Starter Soil

I mix my own.  I use up a large trash barrel each year.  It works great for me!

Start with a sifter.  I made one 2'x2' of 2"x4" boards covered on the bottom with 1/4" hardware cloth (wire mesh). 

My formula is:
4 parts finished compost
2 parts peat moss
1 part vermiculite
1/2 part perlite

I have a large plastic bin that fits under the sifter.  I add scoops of each item into the sifter and rub it around (wearing heavy leather gloves).  When it is mostly gone and just unsiftable lumps left, I add the sifted material to the trash barrel and the unsifted material to a small bucket

After a 2nd load into the barrel, I stir it all around

Repeat, repeat, repeat...

When I'm done, I have a whole barrel of sifted starter soil and 1 bucket of peat clumps.  I pound that as best I can with a 4"x4"x4' post and toss it into the compost bin.

I re-use planting 6-pack cels, but I soak them in a mild bleach solution in the basement laundry tub and rinse them 3 times.  I have great germination, so no problem there. 

I also cut one one cell out of a 11"x22" flat for ease of watering.  There is always SOME plant I can get by with having 5 of, LOL!

So, this week's project is making more starter soil.

Gardening Organization

I love this time of year almost as much as the first harvest.  Planning is in my blood!

The catalogs arrive daily, but that doesn't matter.  Most are junky scammy ones.  I would mention names but I don't feel like getting arguements about them.  I'll just say that if you keep getting catalogs from places you never order from, those are probably them.  LOL!

The catalogs I like are Johnny's, Territorial, Victory, Selected Seeds, and Brent&Becky's.  Burpee's is good too, but I never end up ordering from them these days.

I have a SYSTEM for keeping seeds and deciding when to plant them inside and out.  My seeds are kept refrigerated in medical specimen vials I found cheap years ago.  They last years longer that way.  I number the vials on top and on the sides.

The tray was easy.  I drilled holes the size of the vial bottoms in a piece of plywood and glued another piece under it.  I'm going to build a better one with a 2nd board 1/2 way up (the current bottom holes are tight to hold the vials upright).  But the main point is that the seeds are all in one tray, sealed and refrigerated (in a basement refrigerator also used as a root cellar for potatoes and carrots and such).

I keep a list of the vial contents using Excel (for easy columns).  A part of it looks like this:

	SEEDLIST 2018
	VEGETABLES
VIAL	CROP	TYPE	ACQ YR
101	PAC CHOI	CHING-CHIANG	18
102	TOMATO	SWEET MILLION	17
103	TOMATO	SUPERNATURAL (ROOTSTOCK)	18
104	TOMATO	BRANDYWINE	17
105	TOMATO	PINEAPPLE	17
106	TOMATO	CHEROKEE PURPLE	16
107	TOMATO	STRIPED GERMAN	13
108	TOMATO	MOSKVITCH	13
109	TOMATO	GARDEN TREASURE	16
110	TOMATO	GARDEN GEM	16
111	CORN	ALLURE	16
112	CORN	ALLURE	16
113	CORN	ALLURE	16
114
115	LETTUCE	ROMAINE, RED MARSHALL	17
116	LETTUCE	NEVADA	17

I also keep index cards for each week of planting or transplanting, with notes...

The number in the upper right is the weeks before or after the average last frost date (April 15th here, but I round it to weekends for simplification.  A few days doesn't matter.  And, as you can see, I change the weeks sometimes.  I also have a set of cards counting backwards from the average FIRST frost date for Fall plantings.

I keep all the empty seed packets.  Sometimes there is good information, but it also tells me where I got the seeds from. 

Ancestry

I mentioned "not finding English DNA" in my recent test.  A friend pointed out that there IS no specific English DNA.  The English haven't been "English" long enough for that.  As Americans and Australians haven't.

Aw man, I should have realized that...  So I'm, 43% German and French because that's where the "English" came from.  And the 38% Scot and Welsh is the interesting part.  The minor parts Iberian and Middle East are probably from when the Moslems came across North Africa and conquored Spain and my Southern French ancestors inter-married. 

The Balkan part is still really interesting, though.