The new indoor greenhouse has been preforming its job in a outstanding way, baby salad greens by the tray have been produced.

The pea shoot have been lovely as well, cooking up with that lovely green with hits of bitterness that works so well with a nice fatty meat to eat with it.. The Pawpaw seeds have had 8 sprout to date, and we are waiting yet on 9 more.. I am hoping that we will get at least a dozen or more to go into the big pots this year, everything tell me to raise them in pots for year 1 and not plant them out in the food forest till year two.. so i will just plan and prepare the plantings spots.

I have started some of the very long starts.. Leeks and Celery has been planted out in long rows in full trays, These typically take a good while to come up, in terms of Celery, on average 3 weeks but in my new indoor greenhouse, they were fully up by day 7.. I will admit that worries me a touch on my planned timing.. everything in the greenhouse is starting and growing faster then I normally get in older set up, which means I might have some issues with spacing in regards to transplanting and fingers crossed that I can bring trays in and out from the side house greenhouse to the living room at a later point once they get to a certain size,

I was finally able to get a reasonable amount of seed starting soil and potting soil but not as much as I need, it worry’s me a touch but I will keep on it, they say they will be getting more in, and I hope they are correct, for some things once it warms up enought I might have to really make a few compost piles really hot and turn them rapidly and then screen them for soil and back to the piles..   One of the good things is that I have been able to confirm that I can get another load or two of wood based/well turned cow deep back one year old compost blend, each load is right around 22 tons and I have asked that I am ideally looking for at least two loads at 44 tons of soil/compost.. Given its age, it’s not really compost per say, it is in fact soil age wise.. but it is lovely and its water holding ability with the wood is very nice..   Plus of course my own livestock compost piles etc. 

What a lovely root system

So this weekend I needed to trainsplant my 6 week old very early tomato starts, I started with 4 seeds, three came up, they were transplanted into their pots at their first set of true leaves and they were just thriving. but it was clear that they needed to be moved to their 2 gallon pots, what a lovely root system they have and they were certainly ready to be transplanted, I did the normal trick of planting these very deep indeed, they were taken very close to their last bottom set of leaves, which will allow that lovely thick (what a thick stem these guys have) to root out.

They did a bit of a droop of couse with the man handling but they have perked up and the little greenhouse has its own spider now, I saw him or her so far I have not seen much in the way of bugs but I have seen one little something but I put a asian beetle in (what most think of a ladybug out here) and it cleaned up nicely.. the spider came on its own but i will let it stay..

I can hardly believe these are 6 week plants and I will be starting my peppers this weekend, but will be holding a number of things a extra week or two off from starting as its clear they will start and push faster then I am used to, which means they must size up an I do have limited space and i can imagine tha that the shock of going from the indoor greenhouse to the 3 season outside greenhouse will for a number of things need hardening off even more then normal.. and I already do that alot, taking them from the living room to the greenhouse for the day hours and back to the house for evening..

I think its safe to say that the patio tomato’s will next go into their 5 gallon pots and that we will have flowers and eating tomato’s in spring while I normally only have 4 to 6 inches starts 🙂 A good thing really.

On the other hand, we have snow.. we have added another 12 inches plus since my last post and we are expecting another foot easily this week yet.. the big pups are having much fun, but if we want to goin the fields you need snow shoes, ski’s or a skidoo.. Only plowed or packed trails are walkable at this time. We are not lacking snow cover this year..

Hope you are doing well?