Bee growing like that..

So the plant race is on, lol. Been doing some action around here already. So much so I can actually give a kitchen window report.

Some of the earliest herbs are coming up, basil and lime basil I planted last month. A no show was the lemon basil, I have now sowed the last of the seed that I had. New up in seeding is thyme, oregano, lemon balm and wormwood.
No sign of hyacinth seedlings, but I think the first of the alliums has sprouted. Now if only all the rest of the tray would do something, lol.
Been shufling around some tomato cuttings. One each of silvery fir leaf and totem tomatoes have their own red solo cups. The others are not showing such favorable development, and I've lost a few plugs too :( But hey, if I can get these ones to really go, it's a win. And so far with the planting of the seed testing- the totems are leggy as hell, the freds are really good, and the Snow Whites are leggy.  I don't plan on starting up more tomato seed for a couple weeks at least though. And I moved both the totem mother plants out to the solarium- if they make it, great, if they don't oh well. At this point I have stable and high germinating seed stock and cutting action going on.
Started all the peppers. Yes, all of them. A dozen kinds too. Sigh. I can't seem to help myself. Not the scorching hot deadly weapon round that last year was, though there are plants coming back this year. It is indeed a bit early, but I have some pretty darn good season extending going on now, and I would rather get peppers off to their action a bit earlier than later. And really, it's only about a week earlier than last year. Anywho, enough second guessing myself with this one, lol. All the overwintered pepper plants- Aji Lemon, Fatali, Costeno Amrillio, 7-pot brain strain yellow, and Martians carrot- are in excellent health.

Now I'm going back into what feels like a forever holding pattern, lol. Now I have hit some of my earliest on 12 week action, it's just hover and wait for weeeekkksss at a time. Lol, patience is not my virtue at the moment.
I cleaned up all of my trade seed today- and tossed 95% of it into the IDGAF bucket. The bucket is now just about full enough for me to make some mega seed bomb action out of it. I want to bomb the living beejeebers out of the north line of the wild walk this year. I got more than enough random seed in the bucket now to make an actual impact on this plan. I also have a heap of good popcorn seed and a heap and then some of black oil sunflower seed too. With a lot of wild luck, I will be establishing some rather nice foodly growing border action. I still have a bunch of commercial seed bombs to use this year as well nicely enough.

And on a general whining I want note. Seriously want to procure and learn how to use a scythe well. For real.

Back onto yard and garden, lol. All the indoor growing is going well in general, and looking forward to good bounty come summer.

Another day, another entry.. I think the above is from the third, and today is the 5th..

Been doing a bit of plant cleanup. I potted up more tomatoes to red solo cups. From six each of Totem and Silvery Fir Tree, I now have three Totem and two Silvery Fir Tree  that have graduated up to solo cups. The SFT mother has been cut for a while now, the two Totem mothers are now out in the solarium to see what happens with the chill.
Took six Beaver Lodge Slicer cuttings off the three struggling mothers. I nixed the weakest one, willing to sacrifice the one almost bigger tomato for the good of the cuttings I got. The other two are healthier, and are well staked. And both have either fruit growing or strong bud clusters opening, so it looks possible to still get seed stock as well as clones going on.
The Copper River is vining along, a single 4 foot vine now. And finally starting to show both flower bud sign and has a sucker or two that would be suitable for cuttings. It got moved to the floor today because it's getting so tall, lol. And it got a couple new 6 foot bamboo rods to grow up onto.
I pulled the Dwarf Wild Fred and Snow White Cherry seedlings today. I couldn't kill them when they passed their germination test, but the are simply tooo leggy, and I will start again in a few weeks. The Totem seedlings are stubby and looking great.

Took a half dozen cuttings from the Aji Lemon pepper today, and got those under the dome. The plant needed trimming, and no sense in letting good cuttings go to waste since I currently have the space for them. The 7-pot Brain Strain Yellow required a harsh cutting today, all of it's new tip action. It was infested with something that were tiny, white, and made webs. We shall see if the harsh cutting is good or not. 


And on the food front.. it's citrus season. Seriously. In the depths of cold as a mutha, it's citrus season. Now is the time to perk up on massive doses of tart and sweet juicy sunshine. Over the last few weeks grapefruits and massive naval oranges have been 1/10, clementines are going on clearance here and there, and limes and lemons are running around two bucks a bag.
So we had a lot in pitchers of lemonaide, and a lot of fresh eating. But now we are starting to run down on the glut, lol. That meant it was time to take time for some preserving.
I took two grapefruit, four clementines, three lemons, and about a dozen limes to make up three cups of juice. Whew. Made a pitcher of aide right away, but the other two cups are in a bottle in the fridge, awaiting either more fresh goodness or to be frozen into cubes for later use.
That left me with a lot of citrus rinds. So much so that I felt I should be doing something more than just tossing them into the compost pile. So I took the ones that had been best rendered out of flesh and juice, and filled a gallon jar about half full with the rinds. Then I used about 3/4 of a gallon of white vinegar and filled up the jar, totally submerging the fruit. This will sit for 4-6 weeks in the cool dark floor corner of the pantry. Then at the end, I will filter the vinegar, and it will be an excellent homemade cleaner. Yum. Just in time for spring cleaning and thoughts of throwing the windows open :) Still had a few rinds left, and so I'm dehydrating them to a crisp so they can be ground up and my sister can use them in making soap.
It is also avocado season, and I picked four very nice ones the other day while they were still rock hard. Now they have ripened on the counter and we have been snacking those up, mostly tossed with lime juice, yum. And of course now the pits are balanced on toothpicks in glasses of water.

