Just look at these perfectly tender radish sprouts!
I planted these little guys back on March 17th along with long-to-germinate parsnips (which should be sprouting soon).
The radishes should be ready to pull on April 7th – that’s in a week! I love these instantly-harvestable shoots of joy.
Even their fat little first leaves reach up and shrug with a super-cheery “YAYY!!!”
It’s as though the parsnips have their own radish cheerleaders.
Broken clay pot? Don’t trash it!
One of your late-fall garden chores is to dutifully empty your clay pots of annuals and store them in a dry place. Why? So your clay pot won’t get wet from rain/sleet/snow then freeze and crack.
I have yet got it together enough to do this. Each spring I find a few pots that I scavenged/bought sitting there with a dead stalk, stale potting soil and a huge crack rendering it useless.
I might as well leave money in my pants then donate them to thrift – lazy money down the drain.
Are you seeing broken clay pots on the curb, set out as trash, broken cleanly into two or three pieces? Another lazy soul left their pots out over winter.
Are all the pieces there? Pick them up and take them home.
A bottle of glue only costs a few bucks. Gluing a pot only takes a few minutes. Salvaging a pot feels so handy.
So, whether you broke your own pot or scavenged someone else’s broken pot, let me introduce you to Gorilla Glue.
The instructions kept me from using it for years, saying to wet the surface first then clamp the glued items together for a period of time. Super Glue is so fast and simple, why bother with Gorilla Glue?
For starters, Super Glue (or Krazy Glue, etc) does not do well on surfaces as porous as clay pots. You have to apply quite a bit so it won’t disappear into the clay.
Next, even with the improved caps, Super Glue never seems to last long in the tube once you open it. They solved this by selling little single-serve tubes of it in multi-packs, but now you’re buying and wasting a lot of packaging to salvage a pot. Fixing a decent sized pot always takes, for me at least, more than one of those little single-shot tubes.
Finally, Crazy Glue is so thin and runny, if you don’t perfectly match up your pot pieces in seconds, there won’t be enough surface contact between the two pieces before the glue dries to hold it all together. Thus, you spent time, effort and glue on a failed repair job.
(Oh, and who hasn’t glued their fingers together while repairing with Super Glue. Lame.)
Gorilla Glue’s awesomeness comes from its expansion while it dries. This makes it very effective on porous clay pots. You don‘t have to align your broken pieces up with exact precision. And, the fact that it does not dry instantly is in your favor, you can actually take a moment to align your pieces as well as possible without all the glue drying in seconds. If do you end up with a tiny little gap, as long as it’s filled with Gorilla Glue, your repair job will still hold.
Regardless of your favorite glue or repair method, read the instructions on the glue bottle. Following them means you’re more likely to have that pot back in rotation for spring.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with Gorilla Glue, Super Glue or Krazy Glue. I do not receive free stuff from them. My endorsement is based solely on a short lifetime of repairing broken things.
DIY: HOW TO REPAIR A BROKEN CLAY POT WITH GORILLA GLUE
1. Gather the pot pieces, bush off dirt if applicable. Try to assemble the pot before even getting the glue out. If you don’t have all the pieces, you should reconsider this project. Or improvise.
2. Determine if your pot will hold itself together better if you assemble it upright or upside down. Whichever is more stable will be how you assemble it as you glue it.
2. Gather your materials: water, Gorilla Glue, cheap dental floss, latex gloves or household cleaning gloves, newspapers to protect your work surface from stray glue.
3. Read the glue’s instructions.
4. Per Step 3, lightly dampen one of the two surfaces as you prepare to assemble them.
5. Apply glue to the dry surface evenly and without over applying. (I negate this below in Step 7.)
6. Assemble your pot, gluing as you go.
7. Throw caution to the wind and apply yet more glue along your repair seams. Take care not to glue your pot to your work surface. Later discovering your successful repair job is firmly affixed to your table will negate any positive feelings of accomplishment. (My work surface is not protected by newspapers because it is already ratty.)
8. You don’t have to apply the extra glue, but I like the overkill. If you are concerned about appearance, focus on applying the glue along the crack on the inner-pot side.
9. Use cheap dental floss to delicately tie it all together. You can use multiple pieces spaced apart if needed. Dental floss is magical since it’s so strong yet so thin – it pulls free of the dried (or nearly dried) glue easier than any other common string.
10. After an hour or two, gently remove the dental floss. Do not move your pot until it sits overnight.
11. If you applied the Step 7 overkill glue, your pot will have fancy glue marks. If you find this horrifying, then skip Step 7 or simply turn the fugly side to the back when you use your awesome reclaimed pot. You to not need the extra glue, Gorilla glue expands to fill the gaps and forms a very strong bond.
