Notes From Zone 4

Our next expansion arrived yesterday and today: Sixteen Pekin ducks and ten Toulouse geese yesterday, 26 White Midget turkeys today. The ducks and geese spent the night in the living room while the woodstove warmed the basement. Today everyone went downstairs. They’re all set up with gamebird starter and water, on a bed of

Read more »

Oh mud season has begun. Ms. Minerva would like nothing else than for me to sit my tushie down on the ground so she can climb up onto my lap. But it’s a muddy mucky mess out there! She has to satisfy herself for however long it takes before my legs start to cramp.

Read more »

I’ve been planting yet more seeds — I started some marigolds for my window boxes, some cilantro for my kitchen, and I’m trying my hand at melampodium, notoriously hard to grow from seeds, but I can never find it in the nurseries around here and I love it. I also transplanted out my pansies, moving

Read more »

I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I had ordered a bunch of heirloom tomato seeds from Tomato Fest last month. I bought their short season collection, hoping for an earlier harvest that I got last year. But anyway, in his book, he talks about planting his seed in the first of April, and he’s in California, yet I started mine the first of March? I did, though. I think I’m going to try those water surround things from Gardener’s Supply, too, to see if I can get them outside mid-April. So the seedlings are already pushing up the tops on the clear covers, growing madly. I used some old plastic silverware for markers, because I really want to keep track of the varieties of these guys. I planted four each of six varieties, and it looks like all but two germinated. Here we go!

Once the little things finally germinated, the pansy seedlings seem to be growing at quite a pace now. I pulled them off of the heating mat today and down to a shelf below, so that I could use the mat for other seeds and so that I don’t fry the little things. I’m going to

Read more »

It’s taking a lot longer than I think it should for my pansies to germinate. It might be perhaps that I’m impatient, but I don’t think so. I planted these guys on the first, and here it is the sixteenth and they are just barely starting to come up. I’m leaving the lights on all the time again this year. Last year it was an experiment, but I think it was a successful one, so I’m going to repeat it again. The theory behind turning the lights off at night is to give the plants some rest, some sleep, but I read some research that said that the amount of light from artificial light is such a minuscule fraction of the light from the sun that they don’t need to rest to process it.

I think this is the official start to the 2004 Gardening Season. The only way to indulge my gardening obsession while living in Zone 4 is to start my plants from seed, under lights. I started four flats of pansies today. Well, to be perfectly accurate, three of pansies, one of violas. After much

Read more »

Even in midwinter there’s some gardening activity worth preserving. First the mushrooms. The enokitake had to get moved out of the fridge to the basement to make room for holiday food. Unfortunately stuff in the basement gets neglected, and we’ve had only one half-hearted flush. We’ve gotten two pretty good flushes from the pioppino

Read more »

I started some veggies up on the upstairs balcony today. Last year, I did lettuce, garlic, and onions. The garlic never did anything, the onions were great as scallions, and the lettuce was a hit with everyone, and lasted deep into the summer. So this year, since the veggie patch is going to take a

Read more »

I traveled all week, so Frank had to maintain all of the seedlings in the basement. Unlike the last time I was away, everything survived and thrived, even, this time. I’m not sure if it’s because of lack of humidity in the basement or what, but some of the trays need to be watered two

Read more »