Toadfish Monastery

Some veggie oils will work, but essentially this is just mineral oil, so I'm a bit on the fence.  I'll probably open the bottle and use my eyes and nose to assess how pure it is...  I have a good nose for bad hydrocarbons. 

I have far too much of both the oil and the lime sulphur, so I'm considering selling the rest via the online classifieds or trading it for garden tools (or perhaps charging some co-workers a few bucks to spray their trees). I could probably buy the lime sulphur separate, but fell for the kit (it was $15). Need to pick up a sprayer before the trees start budding out!

Well, who can blame yer?

I sowed some lettuce and beet seeds in the garden, yesterday.

Still haven't seen any spinach sprouts, but that can take two weeks.

:UPDATE:

I got spinach sprouts! 

As a child I never would have imagined myself  so excited over spinach sprouts.

ye gods,  Opsa!

Lie down immediately until this strange affliction passes!   

B-but... think of the fresh salads! Mmmmmm...

I've got peppergrass (cress) sprouts up in the garden!  Two weeks until salading begins!

There are also a few tentative sprouts from the snow peas, radishes and onions (I think), and possibly kale.  I forgot exactly what I put in each bed, and scatter-block planted rather than sowing nice rows, so it's a little tough to tell.  It'll be interesting sorting out the weeds at first.

The rhubarb has started to throw open the covering over its new shoots, and should be heading skyward soon.

I recently made up a couple of planters for the windowsills of my bedroom (using wood, screws, and woven willow), and have planted a choice of herbs into them. I didn't do it from seed, as i'm lazy, but chose small plants to start off with. The thought of waking up to the smells of herbs on a warm summer's day is very appealing. I have:-

Parsley (the really curled leaf one)
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
Mint
Chives
Coriander
Oregano (pronounced O-ra-gar-no, not O-re-ga-no )

They've already started perking up from their replanting ordeal, and within the next couple of months I hope to start harvesting some. If they do really well, or just become triffids (this always happens to me, lol), I may take a few cuttings and plant some in the garden. This is the first time i've properly attempted to grow herbs, even though i've been thinking of doing so for a long time, and I look forward to tasting them very soon. I'll post a couple of pictures when I can be bothered to take them. If this goes according to plan, I may increase the varieties of herbs I am growing, and devote a decent part of the garden to them. They can be very pretty, especially when you get flowers.

While I like flowers, I can't be bothered to give them space that could be otherwise devoted to food (I'm in the process of ripping out a flower bed at the moment; hopefully I can find homes for most of the refugee perennials).  Herbs are the perfect compromise - they are tasty, produce flowers, and said flowers are usually very good at attracting and supporting parasitoids.  The smell of them also helps to confuse pest insects, so they do the rest of the garden good.

Hey Roland, let me know how that goes.

I was talking with a friend the other day who loves fresh tomatoes but has a shady yard. He lives in a townhouse that does get lots of sun in the upper windows and wondered if you could grow tomatoes in boxes. I thought he could, but they'd have to be deep enough to contain the root system. I guess I might have mentioned those tomato hanging bags, but I don't have any experience with them.

I now have lettuce and beet sprouts, plus some sweet peas sprouted in the garden.

I started some things in my mini greenhouse, too:

nasturtiums (edible flowers, Aggie!)
cabbage
sweet basil (pesto!)
Joseph's coat (Amaranthus seeds given to th'Opsalette)
portulaca
cosmos picatee
and larkspur

I like to grow fresh veg for the body and fresh flowers for the spirit.

Oooh, sweet peas...  I must admit that strongly scented flowers are equal to food plants in my books.  There appears to have been large masses of sweet peas here last year; some appeared to have overwintered (or probably sprouted from seed in the fall) and I expect that they've self-seeded enough to take care of themselves. There are also some massive arching rose bushes, hopefully of the wild sort; I love roses, if they are simple and fragrant.  I enjoy flowers, but can't be bothered to fuss over them, so luckily this yard is already teeming with all sorts.

