I have had a crazy last few weeks what with winning a national championship in hockey and all but i have managed to keep up with my gardening.  Just haven’t had much chance to post.  So here is the status. 

GARDEN UPDATE 

Growing Outside
Garlic (planted 3/10, shoots are about 6 inches tall!)
Peas (planted 4/7, first sprouts 4/15)
White Onions (planted starter sets 4/3, first sprouts 4/14)
Broccoli (direct seeded 4/1, first sprouts 4/15)
Cabbage (direct seeded 4/1, first sprouts 4/17)
Green onions (planted starter sets 4/14, first sprouts 4/17)
Lettuce - two varieties (direct seeded 4/14)
Red Onions (direct seeded 4/14)
Carrots (direct seeded 4/17)

Growing Inside
Tomatoes (in large pots now, are about 12 inches high!)
Peppers (in jiffy pots, jalapenos are 6 inches high, green peppers are 4 inches high)
Broccoli (in jiffy pots, testing the growth starting inside vs. outside)
Oregano, Parsley (in jiffy pots, oregano is tiny, parsley is about 3 inches high and leggy, needs to go outside I think)
Pumpkins, Squash, Zucchini (transplanted to jiffy pots, about 2 inches high)

 
Left picture - green peppers in front, jalapenos in back
Right picture - biggest tomato plant next to the peppers for size comparison.  Crazy huge!

In jiffy pellets waiting to decide if I should move to jiffy pots or transplant straight into the ground:
Dill, Cilantro, Yellow Onions, Celery, Basil

Started this week
Cucumbers and Pickling Cucumbers (starting in vermiculite)

OBSERVATIONS

So far I haven’t had any success in trying to harden off my vegetables for outdoor transplanting.  My first broccoli attempts died while still in the greenhouse.  i think it was too warm for them actually.  They’ve been doing better since I set the new ones on the window sill instead.  I set out onions and lettuce to harden off and they got completely dried out within a few hours.  I forgot that they need a TON more moisture when they are out in the hot sun.  I probably should have set them in a shady place to start with too.  Grrr.  So I just direct seeded some of those plants but it’s sad because i could have had a head start if the transplants had worked.  I think in the future i won’t bother with onion seeds anyway.  They are soooooooooooo easy to grow using starter sets that there is no point in hassling with the seeds.  And the sets aren’t too much more expensive anyway.

When I get to hardening off my prize tomato and pepper plants I am going to be extremely careful with them, give them tons of water, and do it very gradually.  I can’t afford to have those plants die and start over.  That would be too depressing.

Growing Outside
Garlic - Waiting for sprouts to appear 

Growing Inside - Individual Pots
Broccoli - 2 plants growing in individual pots

Transplants Done This Week
Cherry tomatoes - 5 of 5 seeds sprouted in vermiculite, transplanted best one to individual pot
Roma tomatoes - 3 of 3 seeds sprouted in vermiculite, transplanted best one to individual pot
Early girl tomatoes - 5 of 5 seeds sprouted in vermiculite, transplanted best one to individual pot
Green peppers - 5 of 5 seeds sprouted in vermiculite, transplated best two to individual pots
Jalapeno peppers - 2 of 5 seeds sprouted in jiffy pellets, transplated both to individual pots
Red onoins - transplanted two biggest ones to individual pots.  Waiting to get 4 solid plants!

Sprouting Update
Green leaf lettuce - 11 of 18 seeds sprouted in jiffy pellets
Mixed variety lettuce - 1 of 18 sprouted so far in jiffy pellets
Parsley - FINALLY sprouted a lot in vermiculite, still tiny seedlings though
Round 2 of celery - getting a few new sprouts
Round 2 of yellow onions, cabbage, red onions - no sprouts yet

New Seeds Started Indoors:
Started the rest of my herbs in vermiculite:  Oregano, Basil, Dill, Cilantro

I’ve got my cute little indoor greenhouse set up and my plants seem to enjoy it. I don’t have a great sunny location in my house so I try to rotate the greenhouse so my plants don’t lean to the sunshine too badly. It would probably help to get some lights, but it’s not in the budget for this year.  I’m following along with the guidelines on this website and planting new things each week.  I can finally start some stuff outdoors now so it’s getting really exciting!  I sure love spring
Outside

• Planted one square of garlic, 9 cloves. I used grocery store garlic and tried to pick the biggest cloves.
• We ripped up a huge bed of irises that were planted along our back fence.  I’m planning to fill in the beds with compost and use this area for sprawling plants like pumpkins, zucchini, etc.

