Plant Check Up Pictures

Spinach Lettuce Zucchini Tomato

Checking some things off the to do list

My plants seem to be doing okay and are enjoying the sun. I placed a bunch of compost round each little mound where there are seedlings. I am a little worried about the amount of soil there is for the plants as they grow. I might buy some more soil and when the seedlings are strong enough i may pull the, up and lay for topsoil to ensure they have enough room to grow. Also the compost seems to be coming along well and I plan to add some of the old compost to the new compost to help it along.

Plants

It's such a beautiful day I knew I had to get out and do some work. I planted my tomato seedlings and my pepper seedlings. My lettuce and spinach seem to be doing really well and are very happy with the weather. I want to plant some seeds straight in the soil to see how the two differ and see if having seedlings in the house changes how the two plants grow.
My compost is going well. I have three different houses contributing food scraps and some brush. I am excited to get it going, it looks like it is going to turn out really well.

Planting!

Although they are hard to see I have planted my spinach and my lettuce plants. I will post another picture when there is better lighting and when I have more plants in! I plan on getting them all in tomorrow. I think it will be warm enough for the rest of the plants to go in. Everything around seems to be springing up and the average temperature of each day and night seem to be relatively warm with out any unsafe drops in the temperature at night.

Garden and Compost

I bought some organic soil from Home depot and put it in my plot. I underestimated how much soil I was going to need. I bought 6 bags and have come to find that i need around 8 more. I am going to go buy some more tomorrow and fill it in this weekend. The weather seems to be holding sort of constant so I may plant some of my seedlings or some new seeds directly in the ground. I want to see if this has any effect on the plants.
I have gotten my compost walls to a height I am happy with for now. I threw some sticks and some dead leaves in the bottom (the base for a good compost) and will begin to throw food waste into the pile. That will take a while to be usable so I am going to use my previous compost as soon as I have all the soil laid.
On Sunday there is a compost fair at Cooperative Extension from 12-4. I am going to see if I can learn anything new by attending.

Compost Pile

I dug out an area for the new compost pile and then with the bricks that I tore up I have begun to build a wall to house the new pile. I want to make it at least 2 or 3 times the height it is now. the only problem with that is that I have to make sure that the walls are sturdy enough to hold the compost once the pile starts to grow. I am going to experiment with some different ideas in terms of construction to see what is the best.

Composting Presentation

The Green Team has been hosting some presentation on being a teenager and energy and environmentally conscious. Today the presentation was on composting and I was excited to see what they had to offer.
The presentation was interesting and they did a demonstration on lasagna layering compost (the process of alternating dry, brown matter and "green" nitrogen rich material like food scraps) and why compost is important for us to do.
Although it was interesting it was quite basic and I knew a lot of the stuff from AP Environmental Science and from already having a compost. However, they described some methods of composting that I had never heard of, such as stealth composting.
I took notes of which I am going to try and upload a scan. If that can't be done I'll type up the important parts.
Overall I think what this presentation did was kind of plant the seed of what this project will lead me too. I have recently got extremely excited about composting. Because of the nature of this project it has led me to spending a lot of time working with compost and the science of it. I think I will become a "hard-core" composter because of this whole experience.

Hopefuls and New design

I found these flowers spread across the entire yard of one of my friends house and I fell in love with the way they look. I don't know what they are yet and neither does my mom but I am going to do some research and ask some of my gardening resources to see if any of them know what they are. They look like bulb flowers so I may have to plant them this year but I won't get to see them till next year.

Here they are:


I also added a new cover to my seedling pan. The plastic will act as a green house and will help to keep more moisture in as well as intensify the sunlight to help the plants grow! It looks kind of makeshift, but hey, that's exactly what it is!

The real work

Today, my mom and I tore out the bricks that were in the space where I plan to plant my garden. It only took an hour and a half or so and it was a really nice time to get spend time with my mom and getting work done. We also figured out that we are going to start a new compost pile and we are going to use the bricks we removed to build the walls for a container for the compost. The cool thing about this compost is we are going to keep it strictly food scraps and we are going to have our two neighbors contribute to the pile. I hope that we can get that built by next week so it can get a move on.

Turning Compost

Yesterday I went out and started to turn my compost. I had to clear a bunch of snow off but got to it pretty quickly. I had never really looked at our compost pile but to my surprise it is doing extremely well. The sign of good compost is that it looks and smells like regular dirt, and that is what my compost pile is! I ran in to a little problem. The bottom half of the pile was frozen and I couldn't break through it. So I am going to have to wait until it warms up a bit in order to fully turn the entire pile.

Planting and CCE Gardening

The seeds are in their little starting egg cartons, in the window sill, and watered. So hopefully they will begin to grow. I did only one or two seeds per cell so this is kind of an experiment to see how they will do. The only worry I have right now is that the cold from the window causing a problem for the plants. I have other plants in the house near a window and they seem to do fine, but I will have to wait and see. Once those get started I might move them to a larger pot until it starts to warm up and the garden gets ready.
I was pretty busy this week so I did not attend a Cornell Cooperative Extension Gardening meeting like I thought. However, it turns out there is a discussion panel that is focusing on Home food production. This fits what I am doing so perfectly and I am very excited to listen to what some specialists in the area have to offer about home gardening.

Seeds

Today I went to Agway and I picked out some seeds that I wanted to put in the garden. I am going to start looking at the average date when the last frost is in Ithaca so that I can plant the seeds indoors in a proper amount of them to germinate and be ready to go into the ground after the last frost. I bought French Rosemary, Bloomsdale Spinach, Zucchini, Brandywine Pink Tomatoes, Muncher Cucumbers, Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce, and Rainbow Bell peppers. All of the seeds are organic. I also want to try drying and saving some of my own seeds from some sweet peppers that my family enjoys. Depending on each individual seeds duration of growing it needs indoors I will have to start looking into grow lights and some boxes in which to plant soon.