• Tag Archives seeds

  • Stumbling

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                             Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

    Hmmm.  The ablative absolute and the passive periphrastic did not get put straight into my brain.  I stumbled through my lesson today, learning by mistake, a common method for me.  Still, I added a few more verses of Ovid to my translated column, down to 52.  Greg is a patient guy, a good teacher.  I’m lucky to have found him.  He played the music at the Minnetonka UU when I preached out there two Labor Days ago.  We got to talking and he mentioned his Latin and Greek tutoring.  I’d never had a tutor, one on one teaching and I love it.

    A nap.  Then a lot of organization stuff, some for the Docent Discussion group I facilitate, some for the Sierra Club’s legislative committee, some for next year’s garden.

    On that last point I ordered leeks, kale, chard, cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, rosemary, spinach, lettuce and a Seed Saver’s Exchange calendar.  They’re on the docket now because cranking up the hydroponics is a before the end of the year chore and I need to have seeds to start.

    Most I’ll wait a bit on, but chard, lettuce, cilantro and rosemary I’ll start right away and grow them out in the hydroponic tubs for winter eating.  Then, around the end of February I’ll get other seeds started, some earlier, some later, getting ready for the start of the growing season.  Right now I’m happy it’s all under snow and out of reach, but come March, April I’ll be eager, looking forward to a new growing season.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Garden Humanities Hydroponics 📎and tagged

  • Beesy Morning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                         Awakening Moon

    Checked on the bees today.  They needed syrup so I put in two pitchers full.  They also needed another pollen patty. The colony looks healthy.  Lots of bees hard at work.  No stings.  I have a few things to check on in terms of what I need to do now.

    Got all the mechanical detritus out of the soon to be honey house.  Next is a good sweeping and a washing, then organizing a table and the rest of the equipment.

    (honey bee head under an electron microscope)

    General clean up.  Getting ready for spring, which has sprung on us with some surprise.  Bought the seeds for early stuff and I’ll plant the onions tomorrow morning after I plan the rest of the vegetable garden.

    We need rain.  If it fits in your faith tradition, please do a rain dance for us up here in Andover.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Garden permaculture 📎and tagged

  • A Green Miracle

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring              Waning Seed Moon

    The bee hives have a new coat of white sealer, a soothing color for them.  The raised bed on which I painted them has some tulips pushing up and the bed across from it have the garlic.  They’ve begun to wake up in force now so we’ll have the pleasure of garlic grown this year from garlic we grew last year.

    We had chard for lunch today.  I thought about it a moment.  I took one chard seed and put it in a small rockwool cube late last fall or early winter.  It got water and light from the fluorescent bulb until it sprouted.  After the first tiny roots began to appear outside the confines of the small cube, it went into the clay growing medium, small balls of clay that absorb nutrient solution.

    The seedling grew in the nutrient solution for several weeks as the roots spread out.  The nutrient solution comes in a bottle, concentrated and goes 3 tablespoons to two gallons of water.  What those roots and the chard plant leaves have to work with then is that nutrient solution and the light from a full spectrum second sun that glows above the plastic beds in which the liquid circulates.

    The wonder in this is the transformation of that small seed, not bigger than the head of a pin, into food with only the inputs of light and some concentrated chemicals diluted in water.  I’m not sure why  you need water into wine when you can turn water into food, better for you anyhow.

    Over the next month the outside work begins to grow and take up more time.  In our raised beds and the orchard this same miracle happens, changed only by the addition of soil.  Seeds into food.  Which in turn create more seeds so you can grow more food.  A green miracle.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Cooking Faith and Spirituality Garden Hydroponics 📎and tagged

  • Under the Lights

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring            Waning Moon of Winds

    The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. – Walt Whitman

    Business meeting and plants this morning.  The business meeting went just fine, our financial management continues to work for us and not against us.  Wish I could say the same for the financial markets.  Sigh.  Decided to check.  Wish granted: Dow Leaps 497 Points on Treasury Plan.  Yeah.

    My seedlings, grown over the last couple of weeks, sprouted roots which is the time to move them to their next medium, in this case soil in peat and coconut fiber pots with the exception of four chard and one mustard green that I put in lava rock and in the hydroponics.  The broccoli, egg plants, onions, leeks, mustard and collard greens, cauliflower and huckelberry now have soil around their sprouting medium.  They are all under the lights still.   Moving to larger size containers strained my space, though with some jiggering I got them all in new places and still under the lights.

    Some of them have to move out soon to make way for the seedlings that need to get started on April 1st and April 15th.  Just when they were getting comfortable.  Hmmm.  I may have problems here.  Seems onions started by seed should not go outside until May.  This will definitely cramp the April batch of plants.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work Health Hydroponics permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Traveling By Television

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -6  steep fall 30.26  E1  windchill -8  Winter

    Waning Wolf Moon

    Boy do I feel good.  I recalled that some legislative meetings are webcast, broadcast, or taped.  Turns out the one I need to cover will be on Channel 17 at 3pm or I can watch it live on the web.  God, you gotta love technology.  Normally, I’d head into the capitol anyhow just to get the feel of the place, but the hassle of really cold weather and a long drive, capped with a return trip in rush hour makes the couch a much more sensible option.

