popular What have you done today in the Garden?

I was watering my plants

 

Nothing today it's still cold and the ground is still frozen, maybe next week.

 

Hoping to get some garden clean up today.

 

4 more weeks until I can start some seeds.

 

I hauled some more soil for a planter box. I harvest mole hills, which are finely ground and numerous around here. I suppose should spread the molehills around the area where they appear, but I don't think it matters.

The seedlings are doing pretty well.


All of the eggplants are up, also all of the echinaceas. and most of the onions and garlic chives. The hybrid red onions were sparse. I had also planted year-old Red Wethersfield onion seeds, not expecting them to grow, but they are doing great.



A few peppers haven't germinated. Most have germinated. Not the banana peppers. The Thai peppers also didn't, so I harvested seeds from one of last year's Thai peppers, and planted them. Then I noticed that some are germinating, after all.

I cut open a Galeux pumpkin to use it, and saved the seeds for this year.



The plastic tie indicates that this was hand pollinated, so should be true.



It didn't have a lot of seeds, but I don't need many. Those smell so good!



After cutting chunks for cooking, I put the skins in the Instant Pot for a few minutes, and fed them to the hens and ducks.

After making some enchilada sauce, I was thinking I might grow sone Ancho Peppers too. I saved seeds from one, from the package.



But those seeds don't look too promising.



I planted them, but I might order some anyway.

 

Daniel.. some interesting pumpkins lots on interest . Some are great for beginners to grow.

 

Nothing today it's still cold and the ground is frozen.

 

Daniël, another superlative posting. I just scrolled from one pic to the next, reading what was going on.

You know, what I liked the most was when you told about using mole tunnel excavations as germination material. That’s brilliant mate. How luck we are to have you on here.

 

When specializing growing fuchsias. I read of a society member who collected molehill soil from the local grass verge. So sad. Unbeknown to him, the local council had sprayed the verge. Our friend lost his stock of plants.

 

well sprayed area with what.. usually once weed spray hits soils it becomes inert.
Inert is that a word.. or lacking the ability or strength to work as designed.

well my soil is straight hard pack clay. Moles are the only critters that can break the clay up into hard pan clay mounds. Not what I would call seedling material around here.. other types of mixed soil ok .

those mounds are bigger than they look . Time to get out the mole traps. UGH..

 

@Sjoerd, you are too kind. I'm just an old gardener with a lot of time on his hands. But I do love posting about it all, and reading EVERYONE's posts about gardening.

Just to be clear, I don't germinate indoor seeds in the mole hill soil. It would still be too heavy, have weed seeds (not much, here), and potential diseases. Also, I have to inspect each mole hill before using it, because the feral cats sometimes use them for litter boxes. I leave that where it is. But the mole hill soil is finely ground up by our little furry friends, and they eat all of the fauna - caterpillars, slugs, worms, beetles, bugs, and (I hope) nematodes and symphylans. Plus, I'm not bringing in purchased soil, which could be contaminated by diseases, insects, or herbicides. On my two acres, moles grind and deposit enough soil on the soil surface, for me to fill a couple of raised beds in a season. I do amend it with compost, eggshell, and a little wood ash.

 

Today I added some ground up eggshells to the garden beds. And did some inspecting.

Some daffys are starting to emerge. That's oregano next to them. After the daffys bloom, the oregano will cover their garden footprint, and make lots of flowers for the bees (and oregano for pizza and chili).



The garlic is also emerging.



I was anxious that I killed the garlic by planting it too deep. Maybe 4 inches. But those cloves were jumbo sized. Now, all of the "Music" hardneck garlic is growing, and about half of the "Lorz" Italian softneck. So far. I scattered slug bait. There's not a lot around for slugs to forage on, and they can completely destroy winter onions and garlic, if I let them.

I collected some climbing rose scion for grafting. I don't know if that will work, but that never seems to stop me LOL. It works great for apples, pears, plums.

 

That's heartbreaking, Mike.

I bought some potting soil last year that killed everything I planted in it. I bought a different brand, and all of the replacement plants grew in the new brand. I suspect herbicide contamination in the compost.

I had a similar situation with some purchased raised bed / container mix, and I'm perplexed about it. Potatoes grew just fine - actually, those did great! Basil, onions, tomatoes and peppers were very stunted. Carnations and statice were in between. At the same time, tomatoes, peppers, statice and basil did great in my native garden soil mix. I'm not sure what to do about it. I wonder if it's herbicide in the compost or cow manure, or some insect or disease. I'm leaning towards replacing at least the top foot of soil and try again. I don't know.

 

Cut the leaves off some of the hellebores and weeded around them.