The Gorilla Glue holds great over time – a pot I reclaimed a year ago shows the glue yellowed in the sun but holds strong.
Still a Super Glue fan? My old Super Glued pots work fine, they were just a headache to repair.
“Whassup, daffodils!”
B giggles this to daffodils as we pass.
DC’s small front yards make walking the sidewalks an endless treat in spring.
Does anything beat velvety tulips peaking down the sidewalk through their wrought iron fence?
If this were a DIY, it would go like this:
HOW TO ACCIDENTALLY TAKE ROSEMARY CLIPPINGS AND ROOT THEM
1. It’s spring, give your established and unruly rosemary bush an aggressive pruning.
2. Admire your work. Appreciate your lush and bushy rosemary that you barely tend except when you run out to clip sprigs for cooking.
3. Gather what you sheared off and abandon most of it because it’s tough and woody.
4. But you can’t really abandon all that good rosemary. Select a few of the tender branches and trim 8 – 12 inches of the tips and take to your kitchen.
5. Brag about it on your tumblr because growing stuff is awesome and you’ve stopped pestering your facebook friends about cooking with all the awesome stuff you grow.
6. Strip the bottom inch or two of leaves and stick the sprigs in a vase or bottle with water. Place away from the harsh afternoon sun.
7. Continue to pinch off leaves as you need them for a week or two.
8. Change the water and notice WHOA – THEY ROOTED!!!
9. Take exciting iPhone pictures and brag about this miracle of accidentalness on tumblr as well.
10. Consult the internet if you would like to actually turn these rooted cuttings into more plants for your garden (or gifts for friends).
This is great. It turns out that by me stripping the bottom leaves so they fit into their glass bottle, and then pinching the top leaves for cooking, I accidentally did exactly what is needed for rooting.
The scratchy patches of weeds near our front door would love to host a few rosemary bushes. The neighbors and I have been wanting to reclaim that sidewalk area and now we’ll have some anchoring rosemary to accidentally kick it off.
I can’t get enough of this tulip sea bed.
Photos with Hipstamatic.
Winter has been a bad boyfriend this year – not around when he’s supposed to be, shows up unannounced for a night only to leave before breakfast.
Winter was here for a few hours last night. I covered the cold frame and root veggie pots with due diligence given the wind and the freeze warning.
By noon today it was a fabulously warm 50 degrees with the clearest, most brilliant, sunshine.
I stopped in my tracks when I spotted my favorite yard-o-tulips completely awash in 1000 watts of tulip shine.
Winter – I’ve blocked your number. Don’t come around here again.
Photos via Pop Camera app.
SATURDAY: I pleaded for help on twitter.
Something had cut down multiple basil seedlings. Kathy Jentz with Washington Gardener suggested cutworms might be to blame.
In the evening hours between my original post and Kathy’s reply, another two basil seedlings were sliced down.
SUNDAY: I found a cornmeal/molasses/Bt powder cocktail online that would work with the cold frame and went to town.
TUESDAY: Today, two days after scattering the elixir, the basil STANDS!!!
My original tiny basil sprouts have three new tiny buddies and none have been cut down since sprinkling the cutworm kryptonite.
Winning.
I’ve read about it, the grave discovery one day when you go to water your seedlings. Cut, at the base, as though tiny lumberjacks came with a tiny razor blade saw and went on a drunken spree, seedling to seedling through the night.
“Timmmber!“
Our basil fell prey to their weekend bender.
I called to twitter with pictures for help. I naively thought cutworms only targeted tomato plants.
Washington Gardener suggested cutworms and, indeed, their pallet for destruction goes far beyond tomatoes.
Sewn in egg crates and too small to place protective yogurt cup rings around, I found a cutworm solution that would work for the cold frame and I got to work.
How I made my own cutworm no-man’s-land:
Ingredients
1. Cornmeal
2. Molasses
3. Bt powder (Bt powder is so handy against a slew of pests, it’s good to have on hand.)
1. Start with an amount of cornmeal sufficient to sprinkle your seed pots with enough extra to treat the open ground within your cold frame.
2. Add Bt powder loosely based on the product’s instructions. I added about a tablespoon to about two cups cornmeal. Mix.
3. Add molasses. I completely guessed on the quantity. I didn’t want so much that it would be one sticky mass, I wanted to still be able to sprinkle the finished mixture. I added about a tablespoon. Mix with fork until evenly distributed.
4. Sprinkle over seed pots and use the remaining mix to sprinkle over the exposed floor/ground of your cold frame. Cut worms travel the ground at night so head them off at the pass.
Since my Bt powder comes in a squeezable applicator bottle, I carefully puffed a little into the cold frame with hopes it will settle out to finely coat everything and ward off any additional evil spirits cutworms. A little overkill satisfied my vengeful urge.
