Plants are magic!

Cauliflower

Copia Bi-Color tomato from seeds saved by Bean Mountain Farms

Red and Green Cabbage and Tomato

Basil from seed swap

Beginnings of raised beds - 4'X25' with 2' paths

Despite all my kvetching, the seedlings are doing great and the garden is coming along. Today I will be repotting tomatoes one last time so they can get REALLY BIG before we put them out. The weather is very cool, so we will probably wait a while (until nights stay about 60) to put out the heat-loving crops - tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melon, etc. However, that is good news for the cool-loving plants that we planted a bit late - spinach, kale, pac choi, mesclun, beets, carrots, mache and claytonia. They are all up, and most have gotten their first set of true leaves.

All in all, starting seeds has been a great experience this year. My intention is to become as self-sufficient as possible, and saving seeds and starting plants from seeds are keys to that goal. If I can get to the point of growing all my own seeds and never buying seedlings, my reliance on external inputs will be reduced. The electricity for the grow lights is an external input that cannot be eliminated immediately, but hopefully in a few years we can look into alternative sources of energy.

Today I will be adding epsom salts to the garden beds to provide magnesium, and then we have to wait 2 weeks to plant so it doesn't burn the plants. I will also add lime for calcium, and borax for boron.

Isn't it fascinating that the minerals behave similarly in the soil to the way they behave in our bodies?

Calcium, magnesium and boron work synergistically and must be in balance in the body, and the same holds true in the soil. Feeding the soil so the plants feed us seems like a much bigger-picture approach to health than taking chemical or rock forms of vitamins and minerals. Plants CAN eat rocks (unlike people, although some people take calcium supplements made from rocks), so I will employ the plants to do the work for me. When I worked as an account executive (fancy term for sales rep) for New Chapter, I told this story all the time to my customers who were all medical professionals (and to friends, family, neighbors, and anyone who seemed at least vaguely interested). It is the same reason that New Chapter make their calcium supplements from seaweed containing lots of trace minerals biotransformed by nature, and the same reason the seaweed meal nourishes Audrey Hacker's goats so beautifully, and the same reason seaweed meal is good to feed to plants. Seaweed in the form of kelp tablets is even being used to provide an organic form of iodine to help prevent uptake of radioactive iodine into the thyroid gland in the fallout of the Japan nuclear reactor meltdown.

PLANTS DO MAGIC!

http://www.newchapter.com/bone-health

http://herbalsimplicity.com/aboutus.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytonia_perfoliata

http://www.localharvest.org/healthstock-of-tyree-mountain-M28161

Seedlings

.Friday April 8^th

Planted cold weather crops (a little late but it is still cool here – well, typical drastic variations in weather – hot one day then cold the next):

Spinach (4 varieties)

Redbor kale

Mesclun

Claytonia - AKA miner’s lettuce – a succulent, delicious wild edible that I was introduced to and devoured in salads when I was at the California School of Herbal Studies

Mâché

Danvers Half-long and kaleidoscope color mix carrots

More peas where peas didn't germinate interplanted with Gilfeather turnips - a delicacy which originated in Wardsboro VT where our daughter was born (at home in a big red farmhouse). Here is a description of them from Slow Food USA:

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/ark_product_detail/gilfeather_turnip/

And a story about the Gilfeather Festival:

http://www.theheartofnewengland.com/travel/vt/turnip-festival.html

Monday 4/11 The Gaia herbs echinacea that I striated in the freezer in a plastic bag with peat moss germinated!

Planted 40 in small peat pots covered with a thin layer of soil. Growing echinacea feels like the fulfillment of many years of planning and dreaming. By growing our medicine I will be creating a level of self-sufficiency for my family’s health that is very liberating and empowering. The plants take several years to mature so it is also another long-term commitment to the land and the homestead, like the fruit trees. I am not generally a patient person but this I can do!

Tuesday April 12 transplanted peppers (Yolo Wonder), tomatoes (Rutgers, Red Cherry, Copia Bicolor and Break o’Day). Used a variation on Calvin Bey’s tomato starting mix – limestone, compost, diatomaceous earth, Nitron’s Nature meal for plants and A-23 enzyme preparation to help nutrients in compost and soil break down and be released.

Mold on outside of peat pots from lack of air flow. Removed and discarded peat pots. Apparently this is normal/common, but I found dissenting opinions on whether or not it is detrimental to the plants so I erred on the side of caution.

Transplanted cabbage (Red Acre and Late Flat Dutch) and the Lemon-lime basil that Rose picked out. Thinned the basil and had a tiny delicious treat!

I transplanted the Red Acre cabbage into larger pots, but there were extras left over so I decided as an experiment to plant them in a bed that has excess phosphorous and potassium and see how they do (and if the chickens eat them!) I’ll keep you posted on the results.

More photos and updates soon...