>>120020
Maybe you could plant some sage.

>>120033
I did have one sage plant last year and it grew very well, but I ended up not using it much at all. I really don't like the smell of sage and its recipe uses for me seem really limited (poultry I think). I think I still have some seeds from last year somewhere so maybe I could grow some in a pot.
After looking at this stuff, it turns out I probably will buy a dehydrator. It's used for herbs and apparently the dried stuff you make yourself is still a lot better than the dried stuff in the store. And if I want to try making potpourri I think it's used for that as well.

I think I'm going to buy more Reimu turnips too https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/turnips/hakurei-f1-turnip-seed-706.html
I grew them in a container last year and they REALLY grew well even when they were stuffed together, but apparently I never took a picture of them.
Might try growing this "leaf celery" https://www.johnnyseeds.com/herbs/herbs-for-salad-mix/cutting-celery-herb-seed-922.html because my attempts to grow celery failed last year. Although, I'll try again. With onion, carrot and celery being such a common mix in so many recipes I'd really like to be able to grow them all myself. Celery is apparently infamous for being difficult to grow...

Yep, just checked and I had Reimu seeds in the fridge alongside sage and some other stuff. It's recommended to keep seeds in the fridge if you're going to attempt to hold onto them.
I also read that you almost need to do it for stuff like lavender, it's called stratification and it mimics winter conditions https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/seed-stratification/9646.html

Let's see... February 23rd I have planted some San Marzano II tomatoes (sauce tomatoes), strawberry (two kinds) and celery seeds in soil blocks. Nothing exciting to look at, it's just dirt. This is just a memo for me to remember.
Still waiting on my main order of seeds to arrive.

I'm not done with all of them (need to get more potting soil), but here are what the soil blocks look like. If you REALLY want to be efficient there's a smaller size for these, but I didn't want to spend the money. It's going to be pretty boring for the next few weeks because they'll take time to germinate. Unless something crazy happens I won't have anything interesting to post for a while. Lots of boring preparation now. There IS sage in here, but not much because I just want one plant that I'll hopefully keep around inside.

>>120316
Brownies

>>120316
Actually I do have something cool to report! The picture last night was using it, but you couldn't tell because I had no idea how to use it. After procrastinating a bunch (and forgetting about it) I successfully cracked my brother's old smartphone that has a very nice camera on it. I don't have any phone service, but I'm using it as a camera.
Oh, man, this is going to be amazing this year. There's no way I'm not going to have a growth blog now.
Here you can see that last year's strawberry and chives are coming back already. (The green area is a separate pic obviously).

>>120323
Actually I don't think I need JPG quality that high for these.. 5.4mb is a bit too much.
Here are more onions that I completely missed on harvesting... or maybe they split off or something. I don't remember how onions work.

>>120324
Tulips that come back every year. My mom planted these like 15 years ago. They look great for a couple weeks with their flowers, but then the flowers fall off and they look like weeds for 7 months until they die off in autumn. I don't think I'd plant tulips myself for this reason, although it does look nice at the very beginning of spring. (need to work on the focus thing in this phone)

Nice pics! You are definitely going to take pictures of your cat, right?

>>120323
>I don't have any phone service
It should be able to connect to wifi I think?

>>120344
I guess I could try that, but it didn't seem to work. I need to do more troubleshooting, I guess.

Here is a week of growth for the tomatoes. Middle pic was about 3 days ago and right pic is today,
These seem to grow far faster than other stuff. You can see in the right image that it's starting to grow its 'true leaves' in the middle.
The other plants are still tiny sprouts that look nearly identical. The heat mat I got is already making the other plants in the tray seemingly grow faster than other stuff, so maybe I should buy a few more of them. Then again, if I just close the air conditioning vent in this south-facing room the plants are in it will get quite warm up in a few weeks.

>>120811
The tiny blueberry plants that I bought last year that I was worried died in shipping (because there was a delay) turned out to just be dormant for so long. It's nice to see them come back to life. They're in tiny pots, but I'll move them into bigger ones in a month or two.