Be warned: Give a few practice squeezes before using a squeeze applicator bottle on your plants. It’s capable of powder-bombing your target. I usually invert it once then turn it upright and give a light tap to clear the orifice of excess powder.
And now I wait.
Hopefully those tiny lumberjacks won’t care for our cold frame any more.
Lean, reaching and slightly awkward – our seedlings stretched and exposed second sets of leaves today in the 80 degree May March sun.
All they need are little American Apparel Cotton Spandex Jersey Basic Bodysuits to complete the look.
I put our kid and the neighbor’s kid in the wagon and set out on tulip patrol this morning.
All of my tulip pictures from last year are dated April.
Looks like all of this year’s will be dated March.
More tulips (and other delights) are at The Soil Toil tumblr.
Boot trays fix everything.
Deciding you need a boot tray makes you at least pick up all the shoes so you can situate the tray.
Even if the boots aren’t lined up nicely within, it’s at least a notional corral for the shoes.
Or a square upon which to pile them.
I wanted to make one for B’s toddler boots for as cheap as possible, however, if I had seen them at Target for $5, I would have just bought one. I made ours for $6.
Materials needed:
1. A cardboard box that fits the boots in need of a tray.
2. Scissors/utility knife/box cutter if the box needs cutting.
3. One 20-yd roll of colored duct tape.
4. Pebbles.
What to do:
1. Cut the height of the box, if needed.
2. Methodically cover the entire box with duct tape.
3. Place an inch or two of pebbles within the newly-taped box. They let your wet and muddy shoes dry and keeps your boot tray looking tidy (by masking the mud). M. Stewart says you should still clean the tray regularly.
Where to get pebbles? Garden centers, hardware stores… Mini Manor got hers at Ikea.
A friend of mine has a too-deeply-pebbled alley driveway and let me take what I need.
Me parking in her alley one mid-afternoon, jumping out with a shovel and contractor’s bucket, filling it with driveway rocks then driving off was a step I wished I had caught on camera for this instructional.
Sick of the weeds and trash last summer cornered away between our fence and the sidewalk, I dug it all up with a trowel, a borrowed shovel and leather work gloves.
I found a chair leg in the weeds, a recycling bin’s worth of glass in the dirt and untold broken bricks.
$27 later it was a mulched little patch with bargain perennials and clearance annuals since it was already early summer.
This spring it hosts a few clearance grocery store tea roses, an annual whose name I forgot, a thick row of smiling pansies, poppin’ crocus and a few nodding daffodils.
B loves saying “Hi, Pansies!” to them so much that she can spot other people’s pansies from the car now.
We rent.
Despite this, the land reclamation is moving along the fence this spring – I have big plans for that neglected little Weedtown out there.
I am so completely ahead of the game this year – I’ve had a bag of mulch and a bag of humus & manure mix out there waiting for me to dig this mess up. I got them a month ago.
Neal found a $5 well-worn shovel for me at the flea. That, my trowel, cultivator, leather gloves, classy pink plastic hospital pan (my constant garden project companion) and that 80-degree Sunday afternoon last weekend turned Weedtown into Mulchburg.
Mulchburg is still edgy, though. I stopped pulling the large chunks of glass out about 10 minutes into it.
I announced to our two-year-old that we were going to make a smoothie for our azaleas.
She lit up then immediately looked doubtful, squinting her eyes at me slightly waiting for the punchline. I could see her gears turning and imaged her trying to figure out how the bushes would hold the cup and drink through the straw, handless and mouthless.
I explained we would pour it on the ground around them and they would drink it through their roots. Relieved, she lit up again, explaining back to me what I had just said.
Our poor azaleas.
They were planted four or five years ago by Apt #3 – her boyfriend was working for a landscaper that summer and these were brought home as rescues. They just plod along with little more attention than watering but the neglect shows this spring as neighborhood bushes bloom and ours barely push buds out. Our azaleas’ foliage looks decent (it’s not sparse) but the slight yellow tinge could mean the soil isn’t acidic enough.
Or it could mean a million other things.
Common homemade fertilizers are basic but magically cheap. Recipes vary and people do this or that with kitchen scraps and spent tea bags. I add a little fish emulsion to whatever home brew I make because, like Frank’s Hot Sauce, I put that sh*t on everything. (Technically, I suppose it’s no longer DIY fertilizer if I add the store-bought fish emulsion but the stuff is so lovely for the plants.)
I went for gold and combined a few recipes. I figure (a) those azaleas haven’t been fed in at least two years and (b) this mix is pretty mild for in-ground acid-loving plants. Plus, rain is coming.
