March 18th, 2013 - Fertilized some plants

Fertilized the Broccoli and the leeks with fish emulsion. Container said 2T per gallon, so I used 1T per half gallon. The veg gardeners bible said to fertilize at half strength, so hopefully this won’t mess with things.

March 17th, 2013 - Hardened off 3 of the 6 biggest cosmos

Some of cosmos were too tall for the florescent lights, so I tried to harden them off this weekend, to get them ready for transplant next week. I think it is definitely too cold still, because on the second day, by nightfall the leaves looked really droopy. I might just try to grow these inside for a while to see what happens.

March 16th, 2013 - Prepped the back left corner of the garden

I added about 10 gallons of mostly finished compost to the back left corner bed, and prepped it for the carrots and leeks. There were 1 bibb lettuce plants and one chard plant that somehow stayed alive all winter. I took them out of the bed first, turned the bed over (tried to only mess with the top 6 inches), and then added them back in a row.

I think I’ll transplant the leeks, and sow the carrots next weekend.

March 15th, 2013 - Moved the peppers and eggplants downstairs under the lights.

Read that the eggplants can take 3 weeks to germinate, so I’m a little less worried about things now. A few more peppers germinated, so I’m feeling a little better.

March 11th, 2013 - Peppers and Eggplants

I can’t remember where I started my peppers last year, but the germination rate was great. This year I kept them in the dining room at 70 degrees for about 5-6 days, but I started to get antsy that nothing was happening, so I moved them on top of the radiator in the dining room. It certainly get’s warmer, but it fluctuates when the radiator comes on and off, so I’m not sure if I’m helping or hurting.

After a few days on the radiator, two of the Carolina wonders sprouted, and one of the numex is just barely sprotuing, but the rest are not doing much of anything. After looking closely on the bakers creek pages, it says that the peppers and eggplants benifit from light when germinating, something I don’t think I knew. About 2 days ago I dug up each cell to find at least 1 or 2 seeds in the mix, and moved it to the surface of the planting mix. A few of the pepper varieties had just begun to germinate, so hopefully they are close. For good measure, I added two new seeds to each cell. I’m keeping the plastic cap on to keep everything moist, so we’ll see. I’m 90% sure I am just being way too antsy and if I just let it go for a little longer, everything would have come up on its own. But what can I say. Now I have seeds everywhere (on the surface, under the surface, etc), so unless the radiator is doing more harm than good, I should be OK.

Blogger it is

I have been blogging from within Folia for the past month, and although it is has been pretty easy, one of the things I miss is being able to put pictures in between text.  Also, I don't see an easy way to convert from Folia to a book, like last year.  So these next few posts are just going to be pasted from Folia. 

Blogger, Folia, or both?

So it has been a quite few months since my last post to the blog.  For a while, it was because there was no gardening related activity, but for the past month, I have been busy, busy, busy.  Well then whey have I not been updating the blog?  Well, because of this site: www.folia.com, and specifically my profile on this site:  http://myfolia.com/gardener/adidas30

Last year's blog was a success.  I love the book that I printed, and I used it quite a bit when planning out this year's garden.  I love that I'll have that book forever also, as a nice snapshot in time.

The problem with the blog from the beginning, was that everything was manual.  I saw value in keep track of the number of days from the time I planted something, until the time it sprouted, was transplanted, first produced a harvest, etc.  But it quickly got way to complicated to track in blog format. I had to do the calculations each time a new milestone was met, for each veggie.  Also, I found it hard to record all of the detail, without making the blog a big pile of uninteresting metrics.

This is where Folia comes in.  You enter the date in which you sowed the seeds (indoor or outdoor), and then you enter your milestones as they come.  The site sets the counter for each crop and will do all of the calculations for you.

Speaking of new tools, the other site that I have been using is http://gardenplanner.southernexposure.com/, which is really a re-branded version of :http://www.growveg.com/gardenplanner/gardenplanner.html

This site serves a separate but very important purpose for me.  It let's you lay out your garden plan, month by month, and it has been a huge help in terms of planning my garden for the whole summer.

Here is my attempt at converting the month by month diagrams into a youtube video.  The video is pretty bad, but you can get the point.

So all of this brings me to my main question. With these two new tools, do I still need to keep a blog?   For a while I thought no, but now that things are picking up, I am re-considering.  I might use this blog to make general observations, reflections, and updates, while keeping all of the up to the minute updates in Folia.  

I also thought about expanding the blog to include other stuff like my woodworking projects, but I was never 100% behind it.  As with last year's blog, only time will tell.