I also planted nasturtiums, Opsa... climbing ones near the back porch.

I just checked my beds this morning, and I've got the following sprouts up and growing:

Kale
Cress
Radishes
Onions
Snow peas
Beets
Lettuce
(rehash of last post, to some degree, but now it's well and truly growing)

Good luck with the mini-greenhouses, Opsa... the quite simple row cover I installed seems to be working wonders, considering I planted less than two weeks ago and there's still snow in the forecast for week.


Perennial herbs which have shown their faces enough to eat:

Chives
Lovage
Sage
Catnip
Rue

I'm having fresh dandelions from the garden for breakfast, with a bit of lovage to season them.  They seem to love the row-houses, and since it's nearly impossible to kill the root, I just hacked them off slightly below the ground.

Opsa, i'll let everyone know how my herbs go, but already I can see that they're starting to face their leaves towards their respective windows. The coriander, which was little more than thin shoots with the occasional tiny leaf, has started to sprout leaves with shape and definition, so it shouldn't be too long before it gets going. In fact, they all appear to be doing well. The soil I used is a mixture of bagged (and sieved) top soil, bagged compost, and homemade compost, so there should be no worries with their feed requirements for quite a while. All I need to do is water them correctly.

I suppose i'm just impatient, but i'm quite excited with my new project, and already want to expand it into something much bigger, moving onto a much larger variety of herbs and spices.

That's an impressive list of veggies you all have growing there. Nasturtium leaves and flowers are nice, with a peppery taste to them, and go well in salads. For the tomatoes, Opsa, their container doesn't necessarily need to be very deep, just wide enough to accommodate the root system. If you have something known as a "grow bag" wherever you are, this should be a bag of compost around a metre long, 30cm wide, and several centimetres deep. You can make a tear in the top and just plant them straight in, so growing tomatoes on a windowsill should be easy. A pot that is around 6" (15cm) high should suffice, and as long as the pot is around 6-12" square (not cm²), your friend will be harvesting tomatoes before long.

I'm tempted to try upside-down tomatoes this year, for fun... has anyone tried this?

I'm also wondering whether it'd work with eggplant, peppers, etc. I suppose I'll grow tomatoes, but will definitely grow those.

This website claims that you can grow cucumbers, peppers, zucchini and herbs in the topsy-turvy bags.

Aggie, your new garden sounds fantastic.

Sounds like you've got the garden enthusiasm bug, Roland. I'll tell my friend about the wide windowbox for tomatoes.

Cucumbers?  Now that has some interesting possibilities. They'd grow faster hanging down than being forced up a trellis, perhaps.

Oh, I'm determined to grow some mouse melons this year...  I just need to get down to Kelowna to pick up some seeds.  I could have them mailed, but it's likely that myself or someone I know will be heading there soon enough. I bet those would make a good upside-down plant; the fruit aren't heavy enough to put strain on the plants, so the vines could hang down and then spread out over the ground.  We don't have curtains yet, so we're planning to grow climbing vines (probably scarlet runner beans) outside of the windows to shade the house and give some privacy. 

Ma said that the rat-tailed radish seeds I ordered have arrived, which I've wanted to try for a couple of years (you eat the seed pods, not the roots).

I'm starting to suspect that the cat has been whispering in my ear at night, although he may be confused about exactly what these items will taste like. 

Quote from: Opsa on April 04, 2012, 03:28:19 PM
Sounds like you've got the garden enthusiasm bug, Roland. I'll tell my friend about the wide windowbox for tomatoes.

I've always been enthusiastic about the outdoors, plants, and nature in general, but don't always have the time to devote to it, alas. For your friend, make sure he/she feeds the tomatoes regularly, as the feed will soon run out in a pot.

When I was a lot younger I lived down a country lane, at the end of which were a number of nurseries growing cucumbers, etc. A friend's father ran one of them, so I had the privilege of eating cucumbers straight off the vine on a number of occasions. They are so much better this fresh, than when they've sat in a supermarket's warehouse for several days.