Spring is in the...Skylight

I am taking a gardening class taught by Gordon Wells. On Friday he told us he would be starting the seeds for his spring garden this past weekend. I have never planted a spring garden, so I was excited to learn it is already time to get started.

Saturday I bought the Jiffy 72-pack of peat pellets at Wal-Mart for $6, as well as some seeds of cold-weather plants. Today I mapped out on paper two 4'x8' garden boxes that will grow several types of lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, Brussels sprouts, peas, carrots and beets. These crops should do fine if they meet a freeze, and they are most tasty when grown in cool weather. I selected varieties with shorter maturing times so they will be ready to harvest by early June.

Two of my children helped me expand the pellets--they thought it was magical--and then we planted seeds. The peas I will plant directly into the soil, but the other plants are better to start indoors so the seeds don't rot in the cool, wet soil of spring. When my seedlings are ready in three weeks, I'll harden them off and plant them outdoors.

Brother Wells advised starting seeds indoors so they can be transplanted in mid-March. He said to put the seed-start box in a place where it will get plenty of sunlight so the seedlings don't get "leggy" and topple themselves over when the leaves grow.
I wanted a place where small children would leave the box alone, but it would still get light all day. I thought about every window in my house and finally arrived at the perfect place: my skylights! The playroom has an angled ceiling with three south-facing skylights. The tray for the pellets was exactly long enough to set it in the skylight box easily and in a position where it holds its own weight. I jammed two wooden dowels in the frame of the skylight to catch the box just in case it falls. When I checked this afternoon to make sure the plastic lid was still in place, the temperature in the skylight was noticeably warmer on my skin than the playroom. I am so happy to find these three miniature "greenhouses" that are out of reach for my kids but at arm's length for me.

I know not many of you could copy my solution, but I suggest thinking about all your options, not just your obvious ones, if you want to get light to start your garden early.

Trimming the Tree

Most of you probably think winter is a time to take a break from gardening. I disagree. I love to look through plant catalogs and plan my beds and how much I need to save up for new tools. And there is still a good reason to get outside and work a bit: pruning trees is a good winter activity.

I read somewhere that pruning during the hard freeze months (December or January) is good because the tree is not putting energy into growing and it will heal easily. I like pruning in the winter for two reasons. First, I can't bring myself to cut off branches with new, green wood and growing buds. That just seems mean. And second, with no leaves on the tree, it is easy to see what all the branches are doing and which ones need to go while still keeping the overall tree shape and dimensions in mind.

We had a nice day in the middle of this January, so I headed out in my snow boots with pruners in hand to manicure my young Honey Locust. Locusts generally don't need much pruning, but I wanted to remove some branches that were too low. (I apologize for the overexposed photos. My camera batteries were almost dead, so I snapped three quick pictures on the automatic setting without checking them until I had new batteries, and this is what I got.) In the overexposed pictures, you can sort of make out two branches on the left that were growing three or four
feet above the ground. I want to be able to walk under this tree, so those branches had to go. Tree trunks grow at the top, not from the bottom. Branches will not end up higher than they originally grow. I've also read that one should not remove more than one-third of a plant's branches when pruning. I took off a little less than that. You can see the finished result and fallen branches in the last picture. I had taken off some branches last winter and left those two to leave strength in the tree. Last summer, the locust added at least three feet to its height, so this winter I took off all
the branches that were too low and everything that crosses weird in the interior of the vase shape I am going for. I planted this tree in October 2005. January 2008 was the first time I pruned it, taking off a branch that accounted for one-third of the tree. I was pleased with the top growth last year and I hope this month's pruning will encourage it to put more energy into height this year.

Corn

This is my first year growing corn. It is absolutely fantastic to me that in two months a small kernel grows into an eight-foot-tall plant producing corn on the cob whenever we want it. I roasted some in our fire pit. Yummy!

I have 12 plants in a 2'x4' section of this planter box, which has only 6" of soil depth. With the plants so close together, they have pollinated each other just fine. I haven't counted how many ears I've harvested, so I'll track that next year.

I don't know if I'm waiting too long to harvest, but this corn hasn't been particularly sweet.