    I finished the seed database today for all the new seeds.  Tomorrow I’ll enter our left over seeds from last year.  It shows the work ahead in getting transplants ready.  Some plants like the mustard greens and huckleberries will go under the lights in the middle of February.  In two week intervals until May 1st, I’ll be starting different plants inside.

    The weather today is what we usually get in the third week of January, really cold.  Paul Douglas, local weather guy, says this air was over Siberia two weeks ago.  And it’s still this cold?  Geez.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Hydroponics permaculture Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Winter Happy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    7  rises 29.48  WNW2  wchill 5  Winter light snow

    Waxing Gibbous Wolf Moon

    The seeds for the 2009 vegetable garden sit on my desk beside me in piles according to growth habit:  viny, climbing, bushy, root or leafy.  When I get the chance, they’ll go in my homemade database with pertinent data and places to record germination, first bloom, first fruit and eventual production.  I’ve gardened for years, but never taken this much care.  Why now?  Not sure.

    Kate’s off to see the physiatrist in Elk River.  I hope he suggests some things that help her. She’s going to stop by Cottage Quilts on the way home.

    I’m off to the cities this morning to count ballots for the ex-com and see Michelle.  Michelle liked my first draft of the legislative updates, so it will go out Sunday evening.   Many more to follow.

    A light snow this morning, enough to make the outdoors beautiful and wintry.  This kind of winter makes me happy.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden Great Work Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • The Hawthorne Giant Shakes His Shaggy Head

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    64  bar steady 29.81 2mph S dewpoint 50 Spring

                 Full Moon of Growing

    It’s that time of year again.  The time, that is, when I have to pull the shades of my east facing computer room windows.  Otherwise, it heats up in here.  Pretty fast.

    If we’d get some rain to get with this warmth, we’d have plenty of blooms.  I have daffodils and tulips getting close.  Went out yesterday and wandered through our woods and garden.  While looking at one of the large beds shifted from flowers to vegetables, a lily question came up.  Namely, where did I plant all the lilies I had in that bed?  I’ll be damned if I can recall.  They’ll come up as a surprise. 

    The Hawthorne giant must have shaken his shaggy head and stomped off to the Arctic circle.  Hope he finds cool weather when he gets there.

    The rock wool cubes in which I planted the lettuce dried out last night, at least in the smaller of the hydroponic setups.  I don’t know why.  The plants themselves don’t seem affected, so I conjecture that their root system now reaches down into the nutrient solution.  Learning while we go. 

    The truck needs an oil change and I need to read Stefan’s poems and finish the book on Mastery that Tom Crane sent.  So, I’m off.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden General 📎and tagged

  • Rock Wool Seed Blankies

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    36  bar steep fall 29.84 1mph SSE  Dewpoint 26  Spring

                    Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    Ah.  Hands back in the soil, thinking and doing with plants.  We bought two stems of yellow Plumeria when we were in Hawai’i and I potted them today.  Just the act of finding a pot, putting in some potting soil and adding water immersed my soul deep in the earth. 

    The hydroponics setup is underway, too.  Seeds don’t grow well in hydroponic growing mediums, so there’s a prior step that involves starting seedlings in small rock wool blankies, then transplanting them, blankie and all, into the large pebble-sized lava rock medium.  

    A seedling needs a couple of critical tools to grow inside.  The first is a warming coil to make sure the temperature underneath the seed pack does not get below 60 degrees or so.  We have those, four of them.  The second is a grow light.  We have those, too. Two of them. 

    Tomorrow lettuce seeds will go into the rock wool seed blankies and some herbs as well.  These are all heritage seeds Kate and I purchased at the Seed Saver’s Exchange outside Decorah, Iowa.  Potting soil will go in some small cubes made of molded peat moss.  In them will go a few heritage tomato seeds and anything else we need to have a jumpstart on for the garden. 

    The lettuce and herbs will make the transfer into the hydroponics.  We’ll learn how to work with the temps, timing of the nutrient solution flows, the nutrient solutions themselves while growing an easy crop.  The tomato seedlings and the other seedlings will get planted in the raised beds we’ve turned over from flowers to vegetables.

    There are still a few more tools we need like an electrical conductance meter, a turkey baster and an aquarium heater or two.  I’ll pick those up on Friday when I go in to do two Weber tours.

    This manual labor balances the intellectual work I do and I’m glad to be back at it.  From now until mid-October the garden and our land will take up more and more of my time and happily so.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work Our Land and Home 📎and tagged