How Does Your Garden Grow? - Sprouting up all over

How Does Your

Garden Grow?

We have two more bell pepper sprouts!

I can’t believe they’re actually popping up, especially as I was just on the verge of returning them to the earth from whence they came.

I thought I was a patient person, but it seems I have a little work to do in that area.

I don’t know if it was the plastic wrap, keeping them in the dark, or a combination of the two, or perhaps the seeds felt inspired by the fully-grown bell peppers that my coworker, Todd Lundy, placed on top of the pile to troll me, but either way we’ve had success.

I planted what felt like a million iceberg lettuce seeds on Monday, which wanted to be sown a quarter of an inch deep and one inch apart, and set them out for my coworkers to take and nurture. The first to have a sprout pop up will take home however many dollar bills end up in the collection jar in addition to bragging rights. I’m not really going to participate since I’m obviously an expert by now (see the mention of my three pepper sprouts above) and I would just end up humiliating everyone. As long as Todd doesn’t win, I’m happy.

As an experiment I stuck a couple of containers of tomatoes and lettuce covered in plastic into the closet with the rest of the bell peppers to see if I get the same results. I also covered each with plastic and left them in the sun and have another collection of both basking nude elsewhere in the office. I also threw some plastic wrap on top of one tray of strawberries just for s’s and g’s. It’s a race to see what appears first!

I much prefer planting seeds in plastic takeout containers than individual bottles. It seems like I’m using less soil but have more space, and since I’m cutting off the lids and using them as a base for drainage I don’t feel like I’m wasting paper plates to catch excess water. I’ll definitely be keeping my eyes peeled for more of those.

I saw a massive reduction in our office gnat population immediately after I treated any drains that might have organic matter looming inside them and added newspaper to my compost bin. I went ahead and watered all of our office plants with a four-to-one dilution of peroxide just in case. That was last week. This week, they seemed to have made a comeback and I have no doubt that the issue is my compost bin.

While my bin is much more dry, I’m on the hunt for tulle or something similar laying around that I can add as a barrier to keep the gnats from crawling through the aeration holes in the lid. I’m going to add more shredded paper to see if that helps. I also read online that gnats go crazy for banana peels, so I brought in a banana for lunch and placed the peel in a container with plastic wrap stretched over the top. I poked a couple of tiny holes in the plastic wrap and the gnats flocked to it. I left it out for a few days for maximum effect. Hopefully between the banana and the extra paper in the compost bin we’ll thin the herd a bit.

We have chicks at home! Our leghorn chicks from PK Poultry Co. came home on Saturday and they’ve settled in beautifully. We lined a tote with shavings and made sure they had food and water. My husband cut a big rectangle out of the lid of the tote and we duct taped some wire sheeting over the hole for ventilation and so they’d have access to the heat lamp, which I may have placed a bit to close to the chicks initially. Thankfully I realized my mistake before I turned them into extra crispy nuggets.

We bought six chicks at $5 a piece and the feed was around $10. I already had the tote, heat lamp, feeder and waterer which were from a previous bird experiment that I’m sad to say did not turn out in my favor as my goats freed my three button quail who slipped into the night never to be seen again.

Eventually, the leghorn ladies will be too big for their tote and they’ll need a more permanent home. I have an old coop laying around from the quail and our plan is to raise that higher off the ground with pvc pipe and some casters. Our idea is to keep it in the garage where we have the ability to give the birds access to a large outdoor run that’s shared with the goats who will hate the avian invasion, I’m sure. My husband purchased netting to install over the run because we have a large population of predatory birds where we live in and we don’t want to take any chances. Altogether we’ve spent about $70 on the chickens so far.

Also at home, we’re making a big push to get our containers ready for seedlings as soon as the last frost hits in May. I’d like to make some sort of shelving for the 5-gallon buckets to keep them off the ground and provide a little support. To be perfectly honest, the biggest reason is because I don’t want to see a bunch of pails laying around my beautiful yard. I will not be mentioning the latter to my contractor (my husband), though he probably suspects.

I think it’s safe to say that many of us have felt wilted in the last week. It’s been hard to stay positive, especially knowing so many are hurting. It’s important to tend to yourself just as you tend to your garden. Be gentle, and patient.

Keep seeking the sunshine.

Mandee Ellis is a reporter at The Star News. Contact her at Mandee@centralwinews.com. Our leghorn chicks are making themselves comfortable at home. We can't wait for them to get big and strong so they can produce us some delicious cluckberries.