Garden Diary 2009: My First Sprout is Up for this Year – Broccoli or Spinach?

Maybe you can tell me by the leaves. I am just not sure at this point. This is either Broccoli or Spinach. I planted six spinach plants on one side, planning to leave the leafy greens inside the house so we can clip off of them for salads a couple times per week. on the other side of the windowsill container I planed four broccoli plants that I intend to transplant next month, a couple weeks before the last freeze. I want to get small greenhouse or try to build a cheap one to cover the plant till after the last freeze. Broccoli is supposed to be cold weather hearty so I don’t think it really matters when I put them outside.

I did plant these on two different sides of the windowsill growbox, but I really don’t remember which side I planted them on. To be Honest, I suppose it doesn’t really matter to me which side they are on. All I really care about is that my first plant is up for the year of 2009. This means it is going to be a great year for vegetables in my garden. I am so excited.

How to Grow an Apple Tree from a Seed

Step One: (February 11, 2009) Plant your seeds in a pot or, in my case, a windowsill box. I am doing this because I want to make sure they have a strong beginning before winter gets here again in December.

Gather your Pot, Soil and seeds.

Fill your pot with soil. Poke holes into the soil and drop in one seed for each plant you are trying to grow. Plant more than you expect to put into pots. If they all come up, you will pick the strongest plants to move into separate pots or into the ground.

Place your planting box on your window sill and water with a couple of glasses of water. Make sure you water the plants every couple of days or so. You don’t want the soil to dry out, but you dont want the water sitting in the drainage tray.

Still Waiting. March 27, 2009 – It has been nearly 2 months. I know that tree seeds take a while to germinate, i just don’t know if these are going grow or not. If they don’t I will try again. Please come back and check often.

May 18, 2009 – The seeds I planted never germinated. One of the comments I got said to put them in a wet papertowel and stick them in the fridge. I think I am going to try that next.

Garden Diary 2009: Time to Plan My Vegetable Raised Bed and Container Plants for the New Year

Garden Diary 2009

2009 will make the third year in a row that I have documented the growth of my garden. In 2007 I grew tomatoes in a kitty litter container and got about a dozen tomatoes off of it. Turned out I had too many plants in the same container. I also experimented with a wick fed cucumber. It did really well. I learned a couple of things from that plant. The first is that you should not fertilize after the plant blooms. The taste of the fertilizer gets into the vegetable. The other thing is that a plant that is planted in soil will do better in the long run as long as you water it.

In 2008 was a little different. Money was a little tighter. I tried to grow the plants with what I had at the house. I had the pots. I gad the seeds from the previous year and I dug up the soil from the backyard. The main problem I had that season was the clay soil I was using. It was rich, but still had a lot of clay in it. I only grew one plant per pot and they grew pretty tall, but they didn’t produce a whole lot.

This year I am planning some minor changes as well as the first year of what I hope to be a multi year project where you will get to watch me grow an apple tree.

As for the minor changes, I will be planting the seeds in potting mix this year; not the clay soil of my backyard. I will be thinning them down to one plant per pot. The other thing I found I should be doing is snapping off the suckers as the plant grows. This will allow the plant to focus on the fruit rather than trying to grow new branches and leaves.

Another thing I would like to try is to update my wick system with a garbage can holding the water. Supposedly the garbage can will be large enough to hold the amount of water needed for the plant to grow all season. If I combine that with the removal of all the suckers, I might be able to get one long plant with a lot of cucumbers on one long vine. That would be interesting.

I had some success with bush beans last year. I want to try them again this year with potting soil. If I can grow enough plants to where I can cultivate a lot of beans to eat, we could actually have some beans for dinner several times throughout the season.

It has also been suggested that I try to grow broccoli this year. It grows in the cool part of the spring and fall. I think I might give that a try as well.

Big dreams I think. We will see if I can find enough money to get it all started. I am going to attempt to do more video this year. I want you all to see the garden better than I presented it last year. Keep an eye out and check back often for updates.