The Creations of M. Nicole van Dam ®

Today I planted the remining plants from the BioDome – mostly tomatoes, peppers, eggplants – so now the veggie garden is failry well planted – with brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, leek, beets, carrots, radishes, onions, kale, swiss chard, corn, sugar snap peas, sunflowers, strawberries, blueberries, black berries, raspberries, grapes, artichoke, basil, asaparagus, zuccini.  Notably weak in terms of successful BioDome sproutings were the watermelon, spinach and zuccini, and weak amongs the transplants were (surprsingly) the watermelon and sunflowers.  The strongest success stories so far are the sugar snap peas (from the Park Seed biodome) and strawberries (from roots from Burpee).  I intend to plant another biodome tranch of spinach, sunflowers, watermelon, a few more corn, a bit more basil, and some marigolds.  Although it’s too soon to tell re transplant success from the biodome, the tomatoes were very prolific in the biodome.  However, sadly, within an hour of transplanting these biodome tomato sproutings, several entire transplanted tomato plants were inexplicably wilting, so I am wondering what if any of these tomatoes will be left by the morning.

GARDEN GATE & MAIN BOX:

Garden Gate leading to the vegetable garden, with the lucky horseshoe I found in the garden.

In the box closest to the gate, what I think of as the main box, you see celery leftover from last year.  Also in that box are three blueberry plants from last year, and freshly transplanted (from the BioDome) kale, swiss chard, onions, leek, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, beets. To the left of the main box is a small narrow box, newly built this year, that I call the “Vino Box” because it has in it a grape vine – however this box, while built for the grapevine, all has in it strawberries (there were too many strawberries to plant in the berry box, so these are the “spillover” strawberries), cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and one tomato plant.  Behind the “main box” is the largest box – a long box that has in it corn, tomatoes, beets, peppers, eggplants, basil, sunflowers, sugar snap peas, asaparagus, zuccini – this large box, which because of the tomatoes and peppers and eggplants I am calling the “Italiano Box” – is also newly built this year.  To the right of the main box, not seen on the above photo – is the “berry box” – with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries – YUM!  Below is a photo showing some of the berry box.  I left a space in the middle for me to stand in, to harvest the berries (she writes optimistically!)

BERRY BOX:

Looking down the newly built and planted “ITALIANO BOX”:

VINO BOX:

The view from my Vegetable garden – as inspiring for my art as the garden itself is therapeutic – see the rolling green hills and mountains:

Elsewhere in the garden are many young fruit trees, including various species of pear, Asian pear, peaches, cherries, apple, lime, lemon (both pink and yellow), orange, mandarine, pummelo, grapefruit (ruby red of course!), apricot, persimmon, pomegranite, loquat, plum, banana, mango, honeyberry, with fig to be planted this year.  Some of these fruit trees were victim to my 100 pound Leonberger’s playful habits, but seem to be bravely trying to sprout this year nonetheless – we will see if these are able to bear fruit since they are sprouting from the base, below any grafting that may have been done.  Here are some random pictures of fruit trees and other blossoms around the garden – I so enjoy them all!

We have sprouts!  Within just a few days, the first biodome we planted had sprouts – now all 3 day.  The radishes came up first, but the corn and sunflowers are growing unbelievably fast, with the kale not far behind!  Tomatoes sprouting too – the Japanese Black Trifle tomatoes seem to be doing the fastest growth so far.  How fun!

Am thinking that we will need to start using the fertilizer packet that came with the biodomes now… will need to research that 🙂

Since I have faaaaar more biodomes than seeds, have ordered two more double jumbo biodomes.  My goodness!

All week long seeds and seeds and seeds have arrived from various catalogs – but no seed starter to plant them in yet!  Then yesterday, f.i.n.a.l.l.y, the first seed starter box arrived.  So far I like it – time will tell how much grows.  I chose the Park Seed biodome seed starter planter kit.  Again, only ONE of the three I ordered arrived – hopefully the other two will arrive today.  FYI, last year I used the Jiffy seed starter covered trays, that I bought at Home Depot.  It was pretty easy BUT a little messy and the Jiffy plastic lid to cover the planting tray just wasn’t tall enough to handle the larger sprouts.  In addition, perhaps because of my ineptitude, several seeds just didn’t start, and mold became an issue.  This year, I did a bit more research, and solely because of the taller lid room, I chose the Park Seed catalog’s bio dome brand so I could “whelp” the seedlings a bit longer.  I think it was a good sign that Park Seed was sold out of certain models of their biodome, but they push it pretty savvily in their catalog, and the potentially reusuable aspect is nice.

More specifically, for you newbies like me, the Park Seed bio dome is a seed starter tray with a lid, and inside the tray fits a styrofoam-ish white holder that is reusable (or so they say), and inside those white styrofoam-ish trays goes individual “bio sponges” that will ultimately hold the seed and be transplanted with the seed.

Here is a picture of the tray and white styrofoamsih thing, and the bag of bio sponges that comes with it:

I chose the jumbo size bio sponges, to be placed in their jumbo dual tray model (ie, two side-by-side white styrofoamish things), because it seemed like the regular size bio sponges were a little small to start tomatoes, etc.  I figured more dirt can’t hurt, right?

What I liked:  I had some pleasant surprises today when I planted this first bio dome seed starting box:

1.  You just put the dark brown “biosponges” in water for 15-20 minutes, and they plump up, but don’t make a mess!

2.  Those brown sponges already have a little hole down the middle for putting the seeds, so easy to do, and again less mess, more speed.

3.  The lid really is tall, and it has little plastic vents.  Time will tell if the vents work at all, but it seems like a nice gimic at least.  I will say that the black vent things come off pretty easily, but my husband-the-engineer was able to put it all together again easily 🙂

4.  The whole kit comes with fertilizer for the kit, a little added bonus.

Here is what the bio dome looks like as of 8am, when I finished planting the first box: