More snowstorm damage

As the snow has melted off, more of the damage to trees and shrubs has been revealed. A large branch on my fig tree was ripped nearly off, and now I can see that the wound is pretty deep into the main stem. We've called an arborist to see if the tree can be saved.

And there's the arborvitae. I didn't know that they are often multi-stemmed - the one I learned in my woody plants class had a single stem. At any rate, the multiple stems all sagged in different directions under the weight of the snow - something not so dramatically evident till the snow was mostly gone.

The upside to this destruction is that I have more and more excuses to go shopping for native plants as replacements!

Big snow - the aftermath

We are still living with mountains of snow, albeit no longer the beautiful white fluffy stuff, but dirty old snow. As it slowly melts, damage to trees and shrubs continues to be revealed. My fig tree took a hit; one large branch is broken though still attached to the main trunk. We may have the tree service prune the limb off neatly when they come for other cleanup.

I'm happy that some of my less loved shrubs may be damaged after resting under heavy snow and ice for some time. I'm hoping that storm damage will make it easier to kill these non-natives off: nandina, privet, burning bush. The nandina was encased in ice for awhile that dripped from large icycles. That seems to have melted, and I'm afraid it looks surprisingly perky under the snow. One can only hope it may be weakened, at least, and a little easier to take out.

Way too much winter

 Our front walk - before shoveling

We don't live in the Midwest, but it suddenly looks like it. A couple of feet of snow very effectively shut down the Metro DC area, starting Friday when the federal government closed early in anticipation of this mammoth storm. Today is Monday and everyone is still digging out, with more snow expected tomorrow night. It's nice to be forced to slow down -- watch some movies, sleep in, enjoy watching the snow pile up, and figure you're not going anywhere for awhile.

 Oops

It's been pretty fun, except for the discovery on Saturday afternoon that three trees bordering our driveway had come down. One is resting on a powerline, one on the tail end of our car, and one along our neighbor's walkway. Amazingly, the powerline was not brought down, and we think the car may be undamaged. The neighbors were able to move the tree on their walk enough so they can get in and out of their door. So we're just waiting for the power company to move the tree off the line; then we can get a tree company to clear away the other two  trees. The trees, I've found out, are Leyland Cypress, and they have a bad reputation for growing very fast, being shallow rooted, and coming down in storms. Indeed!

One way to "green" your driveway

          

From seed to seedlings

Since my last post many of the seeds have become seedlings. On the tiny side: the rosemary and lavender. On the towering side (relatively speaking) the okra, now about 5 inches tall. And most amazing, each of the dwarf pea plants has a single white flower bud. What do they think they're doing?! Are they going to produce pea pods that are bigger than the plants themselves?

                    












Jan. 17 - Okra (foreground), Cilantro  (back left), Basil (back right)

Jan. 28 - Okra; Peas

John and Rachel's funky seed starting process

We have experimented with many methods, and various soilless mixes and seed starting mixes, in our adventures with seed starting. Now we are using what are called "Park Starts" from Park Seed Company. They are little plugs of sponge-like material. They are designed to go in a tray holding 60 of these starts. That assumes you'd like a rather large quantity of something, or several somethings, like lettuce or other greens, to set outdoors. But we've found that Park Starts work very well for starting almost any seed, and John has engineered a method for starting small quantities of seed using these plugs and the plastic containers which are used for Chinese takeout. He punches 4 holes in the plastic lid, and the plugs rest in these holes.  They are very easy to transplant into a 4 inch or larger pot later on. A plastic cup can sit on top as a humidity dome and is removed when seeds germinate.

On January 7 I started several sets of seeds using Park Starts. I put 2-3 seeds per Park Start into the little hole in the center of each plug. The only exception was the peas; with such large seeds, I only put one seed per plug.We give each plug one teaspoon of water to start with, and check daily. You want the plugs barely moist, but not too wet.

Already the peas are starting to unfold as seedlings - amazing. The others seeds: peppers, rosemary, cilantro, lavender, dwarf okra, will take varying amounts of time to germinate. I have started all of these seeds indoors before, using a bit more traditional methods, with the exception of rosemary, which I believe can take quite a long time to germinate. We'll see.

John started basil seeds on January 3, and the little seedlings have already got their seed leaves. In a few days he will choose the strongest seedling and carefully snip the stems of any other seedlings sharing the same plug. Basil has turned out to be an amazing indoor plant; John harvests it regularly from his tabletop growlight system at work.

The last rose of winter, and the seeds of spring

Winter came hard and fast, with 21 inches of snow in the DC area right before Christmas. It had been fairly mild up until then, and this rose had managed to unfold. Then, kaboom.

My potted blueberry plant ended up with quite a load of snow!

Indoors, there are still many pots and plant trays that need to be washed, and we've only managed to transplant a couple of peppers and eggplants into bigger pots. But the holidays are past; no more excuses. Time to get busy.

We need to get some seeds going, as we're planning to have a booth at the DC Home and Garden Show in March. We'll want to have plants in various stages of growth in order to display how our system works. If I were starting these for outdoor transplanting, I'd wait a bit. For most plants, especially warm weather crops like tomatoes and peppers, starting from seed this early would mean enormously overgrown plants by the time the weather is warm. But for indoor growing, anytime is a good time to plant seeds. So I'm starting okra, peas, lavender, peppers, rosemary. With the next post, I'll show exactly how we do it.

Turning now to indoor gardening...

We finally got the hoses coiled up and put away, and the outdoor water turned off. (Thank God I'm not the one who has to go down in the crawl space to do that!) Not long after came the first snowfall - a swirl of lovely big flakes on a Saturday morning, transforming the landscape but not sticking to the road, an ideal snow. (The only thing better is a weekday snow that shuts down work.)

So now it's official - the outdoor gardening season is pretty much over. Nothing much to do until February, when it's time to think about pruning. Or rather, nothing much to do outdoors.

Indoors, as always around our house, there's much to be done in the way of gardening. Major transplanting is needed! The peppers and eggplants we started from seed a couple of months back are doing amazingly well, given the small 4-inch pots they've been confined to. All of the pepper plants have peppers on them. We have bell peppers, poblanos, and sweet banana peppers. The eggplants are at the blooming stage, with lovely pale purple flowers. All these plants are  amazingly forgiving, but they really, really need to be in bigger pots! And now that John has a new Sunstation design, we can better accommodate those plants that need a lot of growing space. Sadly, we will never have enough indoor space for all the plants we've started, once they're approaching maturity. So some winnowing, as well as transplanting, will have to be done.