Garden Update

The sunchokes I ordered online and planted a few posts ago didn’t seem to be viable. I pulled them out and they were soggy. I bought some new ones from a local source. This time I actually got the tubers I was expecting instead of the plant crowns.

The plan was to buy 1lb for $8. When I got to the house to buy them, the looked at my bucket and offered me 2lbs for $10. Deal! We had a nice time chatting about plants and permaculture too. I was very jealous of his well developed yard and garden. He had over 25 fruit trees and many garden beds.

One of the sunchokes planted into my new raised beds.

Since it has slowly been getting warmer, I’ve been bringing some of my house plants and seedling outside to toughen them up and get them ready to live outside during the summer. In the photo above from the right,  have the pineapple plant I started a while back. In the middle is my banana tree which badly needs to be repotted, and my three-way citrus tree on the left which also needs to be replanted. It had two small flower blooms on it right now. I hope a friendly bee stops by and pollinates it.

These are the sedums I started late last fall from cuttings. They also need to be repotted and then planted somewhere in the yard. I’m excited they are so easy to propagate.

With Laura’s help, I started about 60 more soil blocks. About half the ones I previously started failed. I think they failed because I was being overly miserly putting one seed into each one. The germination rates seemed low for some seeds. The second is some neglect with watering while we were out of town. I will try harder with this new bunch. We put at least two seeds in each block this time.

A successful soil block with a tiny strawberry seedling.

A bigger strawberry seedling I started very late last fall in a yogurt container as an experiment. It worked! Time to get it outside to flourish.

Another strawberry propagation experiment above which went very well. They are even blooming and trying to grow berries. I should get it into the ground to really get growing.

How is your garden coming along? Successes? Failures?