Entries categorized as ‘Container Gardening’
Spring is here. The sun is shining. It’s 55 degrees outside.
Radishes and peppercress have been planted…and the bugs have emerged.
The thyme that had nearly made it through its indoor winter has been ravaged by aphids. A trip to the basement revealed the lone bag of organic soil crawling with what appear to be fungus gnats. The thyme has been rinsed and then doused with soapy water. Fingers have been crossed.
Unable to toss away an entire bag of soil, it’s time to give sterilizing a shot. Because it’s very, very rarely used, the microwave lives conveniently in the basement, just above the infested soil. Perfect. A quick visit to the interweb reveled that the trick is to heat the soil to 150-190 degrees (anything over 200 degrees causes toxicity in the soil).
Armed with a kitchen scale, one quart measuring cup, and an instant read thermometer (don’t tell the husband/cook), POD discovered that 1:30 to 1:45 in the ancient, tiny microwave heated a one-pound bag of soil to the desired creepy-crawly killing temperature.
Here’s the question, though: should the seeds that were just started be ditched and re-seeded in sterilized soil?
Categories: Container Gardening
Tagged: aphids, fungus gnats, growing radishes, microwaving soil, peppercress, radishes, soil sterilization, sterilizing soil
Each year, POD tends to jump the gun and ends up planting too early. Determined to avoid false starts, last frost dates for South Philadelphia have been carefully compiled and averaged and a target plants-on-deck date has been established.
What does all that mean? Basically, Philadelphia’s average last frost date ranges between April 14 and May 15. After consulting the Magic 8 Ball, POD’s declaring April 20, 2010 this year’s last frost and hopes to move things on deck between April 24 and May 1.
Why is this important? Well, it’s time to start (some of) your seedlings. In POD’s case, basil, oregano, tomato, and pepper seeds — all of which should be started 6-8 weeks before the last frost — are hitting the dirt.
Categories: Container Gardening · Tomatoes
Tagged: Growing herbs from seed, growing vegetables from seed, last frost date, Philadelphia, Starting Seeds Indoors
And checking it twice. It’s hard to believe as this week’s blizzard blows (please, read that as you will) but there were reasons for optimism last weekend. The sun was shining and the 40-degree temps were rapidly melting the blackened snow heaps still dotting Philly’s streets. 
After reviewing a few previous posts, POD hunkered down with with a stack of seed catalogs and began dreaming. To save on shipping cost and distance, only two purveyors made this year’s cut. The winners were Cook’s Garden (Warminster, PA) and Happy Cat Organics (Elverson, PA). As wonderful as Territorial Seed Company and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds are, one is located in Oregon and the other in California and Missouri. Although D. Landreth (New Freedom, PA) had the coolest catalog, they didn’t offer the seaweed/fish fertilizer I vowed to try on this year’s garden.
Of course, there are enough seeds here for a multi-acre garden, but we won’t think about that.
Categories: Container Gardening
Tagged: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Cook's Garden, D. Landreth, growing vegetables from seeds, Happy Cat Organics, seeds, starting seeds, Territorial Seed Company
Fortunately, my friends share their spoils.
POD snagged a few Kiwano melon seeds from this bounty — how could you turn down something described as follows:
“Very unusual fruit with spiny ‘horns.’ The green-yellow skin turns a bright deep orange when ready to harvest and the pulp resembles lime-green Jell-O.”
Oh yeah.
Categories: Container Gardening · Melons & Cucumbers
Tagged: African horned cucumber melon, Kiwano, melon seeds
Mighty Twist
A grateful neighbor gave the shoveling husband a pineapple. So, while the husband shovels, the wife plays with pineapple.
Twenty-seven inches of snow equals one house-bound, stir-crazy gardener. And a lot of shoveling.
Thanks to Don’t Throw It, Grow It, an irresistible book picked up in Chicago this past summer, Plants On Deck has a sunny sill full of avocado experiments.
Double Checking
Now joining the experimental ranks is a scalped pineapple. If all goes well, we may see a bloom in three years…mark your calendars.
1) Grasp the pineapple firmly with one hand and give the greens a mighty twist with the other hand.
2) Carefully peel the lower leaves off. After an inch or so, you’ll begin to see nubs along the horizontal bands. These nubs will, one hopes, eventually become the roots of your new pineapple plant.
Future Roots
5) Stick the peeled scalp into a jar of water.
6) Add a teaspoon of activated charcoal to the water. Strangely there was no activated charcoal lounging around the house, so the dried contents of a well-used Brita filter will have to do the trick.
We Shall See
6) The nubs should swell in a few days. When the roots are about four inches long, transplant the pineapple into a 6″ pot. Obviously, pineapples like sun. Water only when the soil appears completely dry.
