The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

I haven’t been able to post here on the old blog for a couple of days because of the ice storm that blew through earlier this week. The greenhouse is located in the area that was without power for a few days. Thursday was the first day we had all the power back on and we had a lot of catching up to do.

The temperature dropped to around 34 degrees ( colder at floor level ) for two nights in a row before we were able to get an electrician to correct a wiring problem we had with our boilers. After he left we were able to limp along on generator power. We had heat, but the generator could not handle the water well.

The generator sent a couple of power surges and blew out a few fuses in our greenhouse ventilation system but no real harm was done. However, I was still finding blown fuses in some of the equipment today.

Remember those begonias that I wrote about awhile back that had to be in the right temperature range in order to germinate? Well, apparently the germination process had started and was well under way when the power went down. It looks like we had a good germination rate as there are plenty of seedlings today and seem to be doing well despite the frigid start of their young lives.

Time will tell if the bananas were damaged as their growing points are buried inside the trunk of the plant. No damage was done to the Easter Lilies, citrus and tomatoes. The Coleus and Ipomea ( sweet potato vine ) that we use for taking cuttings (for starting new plants for spring ), did get “burned” by the cold but did not die. The Strobilanthes (Persian Shield ) was fine as well as the Chicken Gizzard Plant.

A bright note in all this was the Pansy seedlings ( Viola ), they absolutley loved the 30 degree nights and 50 degree days we had inside the greenhouse.

A disaster was averted by the use of propane heaters ( before the electrician arrived) and a generator. So now its back to normal and full speed ahead.

From now on I’ll take my weather like I take my Vernors, without ice!

Bob

I don’t know about you, but I like to have a salad at least once a day. For me, lunch is the most convieneint time to prepare may salad since my lettuce is right there for the picking in the garden.

This year with our mild “El Nino” winter, we really haven’t had to use the greenhouse for growing lettuce. All our lettuce harvested this fall and winter, has been growing under plastic covered beds. I’ll bet some of you are doing the same thing.

Every year in my covered beds, we get an extra bonus…Chickweed. That’s right, that common lawn and garden “pest” Chickweed ! ( Stellaria media )

By now you probably have guessed where I an going with this train of thought, I pick Chickweed along with my lettuce and use it in my salad. For example today my lunch was a mixture of Romaine and Buttercrunch lettuce, freshly dug carrots ( a real treat in its own right), spinach and chickweed. Now to some people the thought of eating “weeds” ranks right up there with eating road kill, but I assure you it really is tasty.

This time of year, under the protection of the hoop coverings, the Chickweed is especially good. It is very tender and has that wonderful “crunch” we like to have in our fresh salad greens. Even the stems are tender and not stringy as they are apt to become later in the spring and early summer.

Chickweed tastes sort of like spinach; plus it has a certian sweetness all its own. Maybe that accounts for the recipes of Chickweed wine that you see in references to wild foods. Heck, I even ran across a recipe for chickweed bread.

Fresh Chickweed is nutritious too; 100 grams ( about 3-1/2 oz. ) provides you with 49 mg of vitamin C. That compares very well with the 50 mg you get in a 100 gram serving of oranges.

The name Chickweed comes from the fact that chickens and wild birds love the stuff. If you keep birds as pets you can feed it to them as a treat as well. If you are unsure about feeding Ckickweed, ask Dr. Whiting over at Pet Talk blog about it. Like anything else, it would be prudent to feed this in moderation.

All of the above ground parts of this plant are edible, including the tiny seeds. Even though each plant produces hundreds of seeds, there is really no point in try to pick the seeds because they are so small. The good part ( in this case ) is that you don’t have to plant Chickweed, it seeds itself. The bad part is that it seeds itself ( as a weed in the spring ). If for some unkown reason you don’t have Chickweed in your garden, Johnny’s Selected Seeds offers them for sale in their catalog. Buy some and you will never have to worry about having enough Chickweed ever again!

The plant itself has some very interesting behaviors…. that’s right, I said behaviors. For one thing it likes to close up its flowers at night as if getting ready to go to sleep. Then, when it wakes up in the morning, the flowers open back up. ” So what” you say, ” lots of plants do that “. Yes, that is true, but Chickweed adds another wrinkle to this behavior; it closes its flowers before it rains! How it knows its going to rain is a mystery to me!

As with any plant harvested from the wild, be sure you know what you are picking before you eat it.

Later on this winter, as the cold temperatures return and finally kill our lettuce, there will still be Chickweed there in those beds waiting to be picked and enjoyed.

With apologies to Euell Gibbons,*

Bob

* the late Euell Gibbons was the author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus and many other books. You may remember him on TV as spokesman for ” Grape Nuts” cereal.

Those of us who like to start our own plants from seed know you have to get an early start, sometimes a real early start. As a matter of fact, I planted 500 Tuberous Begonia seeds yesterday. I will plant another 500 seeds next week. Spliting up my seeding times helps increase the chances of sucess. If something goes wrong during a critcal time, the second crop will be there to take up the slack.
Begonia seeds are very small, almost as small as petunia seeds, (1/4 to 1/2 the size of a grain of sugar) so they require some special attention.

You have to place the seeds on top of a sterilized planting media such as Jiffy mix and not let them get covered by the soil.

It helps to sprinkle some sand around the seeds after planting to protect them from the deluge of water that happens when you water them. To the begonia seeds, those grains of sand must look like big boulders they can hide behind when watering time starts. Don’t put on too much sand though, you don’t want to bury them.

To water I use a fogging nozzel which puts out a very gentle fog of water, again so the seeds don’t get soil washed over them. At home, you can use a spray bottle, like what you would use to spray on window cleaner, set it on gentle spray.

I also use a clear plastic dome to cover the seed starting flat to help even out the soil moisture, however, a clear sheet of plastic works just as well. I used a sheet of plastic for years before I obtained the plastic dome. Just remember what I said about using sterile starting soil, because mold and bacteria flourish under those conditions too and that’s not good for baby plants.
Now, the hard part of germinating begonia seeds is that you absolutly must keep the soil and seeds at about 74 to 78 degrees. Any more or less will drastically reduce the number of seeds that will sprout. I like to use a heating mat, but any bright, warm place with constant temperature in this range will do.

In about 10 days or so we will begin to see the tiny seedlings emerge. At this stage you can still wash them away so be careful when watering. Keep them moist, but not too moist. Keep in mind those tiny little seedling don’t suck up much water.

Watch out, don’t let them get too dry either! If they get dry they will think its time to form root tubers instead of leaves and will die trying!
There is still time to order some of these early seeds from your favorite seed supplier.  I get my begonia seeds from Stoke’s Seeds. This time of year most seed companies are not very busy and can get them shipped out to you right away.

Don’t count on the harware store or gardening department at the big home supply stores to carry begonia seeds, there is not much of a demand for them by the general public.

Does all this sound like a lot of fussing around just to get a few begonias? Well, it is! If you don’t want to grow your own begonias from seed but still would like to have some for your home, just wait until spring and buy the fully grown plants from the garden center. You can remember with a smile that back in December someone, in a greenhouse somewhere, had to fuss with all those seeds so you didn’t have to.

Doing a lot of fussing but no fighting,

Bob