Activities are picking up quickly in the greenhouses at Transition Garden.
The three dormant fig trees were moved out of cold storage. They were in our workshop, which we keep at 3C during the winter to act as a root cellar and cold storage area). They will leave out quickly and we will move them into the lower greenhouse in May, where we plant the pots into the ground and let the roots grow out through the holes in the pot during the summer. In the fall, when they go dormant again, we pull out the pots and prune off the roots. This year, we may get 3-4 new figs trees by rooting shoots that came up from the bases of two tree. We planting these shoots in small pots after dusting the ends with rooting powder. Exciting!
Over the past few days, we thinned cabbage and Swiss chard seed trays that had germinated and had more that one seedling per cell. We took many of these ‘extras’ and transplanted them into another tray, leaving a few seedlings doubled up in some cells. You always want to have a few extra seedlings in case there was poor germination or other problems, but over-seeding can give you too many and is a waste of seeds. Last year, a mouse was happily munching seedling right down to the stub until we finally caught it in a live trap and took it for a relocation drive.
Our onions, seeded about 4 weeks ago, are well on there way.
We are seeding more varieties of crops into seed trays. Today it was the eggplant (2 types), ground cherry and radicchio. Last week we did tomatoes (8 varieties) and peppers (4 varieties). Our ultra-hot chilies which we started in mid-February are now growing well in 2″ pots and we moved them from under the grow lights into the ‘hot box’ in the greenhouse.