Knockout!

Votes were counted, briberies were offered but refused, and the results are in!

Winner of the 1st Annual 2009 Who Has The Most Diesel Seedlings Contest:


























Any who have followed the travels of these seedlings should not be surprised by the winner. Jiff's pods prevail! Frankly coconut fiber, you suck:

















These pictures were taken on the same day. The coconut seedlings are yellowed and droopy while Jiff's pods are lush and green.
What you typically see before transplanting a healthy seedling is a well established root system around the medium you use.

Healthy rooted seedling

I do not have a picture of the coconut fiber seedling but when I took it out of the six-pack the medium crumbled away. The roots were growing straight down and through the bottom. So most of the root was wallowing on the plastic bottom instead of in some nice, helpful dirt. It makes sense they would be so yellow and unhealthy looking.


In other news...

I embarked on quite the lettuce seedling thinning process recently

















I had a ton of 1" pots and old Tupperware laying around so that made for easy temp. storage containers. I plan to give away many of the seedlings, I have plenty to keep for myself.
See the finished products here, and here.

It has been a busy few weeks over in the E.S. Garden. Enjoy the pictures of the flowers, they are especially wonderful. Thanks to the boy for taking lovely pictures, much more pro-fes-sion-al than myself. I've been over there quite a bit planting, weeding, mowing, and planning. We've had more greens than we know what to do with. The asparagus continues to grow enough so we're picking it every few days. We've had a taste of the radishes, as well, and wow are they little fire balls. I'm attempting to grow some apartment garden radishes, let's hope they can still enjoy a more confined living arrangement.

As you can see we've been very busy over here at The Pale Gardener!

Get your soil tested

There are many reasons to get your garden soil tested. Many plants thrive in certain PHs, some do very poorly when a PH is too low or too high. By testing your soil, you will be in the know about what's in all that dirt. Then you can adjust as needed. Many fertilizers and other supplements will state right on the package the percent of nutrients included and you can adjust your soil as needed.

Here's another great reason why you should get your soil tested, and it's a bit more serious than having the best tomatoes:

For Urban Gardeners, Lead is a Concern

As we all know, lead is quite the scary substance!

Fortunately there are many ways to test your soil.
Cornell Cooperative Extensive will test your soil for you for a small fee. And here is their PH testing kit. They will even give you recommendations after they've tested your soil!
For those living outside of New York State, you may still send your soil to Cornell CE, however, they will not be able to give you recommendations because their recommendations are based on the soil composition of NYS.
I recommend doing a Google search for soil testing in your state, you're sure to come up with something more local.

New Home

We have successfully upgraded living quarters for some of our plants. It was a relatively pain-free process. For normal, run of the mill plants, the big parts to remember when repotting are :

-Start out with a clean pot. That way any yucko fungus or bacteria is cleaned away from the previous inhabitant.

-When repotting it's generally accepted that your new pot should be a size larger than your current pot.

-I like to breakup the root ball a bit before I plop it in. I've read that you can even trim the roots a little before you put it in its new pot. Just make sure the cutting device you use is clean.

-Leave a little space at the top of the pot so there's enough room to water without making a mess.

-Water the plant after it's all set in its new home.

*I just want to note that I am still new to this whole blog idea thing so I often forget to take pictures midway through the process. I will try and remember next time. For now, all I have are the finished products.*

Here is our aloe in its happy new home. This was not originally on the list of repots but part of the plant was heading right over the side and making it a bit of a balancing act trying to get it to stay up sometimes. So I figured it was time to upgrade. There were many, tiny, new aloe plants growing interspersed in the soil so it was a little tough to make sure none of them were sacrificed and burried alive (wow that sounds so morbid!). It has been in its new home for a few weeks and it seems to be adjusting nicely.

























I split the jades up into two pots. There were four plants in one teeny pot and generally you want one to two in a pot. I wanted to use wider mouthed bowls so they could sit a decent distance from each other. I recycled the old pot that held the aloe plants for the first set and I used the old pot that housed the fern for the second set of jades. They have also been in their new pots for a few weeks and are doing very well.
I also moved the jades back from the window a bit because they were starting to look a little pale. Since then they're back to their deep green color. So it seems jades like more indirect sunlight. Now they are about ten feet back from the window when before they were about three feet from the South-West facing window.