In July, we had a few nights of windstorms. After the first night, several stalks were bent over to the ground. I grabbed my daughter's nylon jump rope, wrapped it once around the corn (not too tight or too loose), and secured the ends to my chain link fence. The wind didn't flatten the corn after that. The yellow line in the picture is the jump rope.

The problem I'm having now is aphids. I spray them off with the hose, but they seem to multiply anyway. I'll probably harvest the rest of the corn, pull out the stalks, and let them dry to use as a Fall decoration for my front porch.

Buggy Buddies

I introduced a groundcover called Moss Rose to a container in my yard two years ago. These flowers produce seeds like crazy, and they started popping up in one area last year, and this year they are all over the south and west sides of my yard. They are easy to pull out and I've discovered they don't require watering. So until I can plant all my beds, I'm letting moss rose fill in. They come in white, pinks, pastels, bright colors, yellows, oranges, etc. I am loving the splotches of color they randomly create.


On the yellow and orange flowers, I've found some cool bugs. Do you see the praying mantis on this picture? I love finding these guys everywhere. They blend in particularly well on the Moss Rose. (Click on the picture to see a bigger version. It's kind of hard to see details on these small photos.)









My favorite find was this green bee. I've only seen them in the morning hours before it gets really hot. That may be because these little flowers close up when it warms up.







These bees buzz like flies and fly like flies. They can't sit still for more than two seconds and then they dart around, not like the slower pattern of bees. But I unmistakably saw pollen on their back legs, and they have that long bee body.





I thought I had discovered a new insect. But alas, they are on the internet. The genus is Agapostemon--Metallic Green Bee. 13 species have been identified in the Americas, but none have been recorded in Provo, so maybe I'll pass that information along. I hope they stick around for a while. Green is my favorite color!

Scarlet Runner Beans

One of my favorite finds last year is the Scarlet Runner Bean--Phaseolus coccineus. They are an annual that produces scarlet red flowers with heart-shaped leaves that look beautiful to fill in a trellis. I grow them on our chain-link fence. They like to grow 12-20 feet tall, so I have to wind them around and all over my four-foot fence. These photos were taken a week ago, and the plants have filled in the fence considerably since then. In the late summer and fall, they grow long bean pods that are very tender and sweet to eat. If you let the pods dry, you can harvest the legume and use like any dry bean. I planted enough beans to freeze for the winter. My family loves them!

The seed packet warns against planting in the same spot as the previous year to avoid disease. Once established, they need to be watered when the top two-inches of soil are dry. I have buried a 1/4" soaker hose hooked to my automated drip irrigation system, and most of the plants have done fine. When I planted, I soaked the beans in water for about an hour before placing them in the ground, and I was able to transplant the 7"-tall seedlings to better space out the plants that had sprouted. (I don't like just thinning. I prefer spreading.)

Squash!

September 4 Addendum: These plants just keep filling in. They have covered the bare spot in the picture below and are creeping over the grass! I took this picture of my son yesterday as we were harvesting. He is three, and the plants are as tall as he is.


When I was buying baby plants at the nursery this year, I went a little nuts with the vegetables. Back at home, I had two squash plants that I had no room for in my vegetable garden, so I planted them in a bare spot that I had planned for native flowers. They took off! From left to right are a Yellow Crookneck Squash, Paypaya Squash, and Zucchini (I planted a seed leftover from last year). These three plants filled in the space and they look beautiful in my landscape. The huge leaves are lovely, and the big orange flowers and brightly colored fruits add a splash to the green. Next year I will plan them into the landscape better so I don't have a bare spot in front and so it doesn't dwarf my tree (sticking up in the background).

For the last four weeks I've harvested the fruits. I usually pick it every two or three days and have 8-12 squash between the three plants. I've frozen it, canned it, dried it, fried it, baked it, broiled it, added it raw to salads, and given it away. These plants just keep giving! I love it!

Let the Harvest Begin!

I spend a lot of time babying my garden. Maybe it just needs to be left alone sometimes. After spending five days away from home, we came back to find our corn is seven feet tall, our pumpkins are turning orange, and our beets are peeking out of the ground. It was so fun to spend a morning harvesting lots of different foods with my children. This is the first year they have been excited to eat squash, because they are the ones picking it off the stem. I feel so blessed to have a space where I can grow food to put directly on my table.