Seed starting in the library

I started my pepper and tomato seeds this week, using my upstairs library (the warmest room in the house) as the nursery.  I went all hot with the peppers, since they are so productive and pickle well- we are just finishing our last jar from 2012.  Here's the line up for 2013: Hungarian Wax, Jalapeno Gigante, Bulgarian Carrot and a few pots of Slim Jim Eggplant. I have a heat pad on low under the flat because peppers and eggplant really need it hot to germinate.

In the bookcases (fitted with lights) I have started Mortgage Lifter, Roma VF, Celebrity and Sweet 100's tomatoes.  Here's a pic of Sol observing the pots from his favorite chair:

Snow and Sunchokes

Well, Spring is not here yet. What a difference from last year! Right now it is snowing again.
Here's a pic I just shot looking out the slider into the yard:

The snow is wet and heavy because temps are just above freezing.

Last week I continued my tradition of planting my first seeds in February.
 I sowed Razzle Dazzle spinach under a makeshift coldframe:

Last year I sowed spinach ten days earlier, and by the 28th it had sprouted! We'll see how long it takes this year.

Despite the snow I harvested some fresh sunchokes from the garden this morning.  Under the snow the ground is thawed, and I easily stirred up the soil and pulled out a handful of golden tubers.

I scrubbed the sunchokes clean, then sliced them thin, and added them to a winter salad of cabbage, potato and carrot. Then I splashed olive oil and sherry vinegar on the vegetables, seasoned with salt and pepper and mixed them up thoroughly.  The final touch was decidedly not locovore  -shaved Italian parmesan. Sometimes a little compromise is worth it!

Waiting for spring

Snow and Amaryllis

Winter Storm 'Nemo' walloped us pretty hard here in southeastern Massachusetts -- 2 feet of snow and no power for 30 hours. Thanks to lots of insulation the temperature in the house only went down to the 40's when it was 15 outside, but still, when the power came back on at 3:30am I threw off the down quilt and yelled 'hallelujah', then lay awake for quite a while waiting for the pinging in the baseboard they would mean the furnace was up and running.
We have solar power, but it's tied into the grid, and doesn't work when the power is out.   And we didn't make any electricity until a day after power was back because there was a foot of snow covering the panels.
I was eating dinner and heard the whoosh and thud of snow sliding off the panels, and turned back to my meal much more cheerful.

Today Sol and I went out to dig
through the pile of snow that slid off. After two warm days it was still deep. Here's the path I cleared between the back gate and the deck:









I was worried the cold would kill my house plants, but they have survived, including my pink amaryllis, back for the third year.  It had been dormant so long I was losing hope, but last week a flower bud suddenly nosed it's way out of the bulb:

What a welcome sight in the midst of so much cold and snow!

My Miscanthus planting, aka the 'Septic Garden'

My new septic system was installed in 2003, and because of the high water table, the leach field is big.   Once the project was done I was faced with a large bare patch of soil, and I thought long and hard about what to plant over it.  The plants had to be shallow rooted, or they would damage the performance of the leach field. I also wanted low maintenance.
My solution was 60 plugs of Miscanthus grass and 20 blueberry bushes.  Although the Miscanthus in not native to this area and the blueberries are, they have grown together into an impressive 'septic garden', and need little care other than an annual haircut for the grass and some trimming for shape for the berries. And now that I have a vegetable garden, the Miscanthus cuttings are put to use as mulch over the paths. I know that Miscanthus is considered an invasive non-native in some parts of the US, but it has been a restrained and polite resident of my garden.
I wait until spring to cut them back because the  golden clumps of tall grass are a welcome sight against the  brown and gray of the winter garden. They are also Sol's favorite place to play - he loves to run through them and follow the rabbit trails:

Garbage can root cellar

The water table is very high in my neighborhood ( often a good thing during the summer, when most of the garden never needs watering). As a result, my house has a four foot high crawl space full of  sump pumps instead of a cellar.  So where do I store the crops that traditionally go in a root cellar?

For several winters I stored my potatoes in the garage, in racks draped with newspaper.  Until last winter this worked fine.  It took me a while to notice, but eventually I realized the piles of  potatoes were getting smaller every day, and moved the remaining tubers inside to under the kitchen sink.
In the spring I found a pile of half eaten, sprouting potatoes behind a row of storage bins, along with the carcass of a rat.  Did he die from eating green potatoes? I'll never know, but that's my guess.

We live in a farming community, and rats are a nasty reality around barns full of cows and feed. This year I came up with more secure, yet accessible root storage --  a steel garbage can with holes punched  in the lid for air flow.  It has worked great!

Besides the holes,  the  keys to the success of my garbage can root cellar are placement in the garage and using brown paper bags.  My furnace is located in the back of the garage in a small insulated room. By placing the can next to this room, it absorbs just enough heat to keep the contents from freezing, even during our recent ten degree weather.
The paper bags let the tubers (which are alive, although in a dormant state)  release and reabsorb moisture.  Unlike my winter squash, which likes the dry cool air of my back bedroom, most root crops need fairly high humidity to store well.
I've finished all the potatoes, but now the bin is full of sunchokes. They are storing better than I could have hoped, after reading (after I dug up thirty pounds) that they don't usually store well for more than a couple of weeks.  Here's a pic of  a bag of chokes:

And here's a choke I harvested before Christmas, still firm on January 27th:

Meanwhile, my garlic, hung above the root cellar, is sprouting despite the cold. That's because it is an extra cold hardy hardneck garlic, rather than the better storing softneck.  I am going to plant a crop of the hardiest softneck I can find this fall so I can have my own garlic year round.  The sprouting garlic is still good, but I need to eat it fast before the sprouts get too big.  Than means it's time to eat lots of oven roasted garlic and sunchokes!

Making paper pots

 Last night I spent some time sitting at the dining room table, watching a DVD and making paper pots.

 I don't use a wooden pot maker, just a glass from my cabinet. I've marked the glass on the side at the center with a sharpie.  Using this line as a rolling guide I make 4 inch tall pots.

I start with half sheets of newspaper roughly torn at the middle seam,  then folded double.  Next I roll each sheet around the glass with the extra paper sticking out above the open top of the glass.

Then I tuck the overflow into the glass and slide the paper off the glass. Reaching inside, I fold down the extra paper , then push it flat with the bottom of the glass. It doesn't have to be neat, just tight enough to stay in place.

Finally, I put a small piece of tape in the overlap seam (this time I used free address labels) and fold the rim back a half inch.

After 3 years I'm getting pretty good at these pots!

Then I made labels by cutting up christmas cards. They are usually tough enough to survive until my seedlings go outside, yet because they are paper they breakdown in the garden by the end of the season.   

Sol also likes to steal and chew labels, so I prefer the paper because it is more digestible as well as compostable!