WEEKLY GARDEN THREAD VOLUME 4, JANUARY 24, 2014

Free Republic | Jan 24, 2014 | greeneyes

[sockmonkey]

Of all the seeds I planted last week, only one little tycoon tomato plant has risen, and is trying to push his turquoise seed jacket off. It wasn’t a good time to plant above ground crops by the phases of the moon, btw.

[Marcella]

The only hand machine I have is a small one called Vidalia Onion and I have to cut an onion in fourths and press down on the top to push the onion through the grid. I can only do onions and celery this way. It's not strong enough to do other veggies.

I don't do well with knives so that's why I use that thing. I have looked at your curling machine as a possibility but can you just slice something without making curls? I want cucumber slices, onion slices, potato slices, not curls.

[rightly_dividing]

It has a slicing blade, but we have not yet used it, so can’t tell you how thick the slices are.

[Marcella]

“tobacco to plant today”

I need to plant tobacco today?

[Marcella]

“Of all the seeds I planted last week, only one little tycoon tomato plant has risen,”

Give them some more time. Is water being soaked up into the bottom/lower sides of the cups or whatever you have the seed in?

[JRandomFreeper]

That's what I did. 108 of the fresh seed. Add that to the 48 from old seed that are already up, and that gives me 156 to go in the ground in March. Maybe.

/johnny

[sockmonkey]

Is water being soaked up into the bottom/lower sides of the cups or whatever you have the seed in?

I have them in the little 5 oz dixie dups with holes poked in the bottom of the cups. They are in little plastic trays with about an inch of water, but the water doesn't seem to wick up to the top 3/8 or so of soil in the cups. Maybe I should've "packed" the soil in there more.

Or maybe the seeds are toying with me as I keep going to look at them three or four times a day. Maybe I need to yell at them to "wake up".

[rightly_dividing]

—Maybe I need to yell at them to “wake up”—

Speak softly to your babies. :)

[JRandomFreeper]

This is pre-planting on the tobacco seed. I take a sharply creased piece of paper and pour some seeds into it. Then I use the knife to only get a few (3 or 20) seeds into each container.

Here is my 2012 seed tobacco that I started on the 20th. Since I took the picture I have thinned them.

Important on tobacco to have only ONE plant in each container.

/johnny

[greeneyes]

Part 10 is Run Right Home and Start a Garden Now.

There are 4 Appendices:

12 Bed Layout
Garden Plan for the Second Year
Sample 100 sq ft Starter Garden
Grow Biointensive Sustainable Mini Farm: 60/30/10 Clarification

All the other sections are named exactly the same.

[Marcella]

My appendices are:
A. 12 Bed Layout, Diagram
B. Table C, Garden Plan for the Second Year and NOtes
C. Sample 100 sq.t. “Starter Garden”
D. Grow Biointensive Sustainable Mini-Farm:
60/20/10, Clarification and Examples
E. Table D, Survival Seed Diet Nutrient Data

[greeneyes]

60/20/10 is only 90%, so what about the other 10%?

Those tables in Appendice E are located in part 3 of my book.

[Marcella]

I looked again - my mistake, that is 30%, not 20%.

[greeneyes]

Ok. Sounds like there’s not much difference. Maybe they changed some of the plants they were using? Chances are that whatever changes they made are not all that significant from what we’ve considered so far.