lavender

Forty plants! Sounds spectacular. Post pictures.

I'm with soaking them. I wasn't going to grow any but I found a pack of the African Sunset and they are soaking now. I'll share if I get more than a half dozen. There weren't that many seeds in the pack. They can take 21 days to germinate. The last time I grew them the seeds stayed in the console of the truck overwinter and they still germinated.

I like justjoe's mixture. Peat moss is naturally sterile and keeps down disease. It also holds water. Compost adds some nutrients and improves the texture of the soil. Vermiculite helps with drainage. The horse manure adds vital nitrogen. Both composted material and leaf mold are low in nitrogen. Peat moss has a very low pH and leaf mold is also fairly low so you will want to monitor the pH of the soil. Compost is more neutral.  Veggies like a slightly acid soil 7 is neutral so 5.5-7 covers most things. Lime will increase the pH if it is too low.

If you are starting from scratch you might as well use what is easy to work with and there is no reason that veggies won't grow in that mix. But..............sometimes there is magic in soil. Maybe just a couple of scoops to cover all your bases. You need to reach an ecological balance in your planting medium and some of the microorganisms in soil might help that.

You can use amended top soil from your yard or in bags. Add some peat moss to improve texture and maybe some sand to improve drainage. Veggies will grow in that as well but it will be harder to work with. There is no "correct" recipe. Some people use what they have and some go for scientific mixtures. All's good.

I only have like 30-40 seeds from two tomatoes, they are sooo meaty and sooo good. I'm so hoping that they do well for me. I've bought plants from various places over the last few years that were supposed to be San Marzano, but they weren't anything like what I got last year from a friend. Here's hoping for the best!

San Marzano is an open pollinated tomato so while you get a similar tomato each year they may not be exactly the same. The nice thing about open pollinated veggies is that they adapt to your growing conditions eventually. The bad part is that the fruit may not be identical each year. I think that I will start saving seed from my biggest and best San Marzano. Although to get straight San Marzano i should hand pollinate and cover the flowers so I don't get cross pollination. I grow different types so goodness knows what I'd get. I guess that is why I buy the seeds each year. 

good luck with the celery

Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes. My garden hasn't done particularly well the last few years. Too dry, too wet, not hot enough, too cold at the wrong time. Good thing we have a supermarket.

A few years ago I made two hanging basket of them and they were beautiful. They bloomed like crazy and hung down, a few tendrils climbed up. Since I'm trying to plant my own seeds this year, I'll still try a couple of baskets in addition to planting them in the ground to climb up a trellis. Here's hoping! I am soooo ready for spring.

 

I also have some San Martzano seeds that came from Italy last year.. I so hope that they work out too!

San Marzano has been my tomato of choice for canning for many years. In a good year they can get as big as 5 inches. For a few years a hybrid San Marzano was available and they were even better but I can't find them any more. It will be interesting to see how the seeds from Italy do here. I think that most open pollinated tomatos change after growing a few years in a different region.

They climbed up all of the plants last year rather than making the nice hanging vines that they made two years ago. That is why I've banished them from the pots downtown. They don't show up well when they are climbing all over the other plants. They should do well on a trellis. They say the vines will get up to 8 feet. I'd say the ones in the pots the year they cascaded were abut 3 feet but those pots don't get all the water they should.

If you have any trouble they can live in my greenhouse for awhile. I didn't plant any this year so the window ledge is open. I have another idea for those downtown pots. Last year the black-eyed-Susan vines grew up instead of down. The year before they vined beautifully. Mother Nature is quirky.

Starting to plant seeds today. I had to sterilize my medium as it came infested with fungus gnats. I have 500 celery seeds. Any takers? Germination rate is 60%.  Germination rates on the packets are awfully low this year.

Stick them in now and you will have flowering vines to put in your pots. They flower rather quickly. I put them in 4 inch pots and they were blooming by the end of May.

I could see hundreds or thousands of chickens making a smell. I used to live near a turkey farm, and it was horrendous. Small scale flocks can be almost odor free by composting. All lawn clippings and leaves go directly into my pens. Even with as many birds as I have, customers always comment on the lack of odor

No, no! The chickens don't smell or at least I have no idea either way.  Penn State fertilizes its planting areas, which are just about everywhere in State College, with manure which apparently isn't thoroughly composted. I guess it comes from cows because that is what it smells like. It's been awhile since I smelled it so maybe they have stopped using the stuff. 

