Living in Northern New Jersey

8/2/2011 – Second Season Garden means planting a late summer/fall garden. Today 8/4 i sowed seeds for Bonanza Hybrid and Green Goliath Broccoli plus Igloo Lettuce. I have some heirloom leek seeds, leeks can be planted in August but i thought the growing season at 3 months was long.

8/10/2011 – The broccoli germinated in about 5 days which was surprising because the package said up to 3 weeks for germinqtion. The igloo lettuce has not yet broken the soil surface, again mislead in the opposite direction this time, there germination time was 10 days. I planted cucumbers in late June and harvested one today. Lots of flowers on the cucumbers seem to indicate a good yield. The cucmbers sre located where they get late afternoon shade. I will break ground for the leeks today next to some squash plants sown in late June.

9/1/2011 – The lettuce never sprouted, a little disappointing and i din’t get around to planting the leeks. The broccoli after germinating suspiciously quickly seems be stuck in the cotyledon sprout stage without much growth. I think that some of teh problem is with the lack of sunlight in my yard. Looks like quite a few cucumbers are growing and finally i have a few tomatoes now, hoping they will ripen soon, the weather is turning a bit cooler.

Morning Glorys are great flowers that are easy to grow, easy to collect seed and propagate. Morning glorys are vines so I try to use it to grow on trellises, mailbox and sign posts if I can. nother idead is a rock wall near my font stairs. This year i planted seeds for purple and white Morning Glorys in some rock walls. First I used some ptting soil to make platforms for the seeds to grow and root on, then I watered using a watering can with diffuser. I thenb ade the seeds to the wet potting soil and covered with additional protting soil and watered again. Seeds from morning glorys are easily recovered from dried flowers and are rather large and easy to collect. I planted a patch of morning glories a few years ago and they are a perenial garden, every year purple flowers appear in the summer months.

I planted fox glove in the front yard which gets morning sun. I started them in seed trays and planted in late June. The first year thee were no flowers but the next year, many foxgloves reappeared with tall stalks full of flowers. This is aa beautiful perennial for deer country as it is deer resistant. So far I have not had any problem in an unfenced area of the garden where the Foxgloves grow.

I have some hybrid tea rose I bought at the local supermarket a few years ago and put them in my backyard which doesn’t get much sunlight. I haven’t maintained them at all and they haven’t grown very well as a result. Last year, I built a trellis/bird shrine to protect the roses. This helped in the winter as they were less trampled by the dogs, and generally as a support for the rose branches. This spring I decided to prune what i could from the roses. First I bought a good quality pruner shear, put on some leather work gloves to protect my hands from thorns and set to it. Emboldened by the knowledge that roses are hardy plants, I cut off all the dead wood first using diagonal cuts, cutting until the cane was white inside. Pruning should be done at a forty-five degree diagonal to the cane. On the branches with buds, I cut just after the bud diagonally. I was being fairly conservative, but did manage to trim all the canes, so hopefully this will promote new growth. When trimming, white glue can be used to seal the cuts buy dipping the end in glue, I didn’t do this but it helps make the plant less susceptible to insects and disease.

Maybe the most important piece of gardening equipment is a good pair of garden gloves, I like the PIP WA4215A-AMZ Brahma Men’s Large Glove Leather, Palm Grey, 3-Pack. Leather work gloves are great for protecting your hands from prickly branches and things you don’t want to touch with bare skin (…if you know what i mean…biologicals: dead animals, live animals, poop, bugs). You can double up with a cotton garden glove and wear the leather work glove as an outter layer, this works particularly well. The leather gloves last a while, I usually leave them out in the rain to get clean and dry them on fence post in the sun, usually I will get a couple of seasons out of a pair.

In addition to cleaning up flower beds and shrubs, a big part of my garden is lawn. There is only one thing to do with that and it is to rake, rake and rake more. Besides leaves and twigs from the winter months, the most important thing is to rake out the dead grass and thatch. Removing the dead leaves and thatch allows the healthy green grass to show through and thrive. After raking, I will use a garden spreader to add puverized lime to adjust the pH befoe seeding. A good time to add lime is before it rains so that the lime i washed into the soil. Not to forget about a good pair of garden gloves, I like the PIP WA4215A-AMZ Brahma Men’s Large Glove Leather, Palm Grey, 3-Pack. Leather work gloves are great for protecting your hands from prickly branches and things you don’t want to touch with bare skin (…if you know what i mean…biologicals: dead animals, live animals, poop, bugs). You can double up with a cotton garden glove and wear the leather work glove as an outter layer, this works particularly well. The leather gloves last a while, I usually leave them out in the rain to get clean and dry them on fence post in the sun, usually I will get a couple of seasons out of a pair.