7) Are we expecting fresh pineapple? Nah, but if this sucker lives for three years, we’ll see if we can’t force a bloom. Check back in a few years for flowering tips including ethylene gas. Fun stuff!
Categories: Container Gardening
Tagged: Bromeliaceae, Growing Pineapples, Pineapple, Rooting Pineapples in Water
It’s January in Philly. An extra-cold January, to boot. What’s a gardener to do?
Ideally, she would get to work all those non-gardening tasks that are neatly listed before her. But nooooo, avocado pits prove themselves to be far more fascinating than writing a presentation on green technical communication. Don’t ask.
avocado tree to be
Apparently, it’s fairly easy to grow your own avocado tree.
1) Roast a chicken. Use the leftover chicken to make a cobb salad. Save the avocado pits.
2) Rinse the pits under cool water.
3) Shove three toothpicks or bamboo skewers into the midsection of the pit. (You’ll want to get them about a 1/2 inch or so into the pit. Exercise caution so as not to find yourself with skewers lodged in your palm.)
4) This will allow you to suspend the pit in a glass of water. The flat side of the pit should be in the water and the pointy side should be facing straight up.
5) Keep the water level in the glass high enough to cover the bottom part of the pit. You’ll have to check in twice a week or so. Place the glass in a sunny windowsill. In three to six weeks the top of the pit will crack and a sprout will appear, as if by magic. Roots will begin to grow from the base of the pit. (Perhaps a clear glass would have been a better choice.)
6) You’ll need to train the tree to encourage root growth and shrub-like growth, rather than tree-like growth. So, when your sprout is five or six inches tall, pinch off the top set of leaves. A new set of leaves should sprout in a couple of weeks.
7) After the new set of leaves have grown, you should have a decent set of roots on your avocado. Plant your pitlings in a large pot 10-12″. Place the pitlings in the soil — you’ll want to have the upper half of the pit above the soil line. Add a little more soil if necessary, pressing down to remove major air pockets.
8 Water slowly, gently and generously. Keep the soil moist.
9) Evidently, these suckers can grow up to 20-40′, so it’s important to pinch leaves off regularly to encourage a bushy plant. So, every six inches or so, lop off the newest sets of leaves. It’s a good idea to plant more than one pitling to encourage pollination.
10) Will you ever harvest an avocado? Maybe…after three or four years or so. In the meantime, though, it makes for excellent procrastination material and will, one hopes, replace the anemic bamboo growing in the office sill.
Categories: Container Gardening
Tagged: avocado pits, avocado seedling, growing avocado from pit, growing avocado tree
Parsnip Harvest
Let’s hear it for 2009.
Exactly 135 days after these javelin parsnips (a hybrid known for its slender root, hardiness, and resistance to canker) were planted, they were harvested.
Sure, just a couple of days ago POD was pretty certain they’d kicked it. After all, it seemed as though it rained almost non-stop between mid-August and late-December, this was one of the chillier Philly falls in recent memory, temperatures well below freezing and last week’s two feet of snow couldn’t have helped matters, and by November/December, the little blue deck sees all of an hour of direct sunshine each day (when the sun shines). Disaster, right?
But then it rained for two days, the soil thawed, and Sunday dawned bright and sunny.
Rare and precious sunshine means puttering around outside. Outside means the little blue deck. While cleaning up, transporting pots into the basement, and basically closing up shop, I decided to dig into the parsnip pots. And guess what? Underneath the freeze-dried and dead, dead leaves were creamy white parsnips.
All told, the perimeters of three five-gallon buckets produced just over a 1/2 pound of parsnips. Not bad for the first foray into parsnip planting. Definitely a do-again for next year. After all, what could be more satisfying than roasting up freshly picked vegetables in December?
Categories: Container Gardening
Tagged: Container Gardening, growing parsnips in containers, parsnips, winter gardening
With the recent passing of the Winter Solstice (a sure sign of spring if ever there was one), POD can officially begin looking forward to brighter days. It certainly helps when Dan the Mailman drops of a big “thunking” pile of seed catalogs through the mail slot.
This should help soothe the wind-chapped cheeks and dry-aged hands and help Plants on Deck forget (or at least ignore) the two feet of dirty snow melting away on the South Philly streets. And the Michigan-like chill that slaughtered any hopes of parsnips and Brussels sprouts.
Rays of Hope
Categories: Container Gardening
Unable to toss away an entire bag of soil, it’s time to give sterilizing a shot. Because it’s very, very rarely used, the microwave lives conveniently in the basement, just above the infested soil. Perfect. A quick visit to the interweb reveled that the trick is to heat the soil to 150-190 degrees (anything over 200 degrees causes toxicity in the soil).