>>120812
and lastly a pic that is boring except that it's catnip. I thought about growing this outside, but I've heard stories of it bringing neighbor cats into the garden, which sounds nice except that they can be destructive to plants

I'm glad I resisted the urge to plant because freezing is in next week's forecast. I have something interesting to note, though, and that's that one of my spider plants is budding. That's not amazing on its own, but it's a clone split off from the main plant. This smaller clone that isn't even connected to the dirt and relies on a previous budding branch is itself preparing to produce another set of clones.
It's cool, but I don't think I can let it do this. One little root system in a pot supporting 2 sets of clones is a bit much.

Earth Day (thanks >>>/spg/3014) update.
I decided not to do weekly updates for sprouts because it's not that exciting. The garden is a bit of a mess right now because stuff isn't sprouting as much as it should be. I don't know if something is eating the sprouts or if it's the weeks of windy days with no rain; there's a limit to how much watering I can do to cancel out the drying process.
Anyway...
I think I mentioned that the onions came back earlier, and since it's year two of their life cycle they'll produce flowers this year. If you want the best onions you're supposed to cut the flowers off so it doesn't spend energy on it, but I think the novelty of seeing onion flowers is more interesting and I thought I pulled out all the onions last year anyway.
It's out of focus unfortunately, but you can see the bulb-like thing that will turn into a flower near the middle. Just like with chives the flower stalk is far more firm than the other ones. I looked it up and onion flowers don't look that amazing, but it will still be cool to see.

Transplanted the tomatoes seen here >>120811
It's really cool to have grown them from seed. You can get tomato plants quite cheaply since they're so popular and abundant, but I'm not sure if this specific variety would have been available locally (San Marzano II) and even then I don't regret spending time to grow them from seed. The price is cheaper, sure, but just seeing the process was worth it.
You can see how DRY the dirt is even though I watered last night, so like 12 hours later it looks like a desert. Thanks, wind.

Soybeans, specifically a Japanese variety that's supposed to be good for edamame which my mom likes a lot. The little plants are the bottom are uhhh... what were they again... radish or turnip or something. It grows short to the ground and has a 'compatible' root system that goes straight down instead of interfering with the soybeans. The leaves spread out wide to block weeds and help preserve moisture while the soybeans are trellis plants that grow straight up.
This 'companion plant' system is pretty cool, but it's definitely more work at the beginning.

Example of failed companion planting. This entire row was supposed to have pea plants in the middle next to the carrots on the left, but nope. 3 pea plants (next to purple dots).
Instead I'm growing peas densely in another row and I'm going to try transplanting them to fill out this row.
I wish I knew why the peas failed to sprout. I watered them a whole lot so it could have been overwatering, but if I didn't overwater it would have turned into a block of dry dirt. Thanks again, wind.

I bought two more packs of peas and even a different variety and pre-germinated them inside a wet towel indoors and it seems to have done the trick on this other row. Really eager to eat fresh peas since I've only had them after they've been frozen and microwaved.

I have other plants but I'm going to limit what I screenshot.
Anyway here's a chives plant that came back from last year. I cut off all but one of the flowers because I'm worried it might have died otherwise, like the strawberry plant I had last year that had 6 strawberries and 4 leaves and died from its own mistake (and my ignorance in not cutting off the flowers).

>screenshot
Er I mean picture. Not used to this 'real life' thing.

Lastly the best picture, a close-up of a chives flower that's already in the process of drying up near the top, so I probably should have taken this picture last week.

very cool update

>>123636
>I think I mentioned that the onions came back earlier, and since it's year two of their life cycle they'll produce flowers this year.
Ohhh yeah, this is just your second year doing this. How much of What you're growing came back from last year's yield? Seems like you have strawberries, chives, and onions, but was there anything else? And will you be able to get some seeds from the San Marzano II's you're growing this year that you'll be able to use the next? Also from what I understand of the sauce process for San Marzano's they're best made into sauce when canned, though I grew some last year and made them into sauce fresh and it wasn't bad at all either. I really like the variety you have going here compared to what I tried last year and failed with just making a huge thing of tomato sauce and some parsley/catnip... Think targeting certain meals would be much better (and strawberries, love strawberries though don't know if my porch garden has the space for them).

