Tag Archives: seedlings

Opening Day at the Homestead

Opening Day! We had beautiful weather yesterday. Low 70s, blue skies, no wind. We took advantage and got quite a lot accomplished.

The first thing we did was to hang our new Bat House!! We wanted one for years and we have a small family of bats here. Here is a link to the bat house post.

Part of ‘Opening  Day” was to bring our hardiest seedlings outside for the first time. We put them in the shade to acclimate them to the outside, or, harden them off. We bring them back inside to the grow lights in the evening.

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We also tended to our cold frame. This has been growing lettuce and spinach all winter and has really taken off in the last few weeks. Carol weeded it and harvested some beautiful spinach for our dinner.

Cold Frame
Cold Frame

We made it from an old kitchen cabinet and storm window, both of which we found in the trash.  When it gets warm, you need to open it.

Home grown spinach for our dinner.
Home grown spinach for our dinner.

After that was the biggest part of “Opening Day”: We opened the Fig Tree! I will put up a post just about the Fig at a later point and link from here.

Fig Tree 2016
Fig Tree 2016

After that we turned the entire compost pile and started a new one. Our trick to composting is adding Alfalfa Meal between layers. Gets it real hot (140 degrees!) and helps to break things down.

More to do tomorrow….

Fertilizing the Seedlings with Compost Tea

Last night Carol mixed a batch of compost tea! This is our first time making and using it. She put a shovel or two of our very nice compost into a tub and poured water in it and let it stand overnight.

Compost Tea
Compost Tea in the Tub
Compost Tea
Compost Tea

This morning (4/14/16) I scooped some out and filtered in through an old piece of window screen.

Filtering the Tea
Filtering the Tea

I then used it to lightly water all of our seedlings that were more than just a few days old. I also put some on my fig tree cuttings. I will talk more about them in another post.

Seedling Update 4/9/16

This past weekend we worked on our seedlings. We transplanted our Giant Romas from 3-4 in a tiny pot to single plants in larger pots.

Giant Romas
Giant Romas

snowApril9_2016

It was a bit incongruous since it snowed all weekend: April 9, 2016.

We also bought yet another shop light for a fourth row of sprouts!

Row on bottom makes our fourth lighted row
Row on bottom makes our fourth lighted row

We noticed that our spinach has started to go to seed. We think its because they are under the lights 24/7. It is Tyee spinach, a hybrid that is supposedly slow to bolt. Sending up a flower after the second leaves is ridiculous but is no big deal. We will pinch off the flower and maybe they will continue to grow. If not, we will plant more. The recommendation is to plant spinach seeds every 2 weeks for a continuous harvest. We usually do a buzz cut at the soil line and they will grow more leaves.

Spinach starting to go to seed.
Spinach starting to go to seed.

We also planted some new seeds- Roma VF and San Marzano. Both are Italian style plum tomatoes for making sauce.

Maybe today we will make some compost tea to fertilize our little plants. Stay tuned….