Posts Tagged ‘seedlings’

I tried a version of green beans called Triumph de Farcy. The packet describes them as an “heirloom French filet bean, which bears very early and heavily. Slender, shapely pods have wonderful flabor. Ready to pick 48 days after sowing.” Well, it’s been about seven weeks, and they’re producing beautiful, slender pods as described.  I didn’t know that the flowers would be purple, but if you catch them first thing in the morning (when the zucchini blossoms are also in full bloom), you’ll see a delicate purple flower.  The flower turns white by the end of the day, bleached by the sun I presume.

Several readers have asked me questions about how my garden is doing, and what’s growing in it.  Well, it’s been about 10 weeks, and I have some photos to show you! I started the plants from seed in late February, sowing some in seed starters and some directly in their self watering yogurt-cup planters.  The herbs have remained in their self-watering planters, though I had to thin them as they germinated.  I hate doing that, as the soft side of me likes to give every seedling a chance to grow. By mid-March, they were ready for bigger and better things.  I transplanted some of the hardier varieties, such as zuchinni and peas, to small pots to give the roots more room to grow.  The others I left in their seed starters.  This gave me the opportunity to move them outside during the day, and back inside during the cool nights.  The

The warm weather and sunshine is here, and I saw more smiles on my walk home from work than I have in a while.  The seeds that I started several weeks ago enjoyed the golden light of the setting afternoon sun, and with temperatures in he 80s expected for the near future, this should be a great weekend for your gardens.  Get those plants outside!

If you’ve never gardened before, you might be intimidated by all of the supplies at your local supermarket or garden shop.  You really only need a few things to start seeds.  A container, soil, water, and the seeds.  That said, to increase your chances of success, there are several things you can do.  Here’s a step by step guide to starting seeds in a way that has proven successful for me in the past. I usually start with coconut coir.  It’s a fiber extracted from the shell of a coconut, and they compress it into tiny pellets that expand when you soak them in water.  It comes in a variety of sizes, and while I usually like to get a brick of the stuff, unfortunately my local gardening store only had these pellets.  You can plant directly in the pellet, but as you will see, I removed the netting so

…by planting your own garden!  Spotted at the Whole Foods Market on 15th and P in Washington, DC: everything you need to start your organic garden, right at the front entrance.  Skip the expensive organic produce aisle and make a bee line to the register after picking up your supplies. What are you waiting for?

It seems like every day, I discover another really useful tool that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) produces.  A part of the Department of Commerce (odd, huh?), most people know them as the hurricane monitoring folks.  However, they encompass an alphabet-soup of centers and services. The National Climactic Data Center (NCDC)’s Sattelite and Information Service (NSIS), has an easy to navigate website containing (virtual) reams of freeze/frost data.  You can download the PDF of your state (I downloaded Maryland, which contained the DC Metro area data).  They provide the probabilities of frost for “three temperatures (36, 32, and 28 °f) at three probability levels (10, 50, and 90 percent).” Looks like I’ll have to watch my seedlings.  We’ve had an unusually warm spring and they’ve been outside for two weeks now – at first only during the day, but for the past week I’ve left them out at