The Azalea Smoothie
- Two banana peels
- One dozen egg shells
- One cup spent espresso grounds
- 1 Tbs white vinegar
- 1 Tbs Epsom salts
- 3 Tbs fish emulsion (per the container instructions for flowering shrubs)
Blend in the blender with enough water to let it mix freely and blend until the egg shells are fine. Pour into a gallon jug, top with water and shake. Pull back your mulch and water the azaleas with it, shaking the jug often to distribute the egg shells.
The eggshells and coffee grounds might cancel each other out, but the egg shells break down slower and I’ll be out there with more coffee grounds in a week.
B, the toddler, found this entire process incredibly exciting (she watched the entire smoothie-making and then helped rake back the mulch and leaves with her little cultivator). She talked about how we “Made smoothies for the azaleas!” the rest of the day. That alone was worth gunking up my dish sponge with sand-fine egg bits that won’t rinse out.
My seed-starting calendar I filled out a few weeks ago says I should be really busy this week and next. I’m short on deep containers for root vegetables but feel an urgency to get some planted this weekend.
Whether you are starting seedlings in starting mix or direct sewing into potting soil, moisten your medium before planting the seeds. Why?
1. It leaves no doubt as to how full you have filled your container.
2. It’s easier to poke holes for sowing (or make little furrows).
3. Your carefully placed seeds won’t float away as they do when you wait to moisten the soil until after sowing.
So, moisten your potting soil, work it around to break up clumps (it get compressed in transit), smooth it out then get those seeds in there.
I’ve seen a few blogs and how-to pages mention using a chopstick to sow your seeds. I’ve also seen pencils and plastic utensils suggested.
I’m telling you – the chopstick is a superior tool. It’s perfect: you already have more in your kitchen drawer than you will ever need (since take-out offers an endless supply), it has both a tapered end and a uniform end (whichever suits your fancy) and you can even mark 1/4″ and 1/2″ depth on it if you’re concerned about uniform seed sowing.
As a bonus, both ends are blunt so you can just poke any stray seeds into the soil where they lay to add a little spontaneity to your meticulous operation.
Once your seeds are sown at the suggested depth (found on our seed packet or seed catalog), mist with a spray bottle. My fairly cheap hose nozzle has a wonderfully fine mist setting that far beats my cheap spray bottle.
My dog-eared seed catalog emphasizes the long germination period for parsnips (two weeks) and the need to keep the soil moist until they sprout. It suggested using radishes as markers and for keeping the soil from crusting over.
I skipped the marker use but did plant radishes throughout the parsnip pot. With their 24 days till harvest vs. the turnips’ 105 days, they’ll be long gone before the parsnips really do anything.
To manage the soil moisture, I happened to have a clear-plastic bag that fits nicely so over the parsnip pot.
Today’s lineup:
By the way, as of 2:00 pm today, FOUR tomatoes have sprouted in the cold frame. That’s three more than we had yesterday.
The crew.
Seventeen days after starting the seeds – they struggle to maintain their soil moisture in the 80-degree bizarre DC March weather.
I built the cold frame in a blur, got some seeds sown in seed starter in a rush, filled a spray bottle with water and told our neighbor, “Thanks so much – you are awesome.”
Then we left town for 13 days.
While we were away, the east coast heat-wave continued but with a few cool nights in the low 30s for DC.
We drove down the Carolina coast to Florida, stayed with Neal’s parents as they got their own garden ready for the new season and his mom sent us home with an extra tomato plant. We’ll have tomato races – FL vs. DC.
This will be fun. She, a seasoned second-generation gardener. Me, a fourth-season gardener.
When we returned, I popped the potted Florida tomato plant into the cold frame (a “Celebrity” slicing tomato). The recorded low temperature on the cold frame thermometer read 38 F. Lower than I had hoped from our period away, but it only gets a few hours of direct sun a day given the height of our yard’s surrounding buildings.
I looked closely at the seed pots. Any number of factors could explain the distinct lack of action within.
Fourteen days in the fateful cold frame and nada. None of the following items we planted sprouted:
Jimmy Nardello’s Italian Pepper
Fourth of July Tomato <— Free seed packet in the Washington Gardener 2012 Seed Exchange goodie bag!
The seed pots, especially the little toilet paper roll ones, were not staying moist enough through the day. I doubled my watering and placed little plastic covers on half of them (i.e. I reunited the strawberry carton lids with their bottoms that held the seed pots).
So here we are, March 16th. Day seventeen. I took some pictures. And guess what…
A TOMATO SPROUTED!!!
LIFE!!!
Our first seedling of 2012 is an Eva Purple Ball tomato!!!
The seeds either found motivation from the big-brother Florida tomato or they saw me sowing the back-up-plan starters yesterday that I set in our incredibly sunny bedroom windows.