And just as a random cool thing to think about promoting..

Do you realize, with the Superbowl coming up..
If every single person making guac this weekended saved their avocado pits, and gave them to local schools for spring growing programs...
We could potentially teach thousands or even tens of thousands of kids about how seeds grow. Give them a really cool science project to look forward to in school.
Think about it. Right now, there are lots of schools throughout the country that have no current growing program. But a lot of those areas still see the influx of fresh avocados for the Superbowl every year. Kids that normally would not see any sort of growing program could now do so.. thanks to football. 
If you don't have any avocado pits... but you do have leftover red solo cups or perhaps empty jars from salsas and cheezy dips, or plastic tubs from other dips and salads.. Perhaps consider saving those up and then schools don't need to buy any pots- those are being recycled and kicked in too!

Support your football team through local farming.. Grow an avocado. Support your local school through your love of Superbowl.. Get your school on the avocado pit program.

The word is out... dinner at Growbox Hill!

So with the crappy and cold finally settling in... I put out a little dish of cat food and a box lined with a snuggly towel in the garage. We have a feral cat or two running around, and even though I put stuff out kind of late in the cold snap, there is still signs of it being used now. Along with some nice paw prints in the snow. And yes, I would for sure rather have feral cats in my garage than anywhere else- this encourages them to help keep my yard clean of rodents, lol.

And I made up some suet cakes and put out a couple along with a feeder full of black oil sunflower seed... Well, the first afternoon, no one showed up. The second I saw a few birds. Then the word got out, dinner up at our house! Now every bird in the neighborhood is stopping by for a snack.
So far I've seen some seriously fat bluejays, cardinals, black capped chickadees, dark eyed juncos, rose breasted grosbeaks, titmouses, goldfinches, Downy woodpeckers and red bellied woodpeckers, and the usual assortment of sparrows and wrens. It's kind of nice because all of their birdcalls make it sound like it's spring outside.

Making suet cakes is easy, and I have found that mushroom tubs are the perfect size for cakes. I started using them last year. And honestly, mushroom tubs are one of the most used items I recycle between projects and gardening needs. I finally used up the big bucket of veggie shortening, so now I will get a block of lard next time I make cakes, that's what I should have been using all along, lol.

And dinner.... I've started this years preserving tally, kicking it off with 46 jars of pickled mushrooms and a half dozen jars of spicy pickled edamame. This is my first time pickling edamame, but the raw form tasted pretty good, so I'm hopeful the canned form will be even better. But I couldn't resist when I saw them at Hardings on clearance for 99 cents instead of four bucks. I picked up five 10 oz boxes, and used three to pickle, though I could have used two and that would have been fine for a smaller batch too. But hey, now we know, right? I tinkered the recipe a smidge, leaving out the oil, but I kept the vinegar/water proportions right, and the salt good.
I'm a wee bit bummed that I seem to never find brussels sprouts on sale anymore now that I discovered how damn tasty pickling them is. So I guess a large part of the brassica patch this year will be brussels, yay!

It's been difficult to stave off the depression and hopelessness I've been experiencing for several months, like fighting against a monsoon. But I keep forcing myself to keep trying.. and keep focusing on the zen and happiness in the good things I know I enjoy. It's helping a lot. The plants are really having a lot of impact, taking care of them and knowing that they will do the family good soon. I now have three of the greenhouse stands in the kitchen in front of the windows, and several pots and starts are already there.

I seriously need to spend time in the solarium and really clean. Everything is stacking up in the cold, and too chilly to really spend much time out there doing anything. But it has been staying above freezing for the most part, and hitting above 40 a lot. That is wonderful. Still really chilly for working in though, lamo.

But right now I need to pop off and clean up a turkey carcass.

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 :)

Finally snow.. woah snow!!

So after fall seemingly extended itself till December 28... now winter has hit us. Pretty good too. First we got some craptacular raining ice- whatever, because it melted off in the 40 degree weather... Now we got our first snow in, several inches of lake effect snow. Had to call in to work because the roads were so nasty.
No matter, I will probably get written up for missing one day of work- good thing I am soooo beyond ready to get a different job. I want to work for the nursery, but when I dropped in the other day to make sure they still had my application on file, the gal was less than thrilled, and told me to put in another application again when they posted help wanted- and it was only seasonal. I was a little put off by her coolness, and by the fact that there was a new employee, a young guy I've never seen before. Hermmmms...

