Grow Light Now Active

Yes, I put the tomatoes under the grow light last week. They seem to be getting on, so maybe I'm doing something right. Sometime soon, I am going to have to cull the seedlings so there is only one growing in each pot. I always put this kind of thing off, somehow it seems wrong to kill the plants that way. Plus it is making a commitment to one seedling. Can I make that commitment?

A couple of peppers have now shown up, too. Tomorrow my planner says it is time to start cucumbers and squash.

Meanwhile, I hope all this rain is good for the onions and garlic.

Onions

I planted 45 onion sets today. What will we do with so many onions (assuming they grow)? I don't know.

As it happened, I have many more sets than I needed. (White's sold me a quart, looks like I only needed a pint. Anybody need onion sets?) I planted a few in another corner of the garden for green onions. So it will be another experiment.

Germination and Faith

Somehow, it came as a shock when I looked at the pots with the tomato seeds and saw some little plants growing on Friday. There are more today, and they will go under the grow light soon. My surprise made me think about whether, at some level, I didn't really believe that those seeds would become plants.

Many years ago, a Torah discussion at our chavurah centered on faith. Several people said that they were sad because they lacked the faith that, say, true believers like Habad Chasidim have. I thought then that we liberal Jews do have faith, but that we have to learn to draw on it. Many of the things that we do every day are really expressions of faith in other human beings. (Think of this the next time you drive. Or maybe don't think of it, it might be kind of disturbing to realize how much even the most defensive driver depends on the behavior of other drivers.)

Of course, having children is the ultimate act of faith, since it indicates that we believe that the world will be a good place to live in many years from now.

Planting seeds is an act of faith, too. We know the science, of course. But it still seems amazing at some very basic level that those little tomato seeds would actually grow into plants.

I'm sure this isn't original. But it's nice to think that there is some kind of optimistic lesson for us in the fact that we can put seeds in the earth and plants will grow.

Here's the garden in March. Not much growing but some weeds and the garlic.































Garlic in the winter. I planted it in the fall. Guess I need to work on the focus of this camera.

It's time for onions...not yet, I guess. I went to White's to buy onion sets, for my first attempt at growing onions. I now have a quart of tiny onions (yes, they are sold by volume) in a paper bag and firm instructions not to plant them before March 16. I guess they will go in next weekend.

I also started tomatoes and hot peppers. At least, I put the seeds in pots with a growing medium. We'll see if anything actually grows.

Ah, weeds even in March...it's a warm day and I just spent a little while cleaning up unwanted plants around the garlic.

Book Review of Sorts

Another thing to do when the garden is covered with snow (or not, this being the DC area) is to read. I just finished "The Ominvore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. There is lots of interesting stuff in it about our food supply. Strongly recommended for people interested in what they eat.

This, about why people choose hobbies, is pretty good:

"You can probably tell a lot about a person by his choice of atavism: whether he's drawn to the patient and solitary attenditveness of fishing, the strict mathematical syntax of building, the emotional drama of the hunt, or the mostly comic dialog with other species that unfolds in the garden."

"Mostly comic." Sounds a lot like my garden. And the joke is usually on me.

The perfect time to start a garden blog, I guess, is in winter. There's not much to do but watch the compost do its thing (or not, in my case---I seem to have perfectly preserved leaves from last year).

Gardeners are supposed to be busy looking at seed catalogs this time of year. In the past, I ignored this, and bought my plants in May. This year, I decided to do the whole growing from seed thing. The main reason is to try to grow cucumbers that don't succumb to cucumber wilt, but I'm going to try doing other plants as well. I have a grow light, pots and other stuff (what would a hobby be without equipment?) In the next few weeks, I'll discover if I can make anything grow inside.

Of course, I would not be surprised if my supposedly sterile growing medium sprouted a fine crop of weeds.