Seeds vs. Sets

I planted onion seeds for two varieties last autumn -- long red Florence and yellow of Parma. Rather than scattering seeds, I used my spacing template to plant 9 per square foot because the year before I tried to plant them close and found that it was too difficult to replant them later in the spring as sets. The Florence didn't come up as well this year as the Parma did. I attribute this primarily to voles or some other pest in the box where the Florence were planted.

But the bigger immediate question is how the seeds have fared so far when compared to sets. Because the Florence were spotty, I bought sets and planted them in the same raised bed. It allows me to make a direct comparison. The photo below compares the best Florence with 2 onions typical of those planted as sets. Not all the Florence are this big, but most are clearly larger than the onions planted from sets.


The Parma that were planted from seeds grew much more regularly and, overall, seem to be doing great. They are all tall and have developed nice thick stalks. It might be hard to make a direct comparison between the photos, but the Parma are uniformly as large as the Florence I captured above.


The conclusion is that I like seeds, at least so far. I have to figure out the pest problem and will move the bed where I plant next year if I can't kill the pests off.

Orchard Report

I took a quick trip through the orchard to see how things were developing. I have two plum trees. I found fruit on one, the Methley, but not the other.


All three pear trees had fruit that was set.


I have six peach trees. Some of the fruit was set. This image was from the tree that was furthest along. Others had very small fruit, just starting to show. There were two trees on which I didn't see any fruit.


One of the peach trees had very weak leaf development and no fruit that I could see.


The apples all had fruit that had set. I will need to thin these out quite a bit. I have yet to get really good apples off any of the trees. One died last year.



Also, not pictured, both the apricots died, but the root sent up new wood. I kept one sapling alive on each tree and cut off the rest last year. I don't think I actually have an apricot tree anymore, just whatever the root stock sent up. If I knew about grafting and where I could get apricot branches, I will address this for both trees.

The persimmon is alive and growing leaves. It's an odd tree, but seems to be coming on strong this year. I'm hoping it will find a central branch to make the trunk. Right now, the strongest branch juts off to one side.

What I don't know how to do is treat the trees for the problems they will all face. It is not crucial that I learn immediately, but eventually I need to learn how to take care of the orchard.

Winter Weeds

There are two kinds of weeds that seem to be very prolific in the garden starting in the fall and growing through the winter. They obviously drop seeds by the hundreds (because I don't get rid of them in time). There is a third and fourth type (not pictured) that I deal with as well, although the latter two don't grow quite as profusely. I ought to know the names of these, but I don't yet. (My purpose in blogging about them is not to complain about the weeds; they only grow because I let them. I need to learn a little so I can be better prepared.)


I've search images on google. The closest I came was for the plants with the purple tips. They may be purple dead nettles (Lamium purpureum).

I am still searching for the other plant in the picture.

New Hearts

Given my poor judgment about transplanting the Hungarian Heart tomato seedlings, I thought I would try again. It would be a shame for me to lose out on learning about this new (to me) variety altogether. So I replanted. I ran out of the peat pots I used the first time. I bought new pots at Tractor supply. The new ones were a bit bigger than the ones I originally used, 3 inch Jiffy Pots that came 22 to a pack.

I planted 16 seeds. I put them in a bit deeper this time around because I noticed that especially for the Hungarian Hearts, the seed cover tended to stay on the first leaves. I figured thet planting deeper would allow the soil to help rip the seed cover off. All came up. Only 3 had seed covers still attached and they came off easily.


I've also tried something else with this batch. I purposely didn't fill the pots to the brim with planting mix when I started the seeds. As the seedlings grow, I will back fill the pots with soil until it reaches the top, allowing the seedlings to start establishing side roots earlier and giving the stalk a bit more support throughout the early phases. (I've noticed for instance that watering even at this stage knocks over some of the stems.) I've only just started this process. I packed a little planting mix around 5 of the plants this morning, adding only about 3/8 inch of soil to the pots.


Then I went out to the garden to clean out weeds and, to my surprise, I still had one Hungarian Heart alive in the bed. I am hoping this one will continue to do well. I will mark it as having hardy character and maybe take some seeds from it if it also does well as a producer.

Queen Cells

Seven days ago I put two frames in the hive that originated from Doug Shaw's strongest hive. One was a super, one was a brood frame. I was pretty sure one of them had eggs or very young larvae. We went back in today, based on Rob Jacobs' advice to see if queen cells had been started. We found one on each frame.

The photos that follow are from the super frame. The queen cell is on the bottom of the frame, just like a swarm cell would be. I'm not sure exactly how the egg or larva got into that position, but the bees seem to like it there. There was one bee that seemed to be especially engaged with the cell. It took a little patience to wait until this nurse bee was through to get the shot of the open cell. This is good news!




The second frame, the brood frame also had a queen cell. This cell was more in the spot you would expect of an emergency or supersedure queen cell. I wasn't quite as impressed with nurse bees, but then caring for the queen cell may be sporadic or I may just have not seen it, I didn't want to be in the hive all that long.



The bees seemed very happy. There was plenty of pollen and honey. I am not feeding because they are close to a nectar and pollen source and there is no need for them to draw new comb.

I have two possible queen cells! May the best one win!

Dead Hearts

I believe in reporting failure. The Hungarian Hearts I planted are dead. Clearly too soon. It didn't get down to freezing, but they clearly didn't like the 40s and 50s F.

I planted 16 new seeds. I probably have a month before things should really be planted. I may just plant them a little late.

Hungarian Hearts

The Hungarian Hearts were the tomato variety that suvived poor water the best. The problem I have seen with them over the past several weeks is an increasing loss of vatality in the leaf color. They are turning quite yellow. In the past, I've found the best remedy is to just get them into the ground and let them grow under normal garden conditions. It is a bit early in the season; the official last frost date isn't for a week or so. I checked the weather channel and they projected no frost for the next 10 days. Besides, I have a cover that I can stick over the top if things look really bad.

I tagged the ones I thought were most ready to go in the ground and put my McDonalds' straws on them for cut worm collars.


The last several years, I have put 18 plants in a bed. This year I am putting 16 plants in a bed. For one thing, I have expanded to three beds dedicated to tomatoes this year, so I will have space for 48 tomato plants instead of 36. This way, I can also use the cold frame conduit to help support the cages and each bed has 5 tubes -- 1 at each end to support 2 plants each and 3 in the middle that will support 4 plants each.

I turned the cages upside down to get my spacing.


I expect rain this afternoon, so I didn't water. We had a good storm last night and the soil was really good and moist.

The one good thing about the spindly seedlings was that I could bury them pretty deep. I understand that the little hairs will turn into roots, so I hope that part works out. I did have an accident with one plant. It's leaves broke off before I could get it into the ground. But, I started with 24 plants and had an extra. (I plan to give all the rest away to friends.)


One thing I do want to comment on, just for the record, is that a whole lot of weeds had grown up in the bed over the winter. This is a problem with several of the beds. The onions have already been weeded. There are 3 beds that I need to get to.