Someone on a gardening forum I visit posted a link to a method of growing potatoes in basically a box, adding height and soil to the box as the plant grows to encourage more growth. I have heard of this, but didn’t have time to try it last year and of course forgot about it. I think I’ll make one and put it next to my regularly planted potatoes and do a little experiment to see if it actually produces better!
The link? http://www.gardencityseeds.net/growers1.php
Enjoy!
Since I haven’t ever gardened at the same time I had a wood stove or fireplace, I never needed to look this up, but I was curious tonight if our ashes from the fireplace would be beneficial, or at least safe, for the compost.
The next door neighbor and I chatted a bit about gardening tonight and he was ecstatic about our garden spot, the people who lived here before had an excellent garden for years and they let him grown what turned out to be the biggest, best corn he’s ever seen. Other information is the rest of our yard is useless to garden as is, it’s all clay (but we knew that)….
So it doesn’t sound like there’s a need to buy compost or do a bunch of amendments, and after a quick Google search showing fireplace ash is good for raising the PH of soil, I think we’ll add some to the compost, but not much. And mix it in well.
So far the composter has grass, leaves, and a whole bunch of kitchen scraps like egg shells, potato peels, apple peels and cores, banana peels, coffee grounds, carrot and celery ends, etc. Add in a little ash and we’ll have a nifty little worm food party. Still kicking myself for leaving the compost at the old house!
I remembered today that I promised my 13 year old I’d grow cherry tomatoes next time. Well, it’s next time :lol and I’m not sure what kind to get. Territorial Seed has a pretty big selection I think, any suggestions? (link goes to the cherry tomato category on their site, opens in new window) Thank you for your help!
It snowed again :lol And now it’s almost 50 degrees, but my 11 year old son managed to get out in time and make a snow man. Being the bad blogger and mom that I am, I forgot to get pictures 
I would bet money if I had it that’ll we’ll get another snow before April the way this climate change is going. I know it’s not the worst or best winter ever, but worldwide, things are changing.
Hey, at least before the ice age in a couple hundred years it’ll be nice and tropical in Canada, eh?
The lettuce decided to start growing true leaves after today’s watering.
However, they are leaning a lot to reach the light since we only have one:
But it’s enough to grow things so I’m happy. More celery is coming up, the onions are all showing green stems and we now have tomatoes sprouting:
They look a little pale and weak I think, I’ll watch them carefully.
I thinned out a few lettuce and cabbage, even as thin as my fingers are I still managed to get too many seeds in a couple spots, one had 6 in the same spot. Oops. I should have used the tweezers like I thought of last year!
In other news, we got a wicked rain storm that knocked out our DSL for a few hours yesterday and all night til after noon today, but my 2 year old didn’t mind a bit:
Oh to be 2 again :lol It took me 20 minutes to get all the mud off the kitchen floor when he came in, and we stripped him right at the door and took him to a nice warm bath!
I can’t leave well enough alone and am giving Garden of Eatin’ a new design. I’m also getting rid of the Google ads to save page load time. I’ve added a “related posts” plug in to the bottom of each post that parses all my posts and pages and comes up with the closest matches. I’ll also be adding actual categories to the blog to help readers find information that way. Stay tuned, it’ll still be the same Garden of Eatin’, just improved a bit (……..I hope).
These babies are going to be ready before the weather is if this keeps up!
The onions are perking up quite nicely. I planted most of the rest of them in the far tray today, here you can see the ones I planted on the 18th with the cabbage just behind it -
Better view of the cabbage (right) and the lettuce (left)…the green peppers in between haven’t sprouted up yet -
Basil to the right of the stick and thyme to the left -
Can you see the teeny bit of green in the upper left of this pot? That’s my first celery ever!
Some chives -
Top view of both trays -
Having never done one of these before, I’ll probably do something wrong. Double Danger started it, blame them! :duck
Describe your gardening style
Throw stuff in the ground and hope it grows? I use all natural stuff to make it work and hope for the best. I like growing things that have a definite use – food, herbs, medicinal (2 aloe plants)…I cannot keep flowers alive.
What was the last plant you bought?
Actual plant? I think that was my bigger aloe plant. That was beautiful and thick and the younger 2 got ahold of it and broke all but 3 fronds off it :censored At least it’s still alive.
What were the last seeds you bought?
Veggie and herb seeds
When was the last time you had to pick the dirt from under your nails?
Nails? Phht. I have such weak nails there’s no room for dirt to get under. But if I had decent nails, it would have been yesterday after planting onions.
Any big plans for the garden this year?
Not this year. Not going to grow things like strawberries or asparagus until we’re in our own house, too much chance of having to move mid-season. Just keeping it simple this time!
What was has been your biggest mistake in gardening EVER?
Leaving the water on overnight, flooding the entire garden.
Biggest success?
A tie between tomatoes and zucchini….they were coming out our ears.
If you could be doing anything right now in regards to gardening… what would it be?
Cleaning up and tilling the new garden spot to make it ready for the season. Soon, I hope.
I think Mr Linky is working?
So in my post on the 15th I said some rubbish about waiting 2 weeks to see growth? How’s 3 days. :lol The earliest any of the packets say to germination is the lettuce at 5-10 days, most are around 10-21.This is the lettuce, but some cabbage has also popped up. I love gardening :treehugger
Here’s the red onion I planted today, it’s a little under the weather from being stuck in a bag but it’ll come around!
While I wish I was getting paid for this, I’m not. This stuff is just that good. It deserves a post of its own. Good gardening practices and good soil is always better then using fertilizer, but if you need it, use this stuff. Organic, uses nothing “bad”, no chemicals or artificial crap that you don’t want in your food and body. And it works so well! My soil last year was blech and I tried to kill the garden a few times by severely over and under watering, using Earth Juice really helped me out. Use it from seedlings to fruiting! earthjuice.com/vegetable/index.html
I bought mine at www.americanag.com, and was pleased with their fast, free shipping (located in Portland, Oregon), or you can find a dealer here: earthjuice.com/buy/index.html
The onions I bought the other day (and had in our very cold garage) have decided it’s time to grow, so I planted a few in the remaining spots in the one flat and will start another flat tomorrow. I’ve only ever started onion from seed and was surprised to find 1-2″ stem growth on some of them. Hopefully they grow better then last years (the onions themselves never got that big, the stems got really tall though, something about too much or too little light?). The only other time I grew onions, in 2002 (I think?) I had many very big onions!
Today I planted
Chives
Basil
Thyme
Roma Tomatoes
Celery
Lettuce
Green peppers
Cabbage
Jalapenos
And set up one counter with the light and tray. In 2 weeks we should see some growth!
Here’s the “before we attack the garden” pictures, it’s a wreck!
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