>I cut off all but one of the flowers because I'm worried it might have died otherwise, like the strawberry plant I had last year that had 6 strawberries and 4 leaves and died from its own mistake (and my ignorance in not cutting off the flowers).
Uhhh, just a bit confused here are you supposed to cut off all the strawberry flowers or leave one of them...

>>123643
Really cool pic

Also do you need to worry with the onion at all about your cats getting near and trying to nibble on it, or is it safe and they won't intentionally poison themselves?

>>123666
>How much of What you're growing came back from last year's yield? Seems like you have strawberries, chives, and onions, but was there anything else?
Just those, and they were surprises because I wasn't planning on any of it. I was pretty sure I pulled out every onion and I tore through the entire garden with a lawnmower and then a tilling machine. I really wasn't expecting anything to survive. Nature is pretty impressive. Also I have an onion growing in the lawn itself and I forgot to take a picture of it. It's just three little tendrils poking out but it's pretty funny.
It was only one small strawberry plant, and it's not doing too well. Somehow it's missing 70% of its leaves which isn't a good sign. I bought some more strawberry plants, though, but I think I'm going to keep them in containers since it's easier to manage.

>will you be able to get some seeds from the San Marzano II's you're growing this year that you'll be able to use the next?
Yeah, it's an heirloom plant which means it's genetically stable. The newer hybrid stuff has reduced fecundity or fails to keep its hybrid traits for the next generation. I triple planted the seeds in each little cube and all 3 germinated each time so I used 24 seeds out of the 80 or so in the pack. I'm thinking of adding more since I have so many seeds left over.

>from what I understand of the sauce process for San Marzano's they're best made into sauce when canned
Yeah, they're specifically known as paste tomatoes. Lots of juice and flesh within a thin skin and few seeds. I actually learned of them because of this cooking youtuber which someone linked here once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMFUKibW-c
Basically the gist of it is that he thinks they're the best, but they're obviously far more expensive than the others when you buy them. But, it's not like it costs me more to grow than other types of tomatoes.
Also, speaking of tomatoes I tried something new with these that I learned last year too late. You tear off the lower leaves of the plant and submerge the plant deeper into the soil when transplanting. Tomatoes, clearly an advanced vine species meant to survive forever, grows new roots out from the parts of its stalk that makes contact with soil. So, you cut off the leaves and bury the lower part of the stem when transplanting and you trade off a slower start for a far more robust plant later on.

(also this plant looks a little yellow, I hope it's doing okay...)

>>123666
> Think targeting certain meals would be much better
That's not a bad idea. My current plan is growing a lot of stuff to throw into a food processor I bought and then attempt to make good vegetable smoothie things. If I can't, I'll just chug it down since I'm pretty good at that.
Ohh now I remember. These little things here are golden beets: >>123639 https://www.rareseeds.com/beet-golden

>Uhhh, just a bit confused here are you supposed to cut off all the strawberry flowers or leave one of them...
Not exactly, but that's probably what you'd do if you wanted to grow the biggest one possible.
It's hugely energy intensive for a plant to produce seeds/fruit. When you want a plant to focus on establishing itself you cut off the flowers so it can redirect the energy to growing more roots or leaves. This was all news to me, I saw a strawberry plant that had 4 flowers on it and 4 leaves and thought "Wow, so productive, I have to buy this one" but there's a reason the other plants weren't that way. The plant had no chance to survive when it was pulling all of its resources into so many fruit when it didn't have the, uh, "infrastructure" to support it. I also read that you're not supposed to allow strawberry runners to spread until year three.

I've removed about a dozen strawberry flowers across 5 plants so far and will probably allow them to be pollinated in a month or so. It feels bad to know I'm removing future fruit, but it will allow the plants to grow stronger and might make the fruit taste better, too.