Inside

• Started 6 peat pellets each of 2 varieties of lettuce.
• Lots of onion sprouts, a few celery sprouts, and both types of peppers have now sprouted. For peat pellets that didn’t sprout, I added some new seeds and am hoping for some more seedlings. I got ZERO cabbage so I really hope I can get some with this next batch.
• Waiting on sprouts from 3 varieties of tomatoes and parsley which are in vermiculite in jiffy pots.

In the garden:

I got ambitious with prepping my gardens this week.  I supplemented my compost-filled beds with some peat moss and vermiculite and filled in the remaining space with fresh compost.  Pulled some weeds out of the garden and my surrounding paver stones.

Planning to start some garlic outdoors this week.  Timing on garlic is weird as it does better planted in the fall.  But I’m experimenting with it this year by trying it in the early early spring.  We’ll see what happens!

New Indoor Seedlings:

Started some parsley and three varieties of tomatoes in jiffy pots with vermiculite.  I am quite enjoying this new method of starting seeds indoors.

Current Indoor Seedlings:

Red onions and yellow onions are all starting to sprout quite nicely in my jiffy pellets.  A teeny celery plant is just barely poking it’s head above the dirt.  Still waiting on peppers and cabbage to make an appearance.  My broccoli exploded in the vermiculite jiffy pots so I repotted them into jiffy pots filled with potting soil.  Here is a picture of the repotting process including a slight mishap I had (dumped the whole thing on my kitchen floor … sad)

In reading through the MySquareFootGarden blog I realized that I was missing out on the opportunity to get started on my plants! I was waiting until the magic “6 weeks before the last frost date” to get started, but through reading the post I figured out that anything that can be planted 4-6 weeks before could actually be started 6-8 weeks earlier than THAT. Following the week system Emily developed and using the Last Frost Dates in Utah chart that I found, I discovered that I am already in week 4 for the 2008 growing season. In light of that discovery I ran to Walmart and picked up my starting materials and got cracking. Here is an update of what I’ve got going this week:

• - Jiffy pellet refills for my jiffy greenhouse
• - Jiffy pots (bigger than pellets)
• - Potting soil
• - Purchased or borrowed seeds I was lacking for this year
• - Tags to label the plants

Vermiculite Experiment

I’ve never attempted to start seeds in vermiculite as described in the Starting Seeds Indoors post, so I decided to give it a whirl this year since I’m starting early enough to recover from any mistakes. Instead of making my own container, I opted to use a “jiffy pot” which just happens to be a small pot with a whole in the bottom I followed the directions and am starting with just two vegetables until I see how it works:

• Broccoli - seeds are 3 years old and very small, so I sprinkled a small pinch of seeds in (hoping to get at least 3-4 good starts and end up with 2 full-blown plants in the garden)
• Green Peppers - seeds are 3 years old but I’m running short on seeds so I put in 5 or 6 seeds (if I can’t get 2 solid plants out of these I will try some seeds using my normal methods)

Jiffy Greenhouse Seedlings

My typical method of starting seedlings is to use this great Jiffy Greenhouse I purchased a few years ago. You can buy refills for it each year for about $4-5 but to buy a brand new one is under $10 so it’s not a huge cost if you don’t feel like storing it. Here is my method. Fill the tray with water and let the pellets expand. Poke a hole in each pellet and drop your seeds down in it. Then cover the hole lightly with the peat moss from the pellets. Then you put the lid over top of the tray and put it in a warm, dark location until the seeds begin to sprout. When a few start to germinate you prop the lid open to allow air to circulate. Once all the seeds are sprouted you remove the lid and move it to a sunny location. I’m definitely considering purchasing the indoor greenhouse posted under “Emily’s Week 2“. So here is a summary of the plants I started this week using the Jiffy method (all of these seeds were purchased this year so I anticipate good germination rates):

• Red onions - 4 jiffy pellets with 3 seeds in each (need 4 onions)
• Celery - 4 jiffy pellets with a small pinch of 10-12 tiny seeds (need 4 plants)
• Cabbage - 2 jiffy pellets with 3 seeds in each (need 2 cabbage heads)
• Jalapeno peppers - 3 jiffy pellets with 2 seeds in each, 1 in one (need 2 jalapeno plants)
• Yellow onions - 11 jiffy pellets with 1 seed in each (eventually need 16, but I want to stagger 8 at a time and I’m short on seeds so we’ll see what happens)

I am still finalizing my garden plan so I will post that later. Hope you have fun following my garden this year