I'll be moving some of my plants out on the porch in the next few weeks. I can't wait to get some floor space back!

I was over at the E.S. Garden yesterday mowing the lawn, and everything is getting so green! I brought home fresh greens and asparagus. Here are some pictures to enjoy!

Happy Day!

In approximately 7.5 hours I will be sitting down to my A&P II final for the semester. After that, freedom until August.
I do love school, don't get me wrong, I especially love what I'm doing now. But...it will be nice to be able to come home after work, not plan out three meals for the day at 630AM, and of course, attend to my apartment garden. Which by the way, is coming along quite nicely. The sunflowers are taking right off and I even have some chamomile popping up!
I planted some cress and chives over the weekend. The cress package was not lying when it said it was fast growing, the plants are an inch tall already!
E.S. Garden is also booming. The asparagus is growing like a weed! We have to pick it a few times a week! Boy do I love that asparagus...makes your pee smell funny though.
OK TMI, Jess.

Pics coming soon!

Til then, wish me luck!

Where in the world is the The Pale Gardener?

modeling for us is little Alf. he is the coolest dude ever. and the cutest.

So for all of you out there who read my blog you may notice that if you have it linked, it does not work. That is because I changed my url. In my extreme intelligence, at the time, I spelled a word incorrectly and it has been driving me crazy ever since. I've always been a lunatic about spelling, and grammar for that matter. (it's their banana, not there banana) grrr
...oh wait let me hop of this soapbox here...
So here's the new url to update your bookmarks:

http://thepalegardener.blogspot.com/


Because I know people are just bringing down the internet trying to find my blog.
Psshhh.

Jiffs V. Burps - Round Dos

Ah Spring is fully upon us here in Upstate NY. And it is lovely. Last weekend was way up in the 80's...a bit warm if you ask me. But it was a great weekend to play outside study for exams. Yes, that is plural. I had two exams in one week in one class. Gotta love it. But enough academics.

I am happy to say the seedlings are doing great! I did not mention yet that some of the seeds I planted, I planted on a whim hoping they'd germinate because...well...they are three years old. Which in seed years ehhh can go either way. The old haggards include: thyme, chamomile, and sweet marjoram. The sweet marjoram is doing great, the thyme is doing so-so and the chamomile is either taking its sweet time or it's a no-show.


From left to right:
Rows 1-2 - lavender - coming along slowly, but looking good.
Rows 3-4 - lobelia - sapphire trailing - exploding! I have to trim them back because there are far too many in each cell
Rows 5-6 - sweet marjoram - other than the sunflowers, these are doing the best! Who knew! Now I have to figure out some recipes using sweet marjoram...
Rows 7-8 - lobelia - crystal palace - also doing wonderfully. Will have to trim these back a bit too. Damn you teeny tiny seeds!
Row 9 - thyme - I'll be able to get a few plants out of these.

What you can't see on the end are the Mexican sunflowers, and the chamomile, which isn't even worth showing because it's not doing a damn thing.

Let's take a look at Burpee shall wee?





From left to right:

Row 1 - thyme - a few sprouts are up, still holding out it will fair well.
Row 2 - lobelia crystal palace - chugging right along. They're not getting leggy yet, which is nice.
Row 3-4 - sweet marjoram - man, I'm going to have a lot of this herb.
Row 5-6 - lavender - also not doing too great in this medium so I'm hoping it's just taking its time coming up.
Row 7 - lobelia - sapphire trailing - 2 thumbs up.
Row 8-9 - a picture of the chamomile not doing jack.
Row 10-11 - new plantings! I planted gaillardia in here. They are doing just great. Pretty perennials they are.
Row 12 - another row of Mexican sunflowers - we'll have a lot of these too!

OK, now that we've taken a look at our seedlings. Who's in the lead this week?
I would say Jiffs still has a good lead. Worth noting, however, is that though Jiffs is beating Burps, both are doing about as well, comparatively. That is, the lobelia in each are doing well, the chamomile in both are sucking, the sweet marjoram in both are doing well but are a bit leggy. And so on, so they are growing at a steady, constant pace as individual mediums. Aww, I've raised such independent seedlings!

I've updated Flickr with some more seedling photos.

Next on The Pale Gardener: updates on our repots! Who gets their own room first?