>Also do you need to worry with the onion at all about your cats getting near and trying to nibble on it, or is it safe and they won't intentionally poison themselves?
Oh, I only have an indoor cat. I'm pretty sure onions and chives are strongly repellent to other mammals, though. Humans have learned to enjoy pungent stuff, but it's a protection against other animals. That's why last year I planted the strawberries next to the chives, although it turns out I still had to cage them.

>>123640
>but if I didn't overwater it would have turned into a block of dry dirt. Thanks again, wind.
Isn't molch supposed to help with that sort of thing?

One of the tomato plants snapped in half...

>>123678
Yeah, but mulch also blocks sprouts and since most of my plants are still in the sprouting stage I can't really use it. And a lot of the stuff I'm growing isn't really compatible with mulch to begin with since it's small and compact. I'll put mulch around the tomatoes in a couple weeks. My priority was getting as much stuff in the ground as I could because of pic related.
Quite worried about the 'breezy' stuff... might have to stake the tomatoes even though they're so small.

Took a picture of a pea plant before transplanting it. The brown thing in the middle is the pea, otherwise known as the seed casing thing. I guess being able to easily remove a plant like this is one of the bonuses of tilling and raking the soil to make it loose.

The lawn onion. Doesn't seem to be doing too well, but that's probably what you'd expect when it's surrounded by grass roots on all sides. In fact, now that I'm looking at it in picture form the brown tips mean it's about to go dormant so I should probably pull it out soon.

Strawberry flower. I think I'll let this one fruit.
And that's it for now.

I didn't have enough fencing to actually close off the sprouts from the rabbit, so uhh... cardboard box on one side. There's still a big opening, but I'm hoping the tomatoes and the stakes between them keep the rabbits away.
There's only 2 garden stakes here for the cardboard, but I added 6 more. Strong storms and winds in the next couple days so I'll have to see how this actually works. Localized flood danger for the garden itself, but hopefully it has enough drainage. The mulch closest to the camera at the bottom is actually about 8 inches (20cm) deep because that area was prone to flooding last year. The droopy stuff in the middle is honeywort (flowers) that didn't seem to grow very well in the little dirt cubes, but they're at least alive. I planted more of them so hopefully those sprout.
This will be the first great storm of this year's garden, but most this stuff is too close to the ground to be affected by wind. Godspeed, tomatoes...

>>123719
Looks like free meat to me

>>123756
Nah, I like seeing them around and I don't mind if they nibble on leaves once plants are actually grown and won't die from it. This area isn't as rural as it used to be and I appreciate any animals I'm able to see. There's some holes in the fencing between yards that could be fixed, but there seems to be an understanding to keep it open for rabbits to run around. (or maybe people are just lazy, but it doesn't seem to be the case)

>>123719
The fat rabbit

Garden survived. Not much I can do when there's 4 inches (10cm) of rain in a few hours. I'm going to have to replace some mulch since it's floating around to the other side...
Some random neighbor woman started talking at 0:14 which kills the serenity of the audio god damn it. I'm not going back out there to film it again. Man, that angers me, it sounds so nice apart from that.

Since big storms were predicted I made a shielded area for the young potted plants. They were previously all crowded together, but now they're spaced out again to get some sunlight.
Now THIS is pure audio bliss. This is the best part of any weather event if you ask me. Light rainfall after a storm with birds chirping to each other. The only thing better is to be in a forest and have some wind rustling leaves at the same time.
The transparent plastic container shows the amount of rainfall since I made sure to keep it empty beforehand.

Lastly, these poor pea plants near a wall are quite submerged. I hope they're alright. It's going to take a few days for this area to dry out, so I'm worried. I don't know what to do in this kind of situation, this is just a low area where water collects when there's a lot of rain.
I guess in the future I could stack some dirt where the peas are and let gravity do the rest, but that's bad for the 99% of the time when there's little rain and I'd want water to move to the area. I guess if I was some sort of sustenance farmer I'd invest in a water pump.

