2026 planting time
Apr. 11th, 2026 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
squirrelitudePlanting time! Hooray!
This year I'm focusing on basil and hot and sweet peppers. I'm not going to grow any tomatoes, as I haven't gotten the kind of reward from them as I would like, and have such limited space. Some parsley, but mostly because I want to see if I can get parsleyworm caterpillars again. ^_^
I also planted more ornamentals than usual, as they're going directly into the ground in my neighbor's yard and so I don't have the space constraints: Tithonia, sunflower, strawflower, mallow, bachelor's buttons, four o'clocks, and love-in-a-puff (a good vine for the chain-link fence).
And a few seeds that probably aren't viable and where I wanted to just use up the packets: Miniature carrots, echinacea, columbine.
...I totally forgot to plant tomatillos. Getting on that.
----
I dug up the remaining sunchoke tubers from my ~1m long container garden tub and got about 5 kg of tubers. I wasn't expecting that much! These are from a few tubers I had planted in May 2024. I completely excavated the tub and filled it back in, and there were tubers all the way at the bottom and crammed into the corners. I got as much out as I could and I'm hoping there aren't any viable tubers left, because my hope is to grow the next batch from seed I saved, rather than from tubers.
...I'm a little concerned, though, at the amount of rocks in the soil. I got some of the soil from someone who said it was clean soil (no lead) but I've never tested it, and I want to run some tests on it before I eat a whole bunch of unpeeled tubers that were grown in that soil. I'm going to get one of those perovskite-based DIY lead test kits and see what I can learn. (They're not intended for quantitative testing, let alone for soil, but I want to do some experimentation.)
This year I'm focusing on basil and hot and sweet peppers. I'm not going to grow any tomatoes, as I haven't gotten the kind of reward from them as I would like, and have such limited space. Some parsley, but mostly because I want to see if I can get parsleyworm caterpillars again. ^_^
I also planted more ornamentals than usual, as they're going directly into the ground in my neighbor's yard and so I don't have the space constraints: Tithonia, sunflower, strawflower, mallow, bachelor's buttons, four o'clocks, and love-in-a-puff (a good vine for the chain-link fence).
And a few seeds that probably aren't viable and where I wanted to just use up the packets: Miniature carrots, echinacea, columbine.
...I totally forgot to plant tomatillos. Getting on that.
----
I dug up the remaining sunchoke tubers from my ~1m long container garden tub and got about 5 kg of tubers. I wasn't expecting that much! These are from a few tubers I had planted in May 2024. I completely excavated the tub and filled it back in, and there were tubers all the way at the bottom and crammed into the corners. I got as much out as I could and I'm hoping there aren't any viable tubers left, because my hope is to grow the next batch from seed I saved, rather than from tubers.
...I'm a little concerned, though, at the amount of rocks in the soil. I got some of the soil from someone who said it was clean soil (no lead) but I've never tested it, and I want to run some tests on it before I eat a whole bunch of unpeeled tubers that were grown in that soil. I'm going to get one of those perovskite-based DIY lead test kits and see what I can learn. (They're not intended for quantitative testing, let alone for soil, but I want to do some experimentation.)
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