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Although it is still spitting snow in this cruddy Pacific Northwest La Nina Spring, it is time to get tomatoes seedlings started.  Last year I had a major disaster using commercial potting soil.  There is virtually no regulation of what can be sold as potting soil, and the quality of commercial potting soils, especially at the low price end of the market, is incredibly variable.  Even for reputable commercial producers of potting soil, quality control can be problematic. Commercial potting soils typically contain compost made from home yard waste.  Home gardeners are notorious for using huge quantities of herbicides such as Weed-n-Feed.  If your potting soil contains significant quantities of Weed-n-Feed, guess what – your plants are going to die.  I experienced exactly that last year when every tomato seedling transplanted into 4 inch pots containing a particular batch of commercial potting soil died.  I lost 500 plants. Disasters like this could probably be avoided, or at least minimized, by buying premium brands of potting soil, but the price for these products is prohibitive.

Enough of that, from today forward I am producing my own potting soil.  This isn’t a simple matter, however, because recipes for potting soil are hugely variable, and there is almost no reliable information available about how they compare in performance.  Comparing about 20 recipes from different sources, I have come up with a consensus recipe.

Potting soils generally have three types of ingredients.
1) Organic matter, to provide aeration and moisture retention.  Good sources of organic matter include sphagnum moss, coir (coconut fiber) and compost.
2) Materials to promote drainage, including vermiculite, perlite, and sand.
3) Lime.  Organic matter, and especially sphagnum (peat) moss is extremely acidic (typically pH 3). Addition of lime is required to bring the pH up to near neutrality (pH 6-7).
4) Fertilizer.  The main requirements for fertility are nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, typically given as a nitrogen-phosphate-potassium percentage ( for example a 4-10-1 fertilizer is, by weight, 4% nitrogen, 10% phosphate and 1 percent potassium.  A good ratio of the three components for vegetable is 1:2:1. I am not a stickler for staying strictly organic, but I like to go the organic route when I can. Blood meal is a widely available organic source of Nitrogen.  The stuff I have is 13-0-0. Bone meal is commonly used for phosphate.  My supply is 3-15-0.  Wood ash is a good source of potassium, and since I sometimes heat my house with a wood-stove, it is free.  Wood ash typically has a nutrient composition of 0-1-3.

An optional additional ingredient is garden soil.  This will increase water retention, and will provide some additional fertility, especially in the form of micronutrients that may be lacking in the other components. 

Here is my recipe-

My garden calendar says that today is the time to seed a variety of vegetables indoors, for transplant later into the garden.  Hmmm – that doesn’t seem right, since we just had 18″ of snow, and more is forecast.  Oh well, what the hell.  Seeded the following in a flat, on a heating pad –

Early cabbage
Early red cabbage
Flat leaf parsley
Black Tuscan Kale
Romaine Lettuce
Early globe onions
Bunching Onions
Leeks
Red Sail Lettuce

Growing vegetables in nutrient-poor mountain clay soil would be impossible without loads of well-rotted horse manure.  If you want to learn more about the source of this manure, read my wife’s memoir about life on High & Dry Farm, Horses Never Lie About Love, recently published by Simon and Schuster.

Thanks to a mild winter, we are at the end of December and my garden is still full of happy vegetables. Kale, chard, cabbage, leeks, turnips, parsley and lettuce all look terrific. 

S

These short, dark, cool, damp days are not friendly to most vegetables, but greens of every sort thrive. These lettuces could not be happier, or sweeter…

and this savoy cabbage, despite the perforations attesting to the insecticide free environment, is as healthy as can be.

The days are getting short and dark, but my pepper crop, warmed by black plastic, remains happy.  If I could grow only one pepper variety, it would be an Italian frying pepper, such as Maroni Rossi.
Sauteed in olive oil, with garlic and a few thin slices of onion, these make an amazing side dish, or a condiment for sandwiches.

  I have harvested the last of the tomatoes.  This year’s crop was disappointing, as the long cool, wet spring allowed blight to get a foothold, and most of the plants succumbed just as they were nearing their most productive stage of growth. I finally got around to cleaning the grasses and other weeds out of my raspberries, the the effect was amazing.  The productivity of the fall crop of berries from plants increased hugely compared to last year.  I harvested about a pint of berries every day from August 1 until October 1.  Even now, a few berries remain, like the beauty shown here, but not enough to bother with.  I will surely miss the berries on my breakfast cereal, until the berries return next June.

The cold wet April was followed by cold wet May, cold wet June and cold wet July. We have been breaking all records for lousy weather – the average daily high for the last 4 months has averaged about 4 degrees below normal. Only 5 days have exceeded 70 degrees during the month of July and sunny days have been few and far between. Needless to say, it has been a struggle to grow anything that requires warm temperatures. Seeds for corn and early plantings of beans, carrots, etc. just rotted in the ground. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant would have been a complete failure if I were not using black plastic ground covers and clear poly covered hoop houses.  Here is what my tomatoes looked like in June.

We are slogging through the wettest Spring we have experienced in 25 years at High & Dry Farm.  We have had measurable rain every day for the last month, and we have had multiple days with daily rainfall in the range of 4 to 12 inches.  Work in the garden is way behind!

The average daily temperatures have been about 5 degrees below normal, so even the seedlings in my greenhouse are showing very little progress.