Cold weather vegetable transplants

Right now I feel very much like we are playing the watch and wait game. I simply have to remember to water my plants every few days. I must admit, my broccoli was looking a little dry. But it's still alive and I'm looking forward to putting everything out in the garden. Well, the cold weather veggies anyway. I need to buy a more water permeable agrabon cover to keep the bugs out. Do you have a preference? I purchased mine locally the last few years but I think this year I'm going to order something online. 

In my life outside of gardening I've been dreaming about building a nice outdoor Aviary for my parrots. I plan on owning a beautiful macaw one day so the Aviary will need to be large enough to  accommodate a larger bird, prevent snakes from getting in, and have plenty of flying space, some shade, and some sunny spots. My birdies need their vitamin D. And when we clean out the Aviary, we can compost everything.

Learn about Romaine and Summertime lettuce from Anderson's Seed & Garden

This is the Romaine Lettuce Plato II.  I purchased the seeds at Anderson's Seed and Garden last year.  As you can see, the seeds are still doing well and had no problem sprouting.  I think after I harvest the spring crop I am going to try the Outback Romaine - it grows taller and is exceptionally heat tolerant.  Nothing like fresh lettuce with grilled hamburgers, especially when you're allergic to wheat and can't enjoy a hamburger bun. 

More about Romaine Lettuce Plato II from Anderson's Seed & Garden:

This popular Romaine has upright growth reaching 10 inches tall with large, thick, medium green, slightly rumpled leaves with creamy white centers. Tender, crisp, and sweet flavored. It is tolerant to many lettuce diseases and is slow bolting. Approximately 65 days to maturity.

This is the Summertime Lettuce.  I purchased the seeds from Andersons.

More about Summertime Lettuce from Andersons:

Summertime head lettuce is an excellent choice for cultivation in warm to hot climates. Here in Cache Valley it can be treated like loose leaf lettuce. This sure heading iceberg variety produces medium-sized, firm heads in about 75 days from direct seeding. Heads are medium green, with a short core. Summertime has demonstrated very slow bolting under high temperatures, and shows good resistance to rib discoloration and tip burn. 

Here is one of my many jalapenos transplants.  I have learned that peppers take a long time to sprout and need a heat mat.  I use an old heating pad.  To get the Serranos to sprout I actually had to turn it up on high.  Serranos take the longest. If you are going to start your own - plant January 1st.  I started the bell peppers and jalapenos the same time.  They really don't need to start until February 1st.  They can't go outside until all danger of frost has past unless you plan on covering them. 

Here's more about Jalapenos from Andersons: 

An improved, medium maturity Jalapeno type with blunt-ended, dark green fruit, ripening to red. The upright medium sized plants produce excellent yields of very hot peppers and provide very good foliage cover for them. A popular type for certain markets.  80 – 110 days to harvest.

Learn more about celery and see our new parrot!

Meet Mambo! She is our new Green Cheek Conure.  She is just a little different from Kiwi. She has no yellow under her wings and she is heavier.  She is a sweetheart and in just a few days she has decided she likes us.  Last night she surprised me when she jumped off her perch and ran across the top of her cage and was half way onto my finger before I had finished the words, "Step up".  I didn't even have a treat.   Wow! Green cheeks are fast learners and sweet.  She loves a head scratch.

Now more on the garden. 

More savings:

In the garden things are needing to be thinned.  Too many plants in one pot can cause damping off.  I prefer the $3 it cost me to start all of the plants inside verses the $4/plant it would cost me if I bought them as transplants at the garden center. That's major savings.  

Less work:

And because I use peat pots and fill the totes with water instead of watering the plants themselves, I water less.  Maybe once every 5 or 6 days.  

Less Waste:

When I thin the plants I don't just toss the sprouts. They become fresh treats for Kiwi and Mambo.  Well, at least Kiwi.  We are slowly getting Mambo used to fresh veggies and sprouts. She seems to love the BirdTricks diet  but is a little wary of the sprouts.

The celery is sprouting well. I am experimenting with it a little this year.  I have 12 in these little peat starters and a bunch in 3" peat pots.  I want to see what the roots do exactly and what that will do to the full size plants.   

Here's the celery in the 3" peat pots.  I will eventually thin them down to 1 plant. Last year I had great success with celery in my square foot garden. Here's a little info about Utah Celery 52-70 from Andersons Seed and Garden:

Celery requires 10-20 days at a temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit to germinate. Seed should be covered and kept moist. If soil dries out, it will delay germination. Keep celery well watered while growing and spray with a good fungicide once a week and fertilize every 2 to 3 weeks. Vigorous sturdy plant produces smooth, thick, long stalks that are often 9-11" to the first joint.  Should be blanched.  120 days to harvest.

And this photo of harvested celery is from their site as well:

The green onions are looking better every day.  These are from seeds that I collected from a plant that just pops up every year and goes to seed.  

You can see from this photo how colorful Kiwi is. He's been breaking off the feathers on his shoulders.  I have some calming drops for him and I have a humidifier on.  He started it when we left him alone on Christmas day.

You can see that Mambo has a little bit of breakage as well.  Hopefully after a visit to the vet for both parrots and the spring molt, they'll both be in tip top shape!

Sea World

I'd never been to Sea World before so this was an adventure.  We saw 90% of the exhibits before we left for the night. We stopped at California Pizza Kitchen across from the San Diego Temple for dinner and I had the best salad I've ever tasted.

 The penguin exhibit was a lot smaller than I expected but they were still cute.

The Shamu show was great but a little slow.  And when they say SOAK ZONE, they mean soak, not splash. And they are serious.  

I loved the macaws in the Pet show.

And the first whales we saw were the beluga whales. They were so pretty.  One was even feeding a baby.  

The dolphin show the best of the shows as far as what the animals could do.

And the kids had a great time with the manta rays.

There weren't any this big in there but we had a great time petting them.  They are super soft and smooth.

We enjoyed The Polar Express 4-D and it was cool because it was our first 4-D experience.  By the time we got done with all of the parks I was tired of getting sprayed in the face.  

We purchased a drink when we got there and then refills were 99 cents.  I had a hard time convincing my family that root beer outside of Utah has caffeine in it. It was mostly a sprite day.

This was the Shamu Christmas show.  The live choir and sign language choir was great.

And we loved all the Christmas decor.

Yellowstone National Park - the continuing story

I remember seeing really great muds pots back when I went with my husband's family to Yellowstone.  That was in the Spring of 1999.  So I wanted to share the mud pots with my kids because we had view most of the cool stuff in Yellowstone by this point in the trip.  Of course I am not showing these in the order they were taken.  

I just thought that boiling mud was fascinating for some reason.

This is in the Artist Paint Pots area but these are mud pots not paint pots.

The Artist Paint Pots were pretty and the walk up the side of the mountain was awe inspiring.  It's worth the little walk.  It was lovely to see the colors splashing all over.  Fascinating that there were bright blue, crimson, and chalk white pots while we were there.  You'll learn that the landscape is forever changing in Yellowstone.  Each visit offers something unique.

There are a lot of old dead trees in Yellowstone.  And it's not because of the big devastating fire in the 80's.  No, it's the boiling water.  Once in a while a small earthquake opens a new crack and everything starts to boil and the trees die from the intense heat.  The ground is unstable to you often get to see their roots, which fascinate me, being a gardener and all.  

This is the one I remember from 1999 except that is was more muddy back then.

It was amazing to be driving along and see the beautiful trees and then suddenly steam and a whole bunch of dead spots.