anyone start seeds yet? | Page 3 | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

Thanks GK.  My friends that live on the lake have a great garden.  They split it in half and rotate back and forth every year.  In the plot that is fallow they till in all the fish guts they accumulate on the weekend, plus neighbors throw them in too.  they have a good fencing system to keep cats/raccoons/etc out.  Fish guts are an amazing soil builder (stinks like hell though and it is pretty interesting running the rear tine tiller through that mess every week).

Hey Speed, look up 'lasagna gardening' that would be a method to use for expansion/establishing beds on a mediocre site too.

Tomato seedlings are about 1 1/2 high and we thinned the out yesterday, starting to get a bit leggy so we will put the light on a timer to give them a rest at night.

Peppers, just poked through this morning.  They are always much later than Tomatoes when it comes to germination.

We have a heating pad under them to help the germination and for now they are in peat pots.  Once the peat pots start to fall apart we put them in a regular 4 inch pot and then the garden.

...grow you little buggers.

Tomorrow I want to check the buds in the orchard, worried about an early bloom that will get obliterated by frost and then no fruit.  I noticed the pussy willow was just about to bud open last Sunday...see how it all looks tomorrow.

GK, Don't be jealous, we are later than we wanted to be this year.  Our goal was to have started seeds in mid January and we just did it about 14 days ago.  We were trying to get large/well established plants to go right in the ground and get an earlier harvest/maturity this year...oh well.

As for the fruit trees, my lower orchard is close to the stream.  The stream usually keeps things a few degrees warmer by the orchard this time of the year, so there is a tiny bit of frost protection.  Last year we started about 8 trees up on a higher location to add to our variety and if one orchard isn't doing well in a given year, then the other one will hopefully pick up the slack...really banking on the difference in 'micro' climates here.

I'll let  you know how the fruit tree buds are this weekend.