Chronicles of a city plot, Spokane

more seedlings/starts. it’s all water outside as the snow melts. we have at least a month of ice left I think, March is when things start to break open here





I moved figs and peppers from the dark burlap cold areas of the greenhouse to a little more lighted areas and checked they weren’t dry. should start seeing them wake this week. I started so much oregano and thyme very early and onions. the herbs are pushing now that I’ve spread them into containers, the onions are still so so small. just sprouts

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oh, obligatory pup update

not a fan of wet snow

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one more update: sad stick season, with orach already coming up and a few mustard that have held on somehow



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greenhouse update, more stuff coming along.





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I always feel like things aren’t changing much until I skip a week or two taking pictures.






in the greenhouse all things are exuberant.

outside, stuff is starting to wake. it’s hot for the season today and yesterday. 70F today. 67 yesterday. I don’t see any freezes coming after this, maybe a frost or few in April but it’s too warm and likely to stick. already got my cold crops out last week.

and there’s orach coming back on its own:




gooseberries and a current leafing out






all the herbs and garlic are up.




rhubarb, lilac, bleeding hearts showing up



will be trying to graft better cherries into these; I thought I ordered edible cherries not ornamental junk. I do not know if I can graft regular cherry onto sand cherry but I’m fixing to try.


I had some help as usual.

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Those figs look great! At what point do you take them out of the greenhouse? Mine were waking up in the garage with not much light and fairly constant 50 degree temp, so I put them out. But the nights are still getting pretty close to freezing and I think they paused putting leaves out.

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I wait until it’s 50+ at night since the greenhouse babies them so much!

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half the grafts are on


reference photos, for April




pears leafing out

old and ugly grafts



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another week or two without pictures in the greenhouse

this will I’ll start to harden off. up potting starts tomorrow.









figs are going along.





asparagus not up yet. rhubarb small but still going. apples starting to leaf out. first week of April this year. will have to look back through to see if that’s late or early



winter sowed things and they grew so far!

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Well I love the updates. Stay warm and hope for no frost,

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it looks like two or three frosty nights coming the next week or two. first week of May is when I start putting things out from the greenhouse, I can’t wait!

I put in more winecap spawn and prepped the beds yesterday.



got some aged steer manure , fresh alpaca, then straw to top it off. it rained as soon as I finished

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I really want to inoculate my garden area with winecaps and other edible fungi if possible. The issue being is that I don’t know if the woodchips I’ve got have something nasty on them which would probably end up in the mushrooms. D:<

That being said I’m in the lookout for logs I can grow shitake, lion’s mane and I don’t know what else!

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If its mulch you bought from the store, its gonna be safe for mushrooms as long as its the right mulch. If its from a local arbor, as long as you don’t live by any chemical plant-type places that had alot of trees but then mysteriously didn’t after you got mulch, is probably also fine.

The big caveat would be if its cypress or pine mulch. They have antifungal properties that resistance innoculation, and would either kill or greatly slow down your mushrooms. Dyed mulch would also not be good, or mulch infused with herbicide/fungicide.

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Yup, I have a big load of cypress from chip drop right now. Heh. Good news is I still had some previous year chips that had mycellium all through it and that should help innoculate the new pile at least. :slight_smile:

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mine has that pre emergent in it, I feel like it’ll suppress the mushrooms at best, make them poisonous somehow at worst.


greenhouse just doing the things

beds are mostly prepped, I got some aphid eating bugs to put out, doing the beneficial nematodes on my next day off (Monday) and that’s about it for now.

I have had a busy work week and next week coming up too so. won’t be much time to be out there

April 12 blooms

toka, arctic jay


leafs starting on,




braeburn, winter banana, several grafts

pear opening up


sumac and ark black behind the others


may be able to spread out some violets and sage this fall if these keep taking off

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Do you know if any of the grafts took yet? Are those plum? I was super excited last year when my first plum graft took. I had no clue it would make me so joyous. I suppose when a person gets over 40 it’s rare to come across experiences
that are entirely novel. It’s nice to feel excited like a kid again. When I go out to check my grafts I get that feeling like a child on Christmas morning.

I get the same feeling! the are last year’s grafts so yes these apples took. toka is a grafted branch on my Italian plum, which also has yellow egg and green gage on it from last year:

this tree needs a big chop at the fork but I keep putting it off, and I let it get a little taller last summer to block the view of the neighbor’s crappy carport thing.

bleeding heart

rhubarb going well

the tiniest asparagus

gooseberry flowers

hazelnut budding out

winter sowing poppies and flowers



greenhouse battles. aphids in the peppers and eggplants.

a helper

morel patch experiment

onions and fennels in the bags

hardening off many things

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someone ripped up the new persimmon whip out of the ground on the side of the house and took off with it

my figs are out right now but the weather has changed and I can’t get them back in the greenhouse until tomorrow- hope that it being 45F overnight doesn’t set them back too much.

greenhouse power keeps flipping its fuse, think a extension cord that had lights and timer must have gotten water in it- unplugged all but the heater for now, no lights this coming week. it’s time to start hardening off anyway. the shuffle





grafts that took from last year, the year before, and the figs

a pear that’s extremely late to leaf out. when I got this it had good roots but nearly every bud seemed rubbed off and there was not a single branching, just the whip/stick

some pleasant things in the garden, a helper





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