October Updates

i finally have reason to blog after some progress throughout october.

let's start with my mother's 5 year old favorite that only blossoms under my care. it had been neglected for quite some time but after starting to tend to it last august, it's been blooming endlessly for the past 6 weeks. does anyone know what this plant is called?

squash progress:

this was the first one i sprouted last september, here it is as of october 9

 

and here it is as of october 31. beside it is another i started a week or so after.

i recently thought i lost my touch sprouting my usuals like papaya and squash and was so excited with the first butternut sprout. turns out i was just impatient and since then i managed to sprout a dozen or so more and gave away a few. i've replanted 3 others around the yard and that should keep me in squash from december until february or march next year. all the same, i'll be sowing regularly from now on so i'll never run out of this personal favorite.

tomato update:

here they are as of october 9. a few died after up-planting from starter cups to milk cartons. that happens and is to be expected so no big deal. that's why we should sow more than we want - we can always give away what we don't have space for eventually.

 

and here they are as of halloween - need to be spaced out as they grow fast - i'm just hoping this batch will be productive.

finally, this is the first one to fruit from the august 15 sowing - took less than three months this time around and i am grateful the seeds i saved from store bought tomatoes weren't duds. hopefully the rest will follow even though most of them are limited to 1 liter containers.

 and this is what i mean - both these were sown in the first week of september and the one in the smaller cup managed to put on almost as much growth despite a container a third of the size. it's quite root-bound but as long as it could get nutrition from the wicking tray, then it will find a way to grow. of course i up-planted the little guy into a milk carton after taking the photos - no sense in restraining growth... or was it among the ones i transplanted directly into the ground? i've managed three direct-to-ground transplants so far and will have to do a few more but it's been rainy since october 28.

and here are two of the potted ones that will hopefully fruit soon too. there are four of five more but i've run out of clay pots so all transplants from hereon will be direct-to-ground.

other new stuff: 

as i mentioned, i try to sow a new batch of misc stuff every week or so and here are the promising ones.

here they were as of october 9

and this is them by halloween

seeds saved from store bought bell peppers. there are a few papaya there too - i thought these would never sprout. there're two or three basil from cuttings and one or two from seed as well.

and here are three starter trays with a few seedlings that got moved into cups on hallow's eve. 

so far, this new season for 2017 has been more successful and speedier than all my previous efforts since i started gardening all those many years ago. much of the progress is from geeking out - watching hundreds and hundreds of youtube videos and reading thru endless message board posts and forums. lots of what i saw i filtered but basically it was concepts of soil care and maintaining organic enrichment thru biochar, urine, wood ash, fermented food waste and lots of well-rotted biomass and compost that made the difference this time. i hope to one day put together a compendium of my favorite sources and give due recognition but it was mainly the living web farms youtube channel and the permies forum which inspired me to put on my garden gloves again.

so there, i will conclude this october installment.  may your garden be more lush than mine.