High & Dry Farm

First tomato sowing is sprouting today – I transferred flats to the greenhouse.

I hope you are following the news about the misguided US judge who is attempting to censor a Swedish website wikileaks.org that posts leaked internal government and company documents concerning behavior that may be considered illegal or immoral. The judge caused the domain name of the web site to be revoked by the domain name registrar. Too bad for the judge that he has no power to kill the ip address of the website in Sweden, so the web site is still accessible via its ip address http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks.

In my cloche, I made an early planting of the following:
Arugula
Lettuce (2 varieties)
Spinach
Fennel
Carrots
Parsnips
Salsify
Parsley

You can add a month on either end of your growing season with a tunnel cloche.
The cloche uses hoops made of 1/2″ EMT steel electrical conduit pipe. You can buy this in 10′ pieces at Home Depot for about $2.00 each.
Using a conduit pipe bender make 60 degree bends in the middle of the pipe, and at 30″ on either side of the middle, creating a hoop that looks like this. Push the ends of the hoops into the earth, at 4′ intervals.

Cover the hoops with 10′ wide 4 mil polyethylene film. Attach the film to the end hoops with clips. You can purchase these, but they are expensive. I make my own, by cutting 5″ sections from old worn out 3/4″ graden hose, and cutting along the length of the hose to open it up.

To hold the film in place, bury the film in the dirt along one side, and weigh down the other side with rocks. The film can be turned up on the ‘rock’ side in order to weed or water. The ends of the cloche can be left open for ventilation when the weather is sunny, or covered up with salvaged window glass or plywood at night or when the weather is cloudy. Your total investment to cover 4’x30′ will be about $16 for the conduit and $10 for the plastic film. The conduit hoops last nearly forever (mine are 3 years old and show no sign of rust) and the PE film will last for 2 or 3 seasons.

Plastic labels for vegetables grown in pots or flats are not cheap – for example 6″ x 1/2″ labels are $.03 each at http://www.dpind.com/. I make my own by cutting up aluminum beverage cans with a sturdy pair of scissors (poultry shears are ideal).

1. Cut off the two ends of the can.
2. Cut down the side to open up the can.
3. Trim off the ragged edges.
4. Cut into strips, 1/4″ wide.
5. Label with permanent marker pen, like these.
6. Or affix labels printed on your laser printer, on weatherproof, self-adhesive label stock, like these.

Sowed these varieties into flats:

Ille’s Yellow Latvian
Lahman Pink
Russian Big Roma
Beam’s Yellow Pear
Camp Joy
Fred Limbauch Potato Top

I have now finished the small first sowing of all tomato varieties. All will be sowed again, around March 1.

Sowed the following varieties (8 cells ea., 1 seed per cell).
Elbe
Italian Tree
Neves Azorean Red
Slava
Eva Purple Ball
Napoli
Martino’s Roma
Cosoluto Fiorentino
Anna Russian
Manyel
Tommy Toe
Stupice
Saint Pierre
Amish Paste
Red Siberian
Old Brooks

For more info about these varieties, see Garden Spot Wiki.