Rake, rake, rake! I put down about fifty pounds of pulverized lime with a small garden spreader on the front lawn, It looked like a bit afterwards, but luckily the next few day the rains washed it into the soil and the grass gre in tall and green, just about ready for the first lawn cutting. Also I have been throwing around alot of sun/shade grass seed.

As soon as the winter snow is gone from your garden, its time to inspect your landscaping for winter damage and make a check list for an early spring cleanup.  the advantage to starting early is that weeds and undesirable plants are not yet starting to grow. If you have perennials that bloom early, that is where you want to concentrate your first efforts with an eye toward protecting new growth. if you have a large garden, its a good idea to break it up into manageable sections that can be tackled in several two or three hour tasks.
My garden is approximately 8000 square feet about equally divided between lawn and shrub/flower beds. Early blooming plants include lilacs, azaelea, two dogwood trees and some large irises. These are the areas I will work on first, I chose to start with the azaelea plants first, so i grabbed my garden gloves and rake and empty trash barrel and set to it.  I raked all the dead leaves. removed small trees/large weeds growing within the azaeleas.  In this area is an overgrown lilac.  Lilacs need to be cut back quite a bit and mine had not been trimmed in years and grew to about twenty feet tall!  generally you should cut branches two inches or more in diameter.  At first, I was going to just trim the lilac overhang atop the azaelea.  A tree brach fell on the lilac bush and drove it into the azaeleas.  The branches that needed cutting were approximately four to six inched in diameter, so i decided to cut them back nearly to ground level using a tree saw.
I will revisit the lilac and trim more, Rome wasn’t built in  day afterall, probably not good to stress the plant too much at once. Next was the Flag Irises bed, green shoots are just begining to appear and since this flower bed is in a corner bordered by large rocks, it collected a great deal of leaves. There is also some Virginia Creeper that has grown in the are so i removed as much as possible with hedge shears.

Early Spring is a good time to start your seeds indoors, especially vegetable that have long grwoing seasons and flowers for early blooms).   I start tomatoes and eggplant in aluminum trays and make pots from newspaper using a potmaker.  I bought a bag of miracle grow potting mix and burpee seeds and set to work. Try to keep your hands very clean washing with soap and water when working with seeds and avoid handling the seeds directly.  This will help prevent mold or yeasts growing in your pot. First I form the pots from newspaper, then fill approximately 3/4 full with potting soil and line the pots in the tray. When the tray is full, I wet the pots and soil with water. Then I carefully sprinkle three to five seeds per pot directly from an opened seed envelope.  after the seeds are added to the pots, i use a watering can with a diffuser so as not to disturb the soil and seeds.
Then the seed trays are placed in the warmest room in the house to germinate, they do not need sunlight yet so a sunny window or lights are unnecessary. Within about two weeks, your seeds should be growing and will need light.

Starting tomatoes by the middle of March should result in July fruit.  I also start a tray of flowers too,  this year I planted zinnias, snapdragons and poppies.  Zinnias are the easiest flowers to grow from seed that i have found. The seeds are large and easy to handle and the flowers are large and colorful.  Zinnias grow tall and fill a garden with color. Marigolds are alos easy to grow for the same reasons. Zinnia and Marigold flower produce seeds that are easy to harvest when closing the garden for winter and can be use to grow next years garden.

Day 6 - 7: Excited to see that most of the seeds have germinated and broke the surface of the soil. The Zinnia, Poppy, Tomato and Eggplant seed have all germinated, still waiting for the Snapdragons. I put the trays on wire shelving in front of a sunny window and keeping the pots moist but not wet by watering with the watering can with difuser. I am also rotating the trays 180 degrees every morning to account for phototropism ( the seedling growing toward the sun ).

the first planting of seed trays went so well, the seedlings are about two inches tall and are in a sunny window growing, I decided to make more seed trays with Bell Peppers, NUMEX Hot Peppers and Marigolds. Its a rainy day, so no outside work today, so I am making more pots out of newspaper with my wooden pot maker. So i filled an aluminum cooking tray with 24 pots each filled a little les than full. Then I water the soil to moisten it with a watering can with a diffuser. Next I carefully add three to five seeds per pot. Lastly, I use a tablespoon of soil to cover each pot and water again with the watering can/diffuser. The trays I bought today from shoprite had clear plastic covers and I put the trays in my laundry room which is the warmest room in the house.

The Marigolds popped up within a few days, whereas the hot peppers sprouted about two weeks after planting and the bell peppers have still not sprouted. The bell pepper seeds were a few years old, but i expected a few to germinate. Seeds packaged for the current season have high germination rates and depending on storage, the seed pack’s germination rate will drop over time. I generally go by the rule that seeds were found in egyptian pyramids that were stil viable so a seed pack a few years old shouldd have a germination rate of at least 30% but I could be wrong but I don’t have a pyraamid to sstore my seeds in (yet).