Youtube: Planting Onions & Leeks in Raised Beds

I started the onions and leeks from seed.  First time.  I read that onions don't need to be hardened off (most resources) so I didn't.  Planted them in my prepared raised beds after amending with course to fine compost and some shredded leaves.  I decided to use staggered planting vs row planting because it maximizes space and looks cooler.  I modeled a dibbler after Dan at YouTube channel "allottmentdiary."  Stay tuned for the upcoming followup videos.

Youtube: Preparing Garden Compost

Beautiful day after some seriously cold weeks for us here in Arkansas.  It may have maxed under 50 degrees, but it was close to 50 and that was all I needed to get out in it!  Got my screener out and got to work getting some compost ready for the garden. Compost does wonderful things for your garden. Creating optimal soil is the key to success, for the better your soil, the better your results.  I created yet another Youtube video:

Youtube: Starting Tomato, Pepper, & Eggplant

Started Tomato, Pepper, and Eggplant on 5 February.  They started coming up about 3 days later and have continued with all tomato varieties up by the time of this posting.  Peppers and eggplant take longer, but they are also poking through.  I hope this year will be a promising year with production and I'm going to try and have some fun with it all.

Youtube: Repotting Mass-Planted Seedlings

When you have limited space in your seed-starting area, you can mass plant (overplant) seeds into any container. In this instance, I planted Broccoli, Cabbage, Pak Choi, Kale, Perpetual Spinach, and Chard into two 36-cell flats and transplanted in various pots. By pulling plugs and teasing them apart before they get too big and roots bind, this can be done successfully.  Check out the video from my Youtube which is shown just below:

When I finished repotting the seedlings, their home will be my garage--which is filled with gardening stuff (yep, messy)--until they can make it into the garden spots. Seedlings are planted in 3" net cups, plastic cups, and 2 kinds of pots I created called "ugly pots". I'm always trying different things and several things are going on here that I'll explain in future vids. 

Just so you know, there's no one way to do this! This is just how I'm doing it right now. As a matter of fact, if you've become so rigid in procedure, you're on the wrong path IMO. Instead, look at successful gardening concepts and move about within the concepts. The more you do, the more you'll get comfortable. And remember, It's all fun!

Youtube: Onions, Leeks, & Peas

Uploaded two new gardening videos to YouTube and thought I'd post them here as well.  It seem as though I'm stepping out of Blogger more and and into YouTube.  For the time being, I'll post some of the gardening videos here as well.  It may be that this will become an RV outlet and a good bit of gardening will be linked here to the YouTube videos I make.  I'm not sure if I want to maintain both venues.  We will see.  Nothing is in stone, however, so let's see how it works out.   For now, here's two videos on what I'm doing with Onions, Leeks, & Peas:

Starting Seed for the 2014 Garden

Over past couple weeks, I have planted some seed in preparation for the upcoming garden.  For my started seed soil, I initially used a screened mixture of 1/2 compost and 1/2 potting mix.  I found that I screened it pretty small and it was retaining too much moisture for my taste, so I added screened pine bark fines.  Now, the mixture is about 1/3 pine bark, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 potting mix.  Planted:

Artichokes on 2 Jan 14.  Only 5 germinated.  Could be the seed was too wet or possibly damping off occurred.

Oregon Sugar Pod II peas on 12 Jan 14.

Artichoke replant on 12 Jan 14 with newer soil.

Broccoli, Cabbage, Pak Choy, Kale, and 2 kinds of Chard on 15 Jan 14.