Scallions From Seed

I had lots of fun with seeds in this garden, including these little fellers. These scallions youngins were just dropped in the ground with little attention to detail and up they came.  They're awefully slow growing compared to everything else in the garden.  I literally planted boc choy at the same time and have harvested AND eaten it in the time it has taken these guys to grow. And they're still not ready.  Sigh.  At least they're cheap to buy at the grocery store.

Chinese Broccoli - Kai Lan - Gai Lan

We planted some Chinese broccoli which is also called Kai Lan and Gai Lan.   Chinese broccoli is a more delicate version of regular broccoli.  The stalk is very thin with a small broccoli head and soft leaves.   It's close in appearance to broccoli rabe but not in flavor since broccoli rabe tastes super bitter to me. You typically harvest the small head with a few inches of stalk and the top most leaves. 

At restaurants it's steamed then sauted with 

garlic.  The leaves wilt down like spinich so you end up with this interesting dish that is like a few different veggies in one. It's wilted like spinich, has tiny heads like traditional broccoli and crunchy/tender stems too.     

These are pictures of baby Chinese broccoli coming up from seed.  Super easy to grow and came right up on their own without any fuss.  The leaf miners seemed to have found them but not a whole lot and most of the damage is on the older leaves that you wouldn't eat anyway.  The powdery mildew that has taken over the rest of the garden (more on that later) doesn't affect these guys. That's my kind of veg.   The down side is that you have to plant quite a few to get enough for a meal.

Seed Update - Borage

 Seeds, yeah! These little fellas are pretty hearty. I planted 6 and all 6 grew. Not too shabby!

 They have lots of fine hair like thingies on the leaves, they're a dusty green color and a bit succulent too. The succulent part scares me cause they could easily rot at the base so I'm being really careful not to over water them. Keep your fingers crossed!

Seed Starting - Borage

 I'm obsessed with starting seeds now!  These little beauties are going to grow up into borage plants. I'm excited to get them into pots near the raised beds to attract the bees.  The more bees the more pollinatin' that goes on and the more food we get! 

 As a side benefit, it's an edible plant with the leaves and small purple flowers tasting like cumbers.  Yum!  They were super easy to sprout, I planted 6 and it looks like 4 of them sprouted up.

Seed Starting - Echinacea

My current fascination is with growing things that are ornamental as well as useful.  The beautiful and medicinal echinacea plant meets the criteria. These seeds are from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and are one of a few packets purchased recently. The back of the packet recommends cold stratification to increase the germination rate.  Huh? After a few quick internet searches, I discovered that some plants need the chilly, wet winter months to encourage the seeds to get started. Cold stratification is just a fancy way of saying that. Hmmm, so these babies need a cold, wet environment to wake up? OK, I can do that! In the refrigerator that is.

Here are the seeds in a nice moist paper towel ready to go into a zip top baggie and then into the chilly refrigerator.

I'm supposed to be checking on them every now and then to see if they're sprouting. As they spout, I'll plant them in some soil.  One site online says the cold stratification process can take 3 months. Can that be right? That seems like a long time. I guess we'll see.......

How to Make Free Seed Starting Pots

I've been enjoying my seed starting experience immensely. Since I'm only doing a few, I'm using the pre-made Jiffy 2" peat pots that I purchased from Home Depot. They're $1.99 for 26 peat pots which makes them about 8 cents each. I saw a handy tutorial online about making your own seedling pots which may come in handy if I ever decide to start more than a handful of plants from seed. This is a cool crafty type project that has a useful purpose and could actually reduce your gardening expenses. It's a win - win- win situation!

You start out with a toilet paper or paper towel tube. This here is a paper towel tube:

Since I'm using the 2" peat pot, I was looking to see of a decent alternative could be made.  In order to get the most similar size to the Jiffy 2" peat pot, you cut the tube into 2 and 3/4 inch sections like this:

Now you need to close one of the ends so that it actually holds in the soil. You squish the tube in one direction then the other to make the circular tube into a square shaped tube. At each corner of your new square-ish shape, you cut a slit 3/4 inches in length.  Below is a picture showing the 4 slits which in turn make the four flaps used for folding:

The next step is to fold over the flaps to create the bottom of the seed pot.  Fold the flaps just like you would fold the flaps of a cardboard box:

Here is how your tube section looks in the very beginning and how it looks after folding all the flaps to create the bottom:

Here is the pretty little Jiffy peat pot on the left and the homemade version on the right. They are nearly the same height but the peat pot flares out at the top and is a bit wider overall:

I thought I'd try to cut a toilet paper roll in half and see what I got, they're on the small side and measure 1 and 1/2 inches tall when finished:

Here are all of the pots lined up for comparison. The two on the left are what the toilet paper roll looks like if you just cut it in half to make 2 pots. They're much smaller than the store bought pot as you can see. The one that was measured out and made from the paper towel roll is a good substitute and looks quite similar in the line up below: