Welcome to Growbox Hill

Welcome to Growbox Hill
Welcome to Growbox HIll!

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Snow a fallin, seeds a sproutin...

So yeah, it is January, and yeah... I have already started seeds.

Well, lol, really I started seeds in July :) Hellebore seeds. It's a facinating winter flower, because it will only sprout in the cold, and blooms during the coldest months. Kind of feels like the opposite of what plants do, right? I thought so too, but they really are such lovely little things.
And extremely expensive as plants, so much so they have been cost prohibitive to me till now. Last June a friendly GW member sent me seed, and a nice goodly lot of it. So I let it scarify in the fridge, and oops.. totally forgot about it. I was supposed to plant the seeds in August, but screwed that pooch till December. So I planted up the paper towels full of seeds at the end of December. Two of them showed signs of sprouting, and those got put into pots in the solarium, and the other four got put into kitty litter jugs for wintersowing.
And lo! Just a few days ago I helped a bunch of tiny little hellebores break free of their paper towel in the solarium... Squee with joy! These little beauties, if I'm careful, will yield blossoms in 2-3 years. That's part of the reason why they are expensive, they are one of those super patience kind of plants, lol.

So yay for those sprouts! I also started up the earliest of the basils, and just the regular basil has sprouted, still awaiting lemon and lime basils. I also planted the black pepper seed I've had for ages, and who knows if that will sprout or not. Got all the kitty litter jugs done and outside on their racks now. Horehound, Vervain, Feverfew, Valerian Hyssop, Borage, Wormwood, Butterfly Weed, Wild Lupine, Evening Stock, Allium, and Large Mixed Hyacinths. Keep yer fingers crossed that they all send up sprouts. I will also be starting indoor pots of all this stuff too when their indoor sowing times come up.

My Silvery Fir Tree tomato finally finished out it's last fruiting, or at least the last one I was willing to wait through. So those seeds are now stripped out and fermenting. And I cut the plant down, took a half dozen cuttings off of it to hopefully clone up for this year. I also took a half dozen Totem cuttings off the two plants I currently have and are either in fruiting or blooming stages. So far after a few days the cuttings still look really healthy, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will continue on well too. The Copper River cutting from last fall is doing very well, as is the best of the Beaver Lodge Slicer- the two weaker BLS's are not doing so great, but are still valiantly fruiting on. Hopefully we will get some seed stock yet off of those.
The 7-pot Brain Strain Yellow, Fatali, and Aji Lemon peppers I brought in are doing right fine. The one Aji Lemon I brought in way late after freezing temps from the solarium never recovered and I scrapped it. The Martians Carrot that is still out in the solarium is still doing remarkably well considering how cold it has stayed out there now for a couple weeks.

And tee-hee, I've planted up diakon radish for spring seed production now. My sister brought home a huge bag of the stuff last fall, and I simply didn't have time to pickle the stuff, and she sure wasn't going to do it.. So the poor roots just languished out in the solarium till one day I noticed some of them sprouting fresh greenery. So I potted the best couple of them up in the tall cans I usually reserve for growing horseradish, and now they are slowly coming along out in the solarium. Sooner or later it will get warm enough for them to really take off, and then I will get my own seed stock... I hope.... or at least that's how radishes are supposed to work, as biannuals. But this is the first time I'm trying this off of completely unknown stock, so hey, let's all hope for the best right? Some of my experiments fail, but a lot of them sure do work out fine :) 

And all in all, I'm pleased as punch with how warm the solarium is staying. Now that I have a growbot out there, I can monitor the temps and a bunch of other stuff too. And it's hit freezing a couple times, but is generally staying between freezing and fridge temps- which is a full ten degrees warmer than outdoors! This is huge. This is a whole growing zone difference huge. If I can keep this up, it will be a game changer. If I can apply myself to some more serious larger greenhouse/hoophouse action outdoors too... why, this whole gardening thing will really change around here. Being in a micro climate is incredible, but some of the growing and season extending abilities is monumental for getting food and such produced. And having a growbot in my solarium is making a marked difference too. Before I was just using a digital thermometer with a high/low mark that would reset every day. Now I get to take hourly readings and can compare them to the actual temps outside to find out what is going on when. Plus I track humidity, lumins, and I have a camera to capture data as well. Mega fucking badass!!

Etsy shop is slowing waaayyy down. I've had some repeated problems with people ordering custom printings without knowing what size they need printed, so I haven't relisted 3D stuff for weeks. And it's so darn cold in the solarium working at my jewlers bench on anything is right out because it's kind of impossible to string beads when you got the shakes from sitting in a 35 degree room, heh.
I need to get off my figurative ass and rework my etsy stuff. It would help if I had someone to take good photographs of my stuff so it looks and sells better- but the one offer I got to photograph stuff never amounted to anything more than words. Sigh, maybe I just need to suck it up and learn how to take good pics, hehehe.

I do have a lot of materials to work with out there, just piling up awaiting my artistic talents. I got a heap of painting to do too, adjusting a lot of stuff to work into the Nightvale scheme. Always a lot of beautiful art I want to work on... always a lot of reality and work I have to dedicate myself to instead. Ain't that always the way of it. I really need to start sneaking in some me and zen time with this.

And today I think I'm going to roast up a turkey- I need to get it into the oven SOON. It's been defrosting for days, so it's well and time. This is one of the four turkeys we picked up for 52 cents a pound. 52 cents, holy fuck good price on meat. But after Thanksgiving, three turkeys sucking up most of the freezer space is pretty ho hum, especially when I have to pass by super good other meat sales because of lack of space! So today is a roast off a turkey day. Mmmmm, means yummy turkey soup soon. And I need to make up a batch of sloppy joe mix out of some ground turkey that's been in the fridge and needs to be used up.
So off I go into cooking land, better get off my butt here... literally this  time :)

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