Planting Sweet Potatoes

You can buy the slips, but why buy what you can make yourself? You take a sweet potato and put four toothpicks, equally spaced, around its "waist." Then put it in a jar of water, so that only half of it is in the water--the toothpicks will keep the top part of it OUT of the water. I painted my jar black, but you could just wrap it in aluminum foil--roots don't like light.
Soon, the potato will start to have little green sprouts. When they are about two inches long, take the potato out of the water, and carefully cut the potato to separate the spouts, but don't separate the sprouts from the little hunk of potato that it's growing from. Plant each "slip" in a pot of soil and let it grow until it's time to plant it outside--after all danger of frost is over.
I'll post a pic of mine when it spouts--stay tuned.

Planted yesterday, Mar 27, 2010

It may be too early to plant in SW WA state, but we shall see. A couple years ago I waited and waited to put my geraniums out on the porch; finally put them out near Mothers' Day, and guess what!? It froze and they died. Kaput! End of the geraniums I'd kept inside, tripping over them, all winter. S*%t! I may have just as well let them freeze in November!! Of course, I COULD have listened to the weather report and brought them in for that night. It pays to pay attention!

Anyway, yesterday I added spinach to my crops that might freeze. I planted them on top of my second year hay bale. I tried hay bale gardening last year and wasn't really very impressed. Some things did OK on them--peas and kale seemed to do OK. Other stuff, not so much. One hay bale is flat, out of the four that would fit in our little pickup. It's about four inches high now. When I plant on it, I will have to construct one of my ingenius (!?) little fences to keep the dogs off it. Now they just run wherever. In fact, Poki was on TOP of the bale I planted yesterday WHILE I was trying to plant it. You wouldn't know she had two badly broken back legs in November!!

I also planted a lot of lavender seeds yesterday in those little peat pellets that swell up in the water. I am hoping to get enough (and permission from the gallery's landlord) to plant a row of them on each side of the sidewalk leading into the gallery. It's already grass-free along the side walk, and I think a row of lavender on each side would look really nice--and lavender's perennial, (here) so it would be a one-time planting. I had lavender in a couple pots that did fine all winter in my backyard. They are both in the ground now. I'm lucky they did OK. Things in pots freeze quicker than things in the ground. I am a lazy gardener.

DH trimmed an evergreen tree and a deciduous bush Friday, and so I am having him cut the evergreen boughs to put on my blueberries, and the bush branches into little chunks to put on the walkways in my garden. It keeps the weeds down and they eventually biodegrade. Hopefully that won't add too much acid to the soil--I never test it (too lazy) so I won't know til something refuses to grow. I have compost to add, too, though, so hopefully everything will work out. I like everything that comes out of my garden to go back in, as much as possible, and am trying to get to the point where I don't have to buy bags of potting soil, manure, etc.

A friend gave me horse manure last year and another is going to give me some this year, so I get that free. I want to build a three part compost bin this year. The Master Gardeners had one at the fair last year; it was made of 98 cement blocks. Let me tell you, if you are a gardener in a wet climate like ours, cement blocks are your best friends! The wood raised beds we built not all that many years ago are completely falling apart; now I use cement blocks to make my raised beds. You can move them to enlarge your bed if you want, and ten years later, they look as good as the day you purchased them. I put them with the holes in the blocks vertical and then I can fill the holes with soil and plant flowers in them. Looks very nice and some flowers thwart the ever present slugs. Marigolds, I think. I've started some of them, too.

I moved a dark green container into the greenhouse; will fill it with water and hope it will radiate enough heat at night to keep the greenhouse from freezing. It's not heated and is made from that wavy fiberglass, which doesn't have insulating properties. I hope to eventually replace that with some of the more modern material that has air spaces for insulation. I am grateful for my greenhouse, though; one of my son's friends that owed us some money, built it for me. This is just my second spring to use it. I tried growing tomatoes in it, to see if they'd winter over, but it wasn't very successful. My tomatoes just don't seem very happy in containers. I think perhaps they needed more fertilizer. I tried the upside down ones, and wasn't very impressed with my results from those either. This year, my tomatoes will just grow in the ground. I COULD just dig a hole for one or two in my greenhouse's floor--it's dirt with crushed gravel on top. Wild blackberries sometimes show up there. I might try that this year and see what happens. Gardening for me is just one big experiment. Stay tuned. I hope I have successes to report, as well as failures!!

