I’ve gotten to the point where my seedlings have become a bit unmanageable. The tomatoes are all mixed up, I only know the variety for sure of 9 of them.
CLICK ON THE PICTURE!
I’m in the N.C. Mountains (zone 7) and Spent a few days this week cleaning leaves and weeds out of my raised beds, and adding in some “Kickin’ Chickin’” composted cow and chicken manure. I can’t plant anything till last frost date which is a week after Mother’s Day. A lot of perineals are coming up nicely and the Peonies along the outside edge of the garden fence have huge buds already. The roses from Jackson Perkins should be here any day…. They are going along the front side of the fence and a climbing one over the entrance arbor. I could not plant them last year because garden and fence was new and fence wood had to cure for several months so I could not paint it white till after growth died back late fall. I’m so excited to add the roses this spring.
QUESTIONs:
(1) Has anyone grown Pineapple Sage. Mine was planted last year, grew 3 feet high and full and lovely blooming all summer and fall. I cut it back for winter and the root system is huge and thick and and the 3 x 5 inches sticking above ground appears to be healthy. But unlike the other perineals there is no sign of new growth yet. Perhaps the new growth will be late spring when it gets much warmer? I’m hoping that is the case.
(2) My tomatoes did not do well last summer. Maybe I didn’t use the right variety. Anyone in zone 7 have a recommendation of a good variety to use? I want big red juicy ones.
This week the weather looks favorable so the cabbage, lettuce, and onion sets are going in.
The warm weather stuff I started in flats is going gangbusters.
Once some of the cool weather crops are out of the flats, stuff like basil is going in.
Good Morning, Everybody!
:-)
Stuff is doing great in the green house. Waiting for the weather to warm up. Put some corn in and a melon, squash and cuc plants by the sunny side of the house as an experiment. Broccoli is trying to grow past the ants feeding on them. Peas are in and i stopped buying burpee seeds. Had trouble germinating pickle cucs, beans, corn over the winter, and their peas are barely hanging on outside, so went to gurneys and johnnies. zone 7.
I only started one tray of seedlings this year. I’m determined to find varieties that do well direct-sown in my climate, but for things like luffa gourds and TPS I’m giving them a head start. Only this time I didn’t inoculate the starting soil with known beneficial fungi like I usually do, and it became a tray of fur.
So, today I added colloidal silver to the watering can. It’s supposed to be a pretty strong anti-fungal, and at least some of the studies I found regarding its use on plants say that it won’t hurt the majority of other life in the soil. We’ll see. If it works I may try it on my strawberry plants, they get a fungus every year that kills the berries before they ripen.
In spite of the fur, the little TPS seedlings were starting to show! Some of them were recent purchases, but others range in ages up to 12 years old. Every single cell showed signs of life, no matter how old the seeds were. I might have to designate a larger section in the garden for them, because I was expecting a much lower germination rate.
(TPS = True Potato Seed, in case anyone was wondering.)
It was a mostly cool and wet week here in Central Missouri. Yesterday popped off sunny and 80°. Today it’s back to cool and damp.
I bought three potted rhubarb plants last week. I’ve left them outside the last few days and they’re looking happy. Need to stick them in the dirt today. Also have some more yukon gold potatoes that need to be planted.
Finally found a handful of morels yesterday. All scouts. I’ll check a couple other spots today. Lots of walking is good for old fat man.
In 2017, AeroFarms received a $2 million grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), a nonprofit organization created in 2014 via the Farm Bill, to improve the characteristics of plants grown indoors to feed urban populations. As of 2021, AeroFarms already had nine farms and was working on building a tenth. They state that they can go from seed to harvest in 15 days with their patented technology. In 2021, Cargill announced its partnership with Aerofarms in a multi-year research collaboration on extending cocoa bean yields by experimenting with indoor growing technologies.
In February, 2021, the CEO of AeroFarms released a short video describing how they utilized one of their ten farms to scale up proteins for the Covid jab and boosters. They also indicated in a presentation that they had participated in growing an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient for Covid-19 therapeutic trial sponsored by the NIH.(COVID chewing gum)
CRISPR tech, mRNA, 15 days from seed to harvest? Food plants that never see the light of day or the sun. Ain't natural.
AeroFarms serves grocery stores, distributors, and online grocers, some of which include:
Amazon Fresh
Baldor Specialty Foods
FreshDirect Express online grocer
ShopRite
Singapore Airlines
Stop and Shop
Walmart
Whole Foods
80 Acres Farms was founded in 2015 by Mike Zelkind and Tisha Livingston and is a private company headquartered in Hamilton, OH. They provide fruits and vegetables to over 600 retail and food service locations. Their robot-powered indoor farms are said to produce 300 times more food than a conventional farm, while using 100% renewable energy and consuming 97% less water.
Kroger has been selling their greens and vegetables at 32 of their stores, and in 2021 expanded to 316 additional stores after a 15-month pilot program. These stores are all located in:
Alabama
Arkansas
Indiana
Kentucky
North Carolina
Ohio
Vertical farming to feed the masses in the cities? Fine. Doing it all with very high tech methods like CRISPR, mRNA, Gene Editing? not so much. FrankenSalad
I think I'm going to make it my goal to grow salad greens year round and/or buy from a local Farmer's Market.