>>123843
very very nice sounds but also very very bad situation
is the mulch and that still floating around? if there are clusters i would try kinda pushing them against something they could stick to (or maybe bunch them up) but i can't tell if there is any such spot at all

>>123844
AAAAAAAAAAAA! Man that's gotta suck when nature just decides to take a big wrecking ball to your plans. I guess at the very least this maybe fertilizes sorta the soil maybe? Or maybe not. Feels like a few days of being submerged would be devastating to a plant, but maybe they can survive somehow... Hopefully at least.

Also are peas not the plant you grow on a fence-like setup? Feel like I've seen them grown that way before, but maybe it's another type of bean.

Everything survived the flooding, even the peas here >>123844
But, it's a huge hassle to do stuff outside in all the mud and some things simply can't be done due to soil softness, like planting the stakes. I really need to get the stakes in the ground and netting placed so the peas and beans can attach to them.
The neat and orderly rows of mulch between the dirt rows have been wrecked by dirt transported by the water. The whole reason to have rows of mulch is to NOT have dirt there since weeds love to sprout from it. So now I uhh... well I guess once it dries out I'll try to rinse out the mulch in plastic containers or something? This sucks.
5 days ago: 4 inches of rain
2 days ago: 2 inches of rain (in 15 minutes)
Tonight: 2 inches of rain
Saturday: ??? inches of rain

I guess we're safe from drought. I didn't take any pictures because it's so messy and wet and ugly, but I guess I could do it soon.

>>123845
Yeah it's mulch that was visibly floating around. The dirt is the reason why the water is brown. The rows of dirt for plants are higher in elevation so there isn't much danger of the mulch flowing into it. It's aforementioned dirt moving to the rows of mulch that SUCKS.

>>123872
My success rate for these peas and beans were like 30% so I didn't put anything down until I knew stuff was actually going to survive. I had to do a lot of transplanting which stakes and netting would interfere with.

Sigh... so much rain. I just looked and the rainfall total from last 10 days excluding today is 7 inches, and today will add another 2 inches I bet.
This is going to be such a mess...

Sigh again.
Everything except the peas and carrots and maybe a couple bean plants is just drowned out; the planted seeds have rotted from soaking in water for a week. There was supposed to be a bunch of stuff sprouting by now to block weeds, but instead it's the weeds that are sprouting and it's not good to pull stuff out when it's so wet (could drag other plant roots with it). This is severely discouraging. I don't know how people deal with this stuff. If I could go 5 days without rain then I could attempt to fix this, but I don't know when that will happen.
I can't really complain since other areas are under severe warning for tornadoes today and I'm only "high/moderate". But I'll be getting 1-3 more inches of rain tonight. Hooray.

I wonder how much industrial farming builds stuff like drainage canals and stuff. If that's even possible

on topic sager deserved it

At least the container stuff is doing well since I'm able to move it around. The strawberries are the most striking since they're far ahead of the others. Growing strawberries in containers is apparently something well known that anyone can do as long as they have access to sunlight. They're very compact plants.

Marigold sprouts. These things have such cool star-like leaf designs. They're known for being very good at keeping bad bugs away and the roots are somehow good at combating nematodes. I had planned to transfer these into the garden, but... bleh.
Well, I'm sure I'll manage to transplant some of them at least.

Chamomile is another plant with attractive leaves. I planted some of these in the garden directly but they're all dead for sure, or maybe they'll sprout when there's dirt again instead of mud soup.
Well, that's it for this update. I have other pots with sprouts in them but they're tiny and unremarkable.

The latest Jellyfish episode had some microgreens in them which was quite weird to see. I think the daughter called them pea sprouts. A "microgreen" isn't a specific plant, but rather anything that's harvested when it's a few weeks old. It's mostly leafy greens, but really anything could work.
It's extremely low maintenance since plants that young still get a lot of their nutrition and energy from the seed itself so the light requirement isn't very high. There's been some research and they're quite nutritious and simple to grow so they've been quite a fad among yuppies for a few years. Baby spinach and bean sprouts are both microgreens technically.
This container here is actually way too deep. It could be 1/3rd as deep since sprouts don't have large roots.