Food Inc.

The documentary film Food Inc is being shown on the program POV (Point of View) on PBS on April 21 at 9:00 pm. I've seen this film twice and will watch it again. It is well-worth watching, IMHO. Did you know it is AGAINST THE LAW to criticize a food?! (Remember Oprah and her comment about hamburger? She only was able to win the lawsuit because she has enough money to fight the beef industry. You or I would not be able to win.)

Even the mother whose child died of ecoli could not tell the makers of the film how she had changed her eating habits since her baby died!!!! And she is still working to get Kevin's Law passed. This law will allow the USDA to shut down plants that are producing contaminated food products, which you'd think they should already be able to do, but, unbelievabley, can't.

Knitting Two Socks at Once, or I Must Be Crazy

I saw, in a knitting book I bought, directions for knitting two socks at once, one inside the other. It seemed impossible, but the directions were there, and I HAD to try it! When it comes to skills I already have, I hate to think there is anything that someone else can do that I can't. This method is challenging to say the least. You knit the cuffs for each sock separately, put one inside the other, and then put the stitches for both on your needles (I use two circulars, usually, but I've also used the old way of three double pointed needles, with the fourth to knit with), alternating one stitch from one cuff and one from the other, until all the stitches are on.

You purl the Near sock stitches and knit the Back sock stitches; if you get mixed up, the wrong stitch joins the two socks together--NOT GOOD! I have taken the stitches off the needles and restarted three times, but I think I can do this. If I run my hand around between the two socks each time I finish a round, I can feel if I've made a wrong stitch, and if you find it right away, it's not hard to fix it.

SO, stay tuned. One thing I learned is NOT to bring this project to my knit group--there's too much going on there what with conversation and all, and this is not a project where you can get distracted and still be OK--at least I can't. Send good knitting thoughts my way!

Doc Martin

Doc Martin mini marathon April 1, beginning at 8:00 p.m., PBS, Channel 9, Seattle. They are showing the last three episodes of last year's shows before the new season shows begin on April 8. For those of you outside of the Seattle area, check your local PBS listings. Both LaMont and I LOVE Doc Martin, so if you tend to like what I like and have never watched Doc Martin, give it a try. (Warning: watching Doc Martin may become habit-forming.)

Planted More Today, March 26, 2010

Today I planted ten pansies and two nastursiums in the two gallery flowerbeds, and some edible pod peas, too. That way, folks walking by or visiting the gallery can munch on them. Came home and planted peas in my own garden. I haven't planted them this early before, so we will see how they do. My goal in gardening this year is to extend my gardening season by planting both early and late.

Bought a couple different tomato plants from the Hoquiam Farmers Market when I was there getting my weekly eggs. One is a yellow one and the other is called Sweet Baby Girl, I think. My problem is that I forget which tomato plant is which, once I get them outside and into the ground. I tried some tomatoes in containers last year, but my tomatoes in the ground did so much better that this year I will put all of them into the ground.

I am also removing the rocks that we put along the fence, lo those many years ago. Water would collect along there and that's why we put the rocks there; it seemed like a good idea at the time. But now I am planting flowerbeds there, so little by little, I am removing all the rocks except those VERY close to the fence. Tedious work, but a little at a time isn't all that bad.

Out in the Greenhouse

I went out today and planted some of the thousands of marigold seeds I harvested last fall. Hopefully, they will do OK out there. My greenhouse isn't insulated and it has been getting near freezing at night, but in the 60s during the day.
My little tomato seedlings are growing in my kitchen, in my garden window, and those that have been there the whole time are doing wonderfully. The ones that were in the living room for awhile are not doing very well; I moved them into the kitchen window with the others and hope they pick up.
I gave away several small houseplants earlier this week to a FreeCycler. I can't stand wasting anything, so anytime I accidentally break a stem off one of my plants, or if I have to prune them, I put the stems in a brown bottle of water and root them; soon I have too many little plants for my window, even though it's big. So I am pleased to give the little ones away. I like having plants, but there is a limit to how many I can keep!!!