around to potting them up in time.

But I'm saving the best one of the lot for Wordless Wednesday.

Planting out in the back balcony

The vegetable seedlings hardening off on the front balcony have been getting unreasonably large in their solo cups over the past couple of weeks while I’ve procrastinated on planting them out. I finally went to the Home Despot this morning to gather the necessary supplies.

Each container was filled with Berger BM-1 all-purpose mix (suprisingly cheaper per unit volume than Miracle Gro potting mix) and amended with vermiculite (~ 4 litres for the big containers) and dolomitic lime (~2 cups for the big containers). 1/3 cups of dehydrated chicken manure was mixed into the top 6 inches or so of the mix.

The containers seemed huge when I picked them up through Freecycle, but now that they've been planted, they all seem a little crowded. There's four broccolis (two each of Di Cicco and Purple Peacock) in the 16" container on the left; a bok choi, two Red Russian kales, and a Wakefield cabbage in the middle 19" container; and an orach, a collard, and a Dino kale in the 12" container on the right.

Between the fancy new medium that I made, the crowding, the lack of sun on the balcony (it probably gets 3 or 4 hours of morning sun), and the squirrels and neighbour’s rat-dog that live back there, I’m not sure how the veggies will do. I’m hopeful, though.

I was going to plant out the spinach too - I eat lots and it's the primary reason for this veggie patch - but upon closer inspection, it appears that all of my starts have bolted already. I'm not sure why this would be since it's been cool and wet for most of the spring. Could it be because they are a little rootbound?

Signs of life on the balcony

Freddy's chives are thriving

The first of the spring bulbs emerge. I think this is Violacea pallida.

Wintersown bok choy, red orach, Bloomsdale Longstanding spinach seedlings

Dirt Gently Nursery for Slightly Fungus-ridden Toilet Paper Rolls: an Update

The seedlings have thrived in their toilet paper homes despite the initial appearance of white fuzzy fungus. There's no visible trace of the stuff any more on the rolls themselves, or on the soil surface. Instead, carpets of lush green growth.

Well, "carpets" might be overstating things a bit, but there is certainly a lot of happy little seedlings with one or more sets of true leaves today. Even the sad-looking purple moonflower seedling, and his brother whose seed coat is permanently attached to its seed leaves, are starting to vine away.

Clearly, time to pot them on, but with only a limited amount of potting soil on hand, only the most desperately leafy were transplanted today.

The germination rate for the bok choi from Richters was excellent, with 15 of 16 seeds producing viable little guys. I sowed these a little too densely with 4 seeds per TP tube. As I separated out the toilet paper tubes and peeled back the cardboard, it was clear that the fungus had been driven underground and was thriving between the tubes and in the seed mix. Still, roots and leaves looked healthy — roots were peeking out from every crack in the rolls and some had even driven right through the cardboard. I thinned each tube to 2 seedlings each, and planted two tubes intact, and two tubes with the cardboard removed.

I ate the thinnings; they tasted like roquette.

Next up was the Bloomsdale long-standing spinach from Sage Garden Herbs, with 5 seedlings for 8 seeds planted. These were not thinned, and were planted 1 intact, 2 naked. Roots looked healthy, though less rambunctious than bok choi, and the fungus was also comfortably co-existing.

Out of those that have emerged, most of the Tree & Twig Jaune du Doubs carrot seedlings still looked a bit small. Only 7 seedlings out of 16 seeds have emerged to date. There was 1 tube showing 3 seedlings so this was transplanted into the same container as the spinach, TP tube intact, after the smallest seedling was removed.

Eight of 8 cape daisy seeds from Seeds & More had hatched, so tubes were planted intact and 2, naked. 2 seedlings were immediately thinned, one each from an intact and naked tube.

The purple moonflower was also transplanted.

I'll probably give the TP rolls one more shot and see if baking them before use (paper burns at 451°!) will prevent fungal growth, and if the seedlings I planted with TP rolls intact do OK.

The purple menace

So my lovely, vigorous moonflower seedling has been gradually turning purple over the last several days. What's up with that? The purpleness started with the stem and crept its way up into the veins of the seed leaves. The leaves themselves are now a mottled with yellow, green, and purple-black areas instead of the healthy green of a couple days ago.

February 28: Lower stem purple but otherwise healthy looking

March 1: Seedling still looks healthy ...

March 1: ... and so I'm not worried yet

March 3: Now worried. Purple stem, veins. Leaves purple-black, yellow. Sad trombone.

Even though some other seedlings also have purple stems, and true leaves appear to be emerging from this moonflower seedling (see below), the seed leaves look pretty unhealthy. Am I worrying too much?

Moonflower crotch shot. Wonder what kind of search engine referrals this will bring?

Some googling leads me to believe that this may be due to impaired phosphorus uptake and the resultant  increased concentration of anthrocyanins in the plant due to restricted transport of sugars around the plant. Possible culprits include restricted root growth (compacted soils), too-cold or too-moist soils, too much light, or a shortage of micronutrients (B, Fe, Mg) (Why are corn seedlings turning purple?, Purple pepper leaves, Help! My seedlings are turning purple, what do I do? Function of phosphorus in plants). Given that it's pretty warm in the propagator, the soil is moist-but-not-wet, and there's a rootlet poking out of the drainage hole at the bottom of the pack, I am leaning towards restricted root growth. Time to pot it up, I guess ...

Hopefully the toilet paper rolls are deep enough for the moonflower seedlings in Dirt Gently's Nursery for Slightly Fungus-ridden Toilet Paper Rolls.

In the same plastic 4-pack as the purple moonflower, a couple of "chinese spinach" seedlings seemed to have succumbed to damping off, or maybe they were just weak to begin with. I will have to keep an eye on things. I wasn't so concerned about how purple they were because that's how they came up.

February 27

February 28

March 1: 2 weak-looking seedlings top centre

March 3: Weak seedlings die

March 3

It looks like even more little lithops seedlings have appeared overnight. They are delivering 100% concentrated happy like champs.

Meanwhile, in Dirt Gently's Nursery for Slightly Fungus-ridden Toilet Paper Rolls, the seedlings keep on coming up and the white fluffy fungus seems to have mostly disappeared. You can see that the spinach and bok choy seedlings are starting to develop true leaves. Like the moonflower, the stems of some of the seedlings are also turning purple, but it can't be because of restricted root growth: the seedlings are tiny, and there's at least 3" of medium in the TP rolls.

February 28: bacopa seedlings emerging from pellet

March 3: Bacopa seedlings

Bok choy: 94% germination!

Purple in front, green in back. WTF?

True leaves developing on most bok choy seedlings

March 3: Spinach

March 3: Spinach true leaves budding

March 3: Cape daisy with 100% germination

March 3: Tree & Twig carrots

 The ivy geraniums continue to bloom under lights.