Vegetable Gardening

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I like those mason bee houses. Better than having them drilling in the deck (or are those carpenter bees?)

Yes, you are thinking of carpenter bees.
Mason bees do not drill into wood. They nest in crevices that already exist, they don't create tunnels. They like to nest in rocky stone walls or crumbling masonry, or in rotting logs- in the abandoned tunnels left over from tunneling beetles. They seal their nest cavities with little plugs of mud gathered from muddy ditches or damp clay earth.
Carpenter bees will drill their way into old wood on houses, but not the harmless little mason bee.

Thanks for the list of cold weather direct seeders... I will try the radishes, carrots, kale, beets, and Swiss chard- all of which I have seeds for. AFTER next week's predicted nighttime temperature dip into the 'teens. That'll probably be our last hard freeze.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Tonight is the last night of a fluke cold snap- the last night that will have temps in the teens. Forecast is much better from now on.

I've started direct seeding of some of the cool loving veggies...
spinach, kale, lettuces, some carrots, beets, scallions. Gotta run out and buy some radish and bok choy seeds- forgot to order them.
Due to you guys' comments last Fall, I now am planting both White Russian kale and Winter Red Russian kale for the first time. I got some very interesting new lettuces to try, too, along with my favorites (black-seeded Simpson, speckled Troutback, and mixed color butterhead).
Just planting one or two small 3' rows of each thing right now, will be doing succession planting this time around even more than i did last year. I'm tightening up the space between each row too- now only leaving 3" between rows instead of 4" or 5".
It's such a huge luxury to have my big new vegetable garden space this year!

Meanwhile, I'm still sprouting jars of alfalfa sprouts in the kitchen on a constant basis ever since December- it's been so nice to have absolutely fresh cool crunchy green sprout sandwiches all winter! Probably the biggest bargain out there, nutrition-wise, is growing your own sprouts. I keep two jars rotating at different stages of growth.

[copperlegend]

How do you do the sprouts? My boyfriend casually mentioned (blatant hint, perhaps?) that when he was growing up, his mom always had a jar of sprouts going, and he misses fresh sprouts in his sandwiches.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

How do you do the sprouts? My boyfriend casually mentioned (blatant hint, perhaps?) that when he was growing up, his mom always had a jar of sprouts going, and he misses fresh sprouts in his sandwiches.

I have two of these jars:
http://www.amazon.com/Quart-Glass-Sp...9727928&sr=8-3
They work well for me and I always keep the two going at different stages.
Once they are 'done' and you take them out of the jar, loosen them up a bit in a big bowl of cold water and rinse a little to rinse off the extra seed hulls. The rest of the hulls you just eat up anyway in the sprouts. One rounded tablespoon of alfalfa seeds fills the whole quart jar jam packed with sprouts. Easy to put in too many seeds, so I had to learn to hold back!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Well, I've been planting little rows of seeds out in the freshly hoed vegetable garden, mostly the cool loving type vegetables.
Various interesting lettuces, scallions, leeks, swiss chard, kohlrabi, kale, bok choy, carrots.

Today we deep-dug the future blueberry and raspberry patches, and mixed in soil amendments to increase the acidity. Glad that's done.
Afterwards, I hoed and planted a small section of leek seeds just for fun.

[ummbnb]

My husband is the king of the garden and has tons of things started both inside and out. I do OK in the garden but he's a sahd so he has a lot more time and energy to dive into it all. I do like to weed, very zen LOL!, and I enjoy the fruits of his labor

[short cut sally]

DH is moving my garden spot to a better location, closer to the water hydrant and it will be bigger. I started buying seeds this week. I've got more to buy. I'll do direct sow when the weather permits, I usually have good luck with that. I've let my co-workers know that the garden's gonna be bigger so they can be the recipients of any items that I can't process right away. I'm getting excited.