Work log: Terrace and horse poop

Today we worked for 3.5 hours.  I got the truck stuck in the ditch again, but eventually got it out by driving backwards down the hill while angling up to the road.  :(
We laid out the wood for 3/4 of the second-lowest terrace.  We unloaded a load of fresh poop, then got a half-trailer of composted poop and dumped it on plastic.

Don't rely on one teacher or source of info!

I learned that lesson today.

I was watching a course on Udemy.com, Seed Starting Simplified: Grow your own garden seedlings.  The teacher gardens in Utah.  He said that he couldn't start his seeds in natural light because they always, without fail, became leggy, and he had to turn them all the time to make sure they grew straight up.  So he prefers a fluorescent light.

But in Charles Dowding's YouTube video, Propagation: germinate, grow and plant seedlings for a long season of bigger harvests, you can see that NONE of his seedlings are leggy, and no artificial light is used.  However, as a parenthetical, Charles mentioned that some of his tomato seedlings (grown on his windowsill) were leggy, but that you could prick them out and bury the stem in a new cell or pot to correct the legginess.  (WOW!)

Anyhoo, by seeing these two videos, I realized that natural light is fine if it's 180 degrees of exposure, not just 90 degrees.  I mean, that's my guess.  I posted the following comment on Charles Dowding's video:

Charles, around minute 12:30, you mention the legginess of starts grown in the windowsill.  I was watching a video by someone in the US who said they always get leggy starts if they rely on natural light, and so they use a fluorescent light placed as close to the seedling as possible, raising the light as the seedling grows.  But your starts in the greenhouse are not leggy!  Is that because they get light on all sides?  Or would it be the intensity of the light or the length of the day that makes the difference for you?  I looked up the latitude of the US videocaster, and he's around 39.323742° N.  You're at about 51.1477° N.  Not sure what that means for light angle or length of day....

I hope he replies.

Update:  He replied!!  Why is that so rewarding?  Anyhoo, he said:

At 51 latitude, our winter light levels are poor. Also it's a dull climate.  Legginess is a separate issue, because windowsill seedlings in any climate/latitude will draw towards the light they need more of.  Greenhouse plants are sturdy because light is all around.  I prefer slower growth in the cooler greenhouse, or using the hotbed or any kind of warmth in there.

I replied, laying out my plan to try putting my starts under our skylights.

Maintaining that mental image

It's pouring rain.  It's been rainy and dreary for days, and will be for days more.  When I get out there, all I see is the mess I've made and the unfinished projects that give no indication of what they're supposed to look like.  And with plant prices the way they are, it's gonna be years until the plants I want are all in.
It's really important, and really difficult, to keep that image in my mind--the image of what it will look like when all of the existing pieces are in place, and all of the stuff that I want gone is gone.  That picture is the only thing keeping me from throwing in the towel.  When I reach that point, all that will be left is bringing in the extra plants I want, as I can afford them.
Oh yeah, I was going to try to propagate everything, but I just don't have the expertise, nor access to the plants I want.  I just had to come to terms with that and prioritize the market garden over the fedge and the food forest.

Planted: Thornless stuffs

I dropped in by one of the best nurseries here, and two days before, they got their berry shipment in!!  I got:

- 2 sour cherries, bare-root, Romeo and Juliet.  $25 each.

- 2 thornless raspberries, max 2 feet tall.  $25 each.

- 2 thornless blackberries, early.  $15 each.

- 2 thornless blackberries, late.  $15 each.

I want to go back for more!  They're not cheap though.  But the selection!!!  I want everything in the food forest to be thornless!

Propagation: Rose cuttings and seeds, forgotten seeds, list of seeds

Well, I consulted the propagation bible, American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniques.

It says rose cuttings should be done in the following ways:

• Take nodal hardwood cuttings in late summer or autumn, taking well-ripened, healthy, woody shoots from the current season's growth, 1'-2' long.  Cut down to 9", and cut through a bud on the bottom end.  Leave top 2 leaves.  Bury up to the leaves.
• After a hard spring pruning, young wood will be produced (shoots that are about 1"-2" long).  Take young cuttings (softwood) in early to mid-spring.  (Lots of detailed, complicated instructions for this one, pp 112).

What a hassle.  And I missed the timing anyway.  So, I just grabbed a bunch of nuisance stems from the rose by the driveway and chopped it up, and set them in water.  I didn't cut through the buds, though, at the bottom.  Perhaps I should on half of them.  I stuck half of them in water, and half of them in water with some water-soluble mycorrhizal fungi.

It might not work.  But the interesting thing is, I didn't get all anxious about it.  Normally, I would've been paralysed by the idea, "this has to work".  I've already failed a bunch at propagation and it's been demoralizing, and I've been afraid so far to try it again.  But I want to get good at this.  And failing will help me get good faster.

I may as well go all out.  I grabbed the 4 remaining rose hips from the plant.  I'll separate out the seeds and stratify them.