Anywho. Despite the winter weather, or maybe because of it, it's time to start getting on with some gardening. I've wintersown up over half my jugs now, mostly hellebores, poppies, and a variety of herbs. Still got about 10 or so jugs to go, and those are for various flowers.
Decided to start up a thin strip tray of herbs too. Finally used my black pepper seed, we shall see if they grow at all or not, they might not because the seed is old. Also seeded up basil, lime basil, and lemon basil.
It's getting to be around that time that I need to figure out what I'm doing with the peppers and tomatoes I brought in for winter. Silvery Fir Tree is finally getting ripe fruit on it, I just pray it got good seed in it- I need to take clones from it soon before it's too late. The Totems are looking rather troubled, dunno if I should keep trying to hang on to them or not. The Copper River and Beaver Lodge Slicers are looking frail, but putting out blooms, so here's hoping they do well enough for some seed too. Peppers are a bit more difficult since they are really healthy. The Fatali is a beautiful tree in it's own right, lovely with yellow peppers, and the 7-pot Brain Strain Yellow is doing excellent too. The Aji Lemon I pulled in early is just plugging along and not doing much, and the one I pulled in the other day is looking sad as hell and might only be useful to pull it's final peppers off before scrapping.
I'm currently testing the very last of the summer tomato seed for germination. Today I get to set up test plates for all the pepper seeds, and boy is there a bunch of those!

Did some pricing for plastic to encase the dog run with, for my notion of making it kind of a hoop house come spring. About 100 bucks for reinforced plastic in a 20x100 roll, and around 75 for non-reinforced. I think it would probably be worth it to pay the extra for reinforcement. If I'm careful, I can re-use the plastic for at least a few years. Still not sure if I want to do this or not though, but I got some time to think about it.
Tarps for the pop up though- that's not quite so easy to dismiss. I will end up needing four of them if I really want to make walls. Good thing they aren't too bad price wise for the size I need. It will take a bit of messing around, but I think I can get it to work out nicely for plant sales this spring... I hope.

Other than that, not much else I can talk about right now. I need to get off my butt and into my now barely freezing solarium and get some work done :)

Wow, two months and the end of the year...

I haven't written a post in two months, whew. I can't say nothing has happened, though life has mostly been a blur of split up days of work mixed with losing my mind and depression trying to get everything done.

So a few brief highlights... Sold some stuff on Esty, yay! Still have that last small handful of tomatoes from this years garden to eat up, which is a triumph in and of itself. Weather has been bizarre- just yesterday was our first real drop down into freezing and icy snow crap.  It was in the 60's for Christmas. The plague went around here a few weeks ago, and that totally sucked ass. Got to see one of my brothers happily married, and that was supremely joyous.

I am already in midst of plans for the 2016 yard of course. So far, I've been able to overwinter quite a few plants. And have a ton of seed planting planned too- the veggies are starting to really form up, now I need to figure out the flower and herb planning, lol. I sowed the first of the wintersowing jugs today, four of them full of hellebore starts. I had kind of forgotten about the seed packets in the fridge, and sure enough, some of them had sprouted. So potted up they needed to be.
There will be extra rotation going on this coming year with all the problems that erupted this year- that will teach me to try to keep the beds static, lol. Right now the kennel beds, the north side is planted in with garlic, and the west side is empty- I want to give that one a serious digging in and work over before doing anything else. The three lasagne beds need a good digging in too. The raised beds need a serious weeding and turn over. The "new" beds need a lot too, heh. And I still want to seriously consider digging in some more front border.
Yipes, what I wouldn't give for a tiller, lol.

The close of this year also brought us the greenhouse that blew away- and needs to be fixed. Sis and I ended up traveling around the whole pond and back 40 before finally finding it in the neighbors back 40, lol. It was for sure an adventure walk, I ended up waist deep in a ditch. Good times of living in the boonies, hehe. I really loved having that season extender on hand. I'm starting to kick around ideas of wrapping the kennel runs in plastic and seeing how that works for an "instant" hoop house. I have some pretty high hopes that we can get the chicken coop up and running, and probably get a hive or two set up in the year to come.

This year coming brings our first round of comparison tomatoes. Jaune Flamme will be coming back along with Snow White to go up against a main crop of blacks, and some container varieties of interest- including a second year of Dwarf Wild Fred. I will be growing fewer super hot peppers, and more mild and sweet peppers- but overall reducing the total number of pepper plants. Back on deck for sure are Aji Lemon and 7-pot brain strain yellow so long as the plants I have inside fare well. My mystery CA pepper too if the cuttings I took fairly late into the season ever decide to start doing well. Fish and Black Hungarian for beauty and tasty. Going to try to get a cherry bomb crop again. And for sweets- not sure yet.

I put in my 2016 seed order already- 12 packets of seeds spread across three companies.
High Mowing had my Jaune Flamme and free shipping- so I ordered those and a pretty sounding bread poppy seed.
Since Garden Watchdog listed Seedsnowas a good source, I picked up a few 99 cent packets. Ordered a couple packets from my long standing favorite, Pinetree Seeds- and for the first time ever, I didn't order any veggie seed from them, only some flowers.

But I guess I should pop off this post while I can... try to get my shit together for next year.