Monday, February 23, 2015

Preparing For Spring....

It's that time of the year to start planning for spring. I ordered seeds and plants/tubers earlier this month. I have even started some seeds, onions to be exact. I order some rose bush seeds more for fun to see how they turn out. I got a red, purple, white, and yellow and their are in my fridge stratifying for about 2 months. I got some lemon grass and those have rooted about time to transplant them into pots.
Onion Seedlings

I also decided I should see how well my sweet potato and ginger roots took storage. I started those too. It seems some of my ginger roots did get frosted and have just rotted. The doors in the shop have shifted and one got left open a crack. I have enough time to a get few ginger roots from the store to start. I have several more reasons besides cooking to grow ginger. I have been making homemade root beer and ginger ale/beer, which is not really a beer. It does have kick though. I will talk more about that on my food/herb blog. :)

Ginger Root
 My sweet potatoes did alright and I have a few with sprouts on them now.I have Beauregard tubers from Johhny's Selected Seeds I planted last year. I did order two different varieties for planting this spring and will get those starts in May some time. I will receive those from Urban Farmer Seeds. I am going to go through this process later in March and compare start times to finished tubers, etc.
Sweet Potato Starts

On the order of gardening stuff. I bought some red wigglers for my worm bin. It has been vacant for several years when I very little success with my last bunch of wigglers. I got better suggestions this time and I have some happy worms busily working on our scraps from fruits, veggies, etc.
Worm Bin

Happy Working Worms

The weather has been wacky as usual, but warmer on the average. The last 2 days we had got around 20 below. Brrr.... Still not warm enough to work on the tractor, which is still giving me issues. I am back to looking at the carburetor, when warmer weather shows up. In the mean time, 'Olive' has been doing just fine with the feeding the cows. :) We are slower and can only move one bale at a time. It is something we can deal with.

I have been doing a little family ancestry searching. Jim order a month's basic subscription to ancestry.com. I have been mixing it up so to speak to pass the winter blues. Sewing, cooking, baking, fermenting, starting seeds and tubers, chores, etc. Keeps me busy. :)

Happy Farming!

Liana