Er ma gerd!!  I opened the fridge in the garage and found like 10+ other packs of seeds that I had saved probably 6+ months ago: thornless blackberry, several cherries, two kinds of plum, Good King Henry, two kind of elderberry, hot pepper, and I'm not sure what else.  I collected the thornless blackberry from Beacon Hill Food Forest.  The package had frozen, probably because they were in the bottom of the fridge.  I hope they're ok.  The label on the Good King Henry said to plant them in January!  Bah!  Must get on those.

How can I avoid this in the future?  I think I need to set calendar items.  I'm going to set one for the rose seeds right now, for 4 weeks from today.

Also... man, I have more than 112 types of seeds (some are root cuttings and bulbs).  I've made a spreadsheet.  My plan is to check Charles Dowding's Calendar and the Maritime Northwest Garden Guide every week or so to choose which ones to sow.

Work log: Terrace and backfill

I'm gonna start logging what I do, with before and after pictures (uh, which I didn't take this time.

Just shy of 4 hours:

• picked up trailer.
• reinforced lowest terrace wood.
• extended it a bit.
• created 75% of the topmost terrace wall and laid cardboard along 40%, and a small load of composted manure that was left over under a tarp.  Decided this will be my first bed, and thus must have only composted manure.
• unloaded the trailer into the bottom-most terrace via barrowfuls.
• decided to have 5 terraces instead of 4.  That solves the problem of how godawful deep they have to be backfilled, but introduces the problem of not having enough wood.  Might change my mind again. 

Here's an after photo, at least, of the part I worked on.

I took my time and pondered and toyed with the wood, and it was SO enjoyable!!!  Not only because of how messing with the wood was like Tetris, but....  When you prevent yourself from feeling rushed, life is SO FUN!!  Must remember that.

Can you rescue a dried out sunchoke?

Remember that concussion I got?  (Yeah, me neither.)  And the plant swap that I had attended the morning of, which I couldn't remember attending?  I found the cloth bag of 3 sunchokes.  They were dried out ans wrinkly.  :(  Turns out you're not supposed tolet them dry out.

So, as an experiment, I stuck them in a bag with sphagnum moss amd squirted it all with water and water-soluble mycorrhizal fungi, and we'll see.  It's too early to plant them yet.  I hope they plump up and survive.  I'll report back here.

Since I was at it, I took the package of fuseau sunchokes I got recently, threw some moss in, and sprayed them a little.  They were all already sprouting, dangit!  Not sure what to do.  I probably shouldn't have touched them.  :(  Oooh!  I'll plant them out and put little greenhouses over them!!

Update: 2 days later, they're almost fully plumped up!!  I can't believe it!  Gonna plant them out with the fuseau tomorrow.

Update: 1 day later, they molded.  Man, I should've taken them out and planted them yesterday.  They still felt like there was some plumping left to do, so I guess there was no way I could've known.  Meh.  Turns out these guys were fuseau (not the white ones) and I have a whole package of fuseau, so I'm not crushed.  And it's new information to add to my mind library.

Potted: Perennial kale and perennial collards

Look at ma bebes!  Arrived as well-packaged cuttings in wet newspaper on Dec. 12, 2019, potted in crappy soil with mycorrhizae on Dec. 15, 2019, and left in an open covered deck with wind protection, on a broken heat mat that had one luke-warm spot.  We have had freezing temperatures too.  They're bending towards the light, so I should've rotated the pots frequently.  There are 2 green kale and 2 purple kale cuttings.  Can't wait to plant them out!!

I received perennial purple collard seeds too.  Gonna plant a few each couple weeks in different ways to see which works best.

FigBid.com is the devil!

Holy crap!  There's an eBay-style site that's dedicated to selling cuttings of fig varietals!  For fun, I signed up.  Then 2 minutes later, I realized I had bid on 3 figs, shook myself out of my trance, and logged off.

Update 5 hours later: whoops!  I'm still currently winning all three.  :D

Update: I was out-bid on each one.  :(

My dates sprouted!!!

Holy crap!  I had dates in the fridge that were years old.  I saved the seeds, watched a video, put the seeds in wet paper towel in a ziploc in a warm cupboard, forgot about them, and then recently discovered they had sprouted!!!

So I planted them in pots and left them in the basement office where it's a little cooler than the house.

They can't survive outside in our zone so I don't know what I'm going to do with them.  Maybe I can build a little personal greenhouse for them.  

I want to grow my own dates dammit!!

Das Poop!

Aww.  My poor helper is such a good sport.  We dumped one load of raw horse manure today, and then loaded up and dumped a bunch of composted poop.  And he absolutely hates poop.  Passionately!

We found a way to being it in without driving on the soil and making ruts (and getting my truck stuck in the ditch).  It's more laborious, but more precise.

I did decide today to re-lay my terraces so that I could drive along each row to deliver das poop more conveniently.  Sigh.  I mean, look at this mess.

By the end of 5 hours, I came in, showered, flopped on the bed, and haven't moved since.  :)  At this point, why would I.