Nah, it would be like an apple being male or female. A flower can be male or female with both on the same plant or each being produced by a seperate plant. Zucchini has both male and female flowers on the same plant but only the female flowers produce fruit after being pollinated. A flower can have both male and female organs so each flower then produces a fruit like a tomato. The seeds are the actual babies with the pepper or the tomato being the "cradle".

OK, gator guess I was the one who was spoofed.

Somebody has been spoofing you. Smack him good.

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/question-of-the-week/are-there-male-and-female-peppers

State College allows chickens. If they can write a ordinance allowing them then a rural area should be able to.

Penn State is an agricultural college. How could State College possibly ban chickens? You hit it at the right time of the year when the college spreads its manure the whole town smells like down on the farm.

Know someone who gives non-laying chickens to the Amish because she is too sentimental to kill or eat them. I'm sure they take good care of them until they die of natural causes.

I was just teasing. With the right mix of breeds you can save money on dye

I'm fairly sure that dye is less expensive than chicken feed. Not as heavy either. Met a fellow in the supermarket today who was telling me about his chickens. Said he has over 100 of them at one time and they lived on the farm all by themselves with no human companions.  He apparently had a couple of helpful uncles. His last words were, "Don't ever buy a farm." And if you are wondering why I was discussing chickens with a complete stranger in the supermarket that is the way it is around here.

Who dyes eggs?

Me. I make Easter baskets too complete with homemade chocolate Easter eggs. I'm weird that way.

We get free range eggs from friends and neighbors and the brown eggs that their hens produce are great for dying at Easter. They take the colors much better than the white ones from the grocery store.

key

Might give it a try if I can find seeds. Still haven't ordered. Must get to it soon. Keep buying off the rack when I find something interesting but for the staples I go catalogue.

I still have pepper seeds from a few years ago. I am sure they will grow. I will have to buy the others. I would like to try onions and celery from seed. I have had very good luck with celery I bought and planted. They always come up great. I was surprised to talk to people and they never heard of anyone growing celery in there garden. They are sensitive to heat and cold. I don't wrap the bottoms in rubber bands or use the bottom of milk cartons to get the white effect on them which basically does nothing except turn the bottom white and maybe a little more tender and less vitamins from i have read in the past.

I have always read that celery grows in "muck" soil whatever that is. Does it need a lot of water to grow? I don't know about onions but leek seeds have very low germination rates after the first year and they send you enormous numbers of them. They can take a long time to germinate. If you are going to start onions indoors you should probably get started real soon.

Here is a planting chart for zone 5 for veggies. I'm putting it in at the end because when I paste links in nothing registers after them. Check your seed packets and see if they say open pollinated (heirloom) or hybrid. The former are ok to save seed from. You might get some cross pollination if you grow more than one variety of the same thing close together. Hybrids won't come true but you will get something. It might be great or it might not. If you are just saying that you saved bought seed from last year plant away. Most seeds are viable for a couple of years at least. You are good to go on the black eyed Susan vines if those are the ones you got from me. They were from saved seed.

I've always had good luck with non-hybrid tomato seeds saved from the garden as they tend to be self pollinating. Peppers are self pollinating too. Ditto cucumbers. It isn't that they can't cross pollinate but they don't usually unless you intermingle them. Squash and pumpkins are a whole nother story. Don't save seed unless you only plant one variety. The second generation will produce weird stuff.

I like to get my flower seeds in by the middle of March ( indoors of course). That way they are nearer to blooming when I put them out. There are no hard and fast rules just guidelines. Much depends on the weather.

http://www.ufseeds.com/Zone-5-Planting-Calendar.html

Dogs don't much like slippery surfaces so gator might have something with the carpeting.

Plant peppermint and prepare to have it take over the world!

Immortality is the least problematic of the two. It always blooms and seems to be immune to iris borers. I almost lost Autumn Tryst to the borers a few years ago but it has come back. Time to divide it again. If I don't keep moving them the borers seem to invade.

I've got a yellow one that is so temperamental that it only set buds once in the fall, never in the spring, and the cold got the buds before it bloomed. Frustrating.