Since I started working at a local farm almost a year ago, I have vastly increased my houseplant collection. Prior to that I really had a minimal selection of houseplants: ivy, spider plant, aloe, jade, a few succulents, a free pothos from a coworker, and a couple of snake plants. I have learned a lot about houseplants: identification, care, and how to help customers deal with pests.
I was able to take home a few free cuttings (inch plant, variegated spider, pothos) and succulent leaves over the course of the season. I even got several free plants, either from coworkers, or store plants that needed extra attention. One such freebie was a ZZ plant, that was partially dying. I dug it up, chopped off the roots that were rotting, and repotted it. Not sure if it will survive, but I think I improved its chances. It appears to be in a holding pattern for now, so I’m taking that as a good sign. I have also made several purchases and can now say that I own the following: ficus, pepperomia, goldfish plant, anthurium, hoya, and albuca humilis.
Overcrowded aloe that had fallen out the pot at the store, I was able to take it home for free. All these plants had been in one pot.
I’m not an expert at houseplants, but I am learning through experience. I enjoy having more greenery inside the house. It especially helps to brighten things up in winter. Right before Christmas I purchased my first ever orchids, split leaf monstera, and white princess philodendron.
Split Leaf Monstera, which needed to be repotted right away. It has since grown a new leaf.
White Princess Philodendron unfurling its first leaf
Then in early February after the farm got its first big houseplant delivery of the year, I purchased a couple of small plants. After careful deliberation I purchased my first ever Rhaphidophera decursiva, an air plant, and lucky bamboo.
My new Rhaphidophera decursiva has already put out a new leaf.
My new air plant is bright red.
Lucky bamboo, repotted to a green bonsai style pot. It has 5 shoots coming off of 3 stems so I’m hoping it will fill out nicely soon.
My houseplants have taken over three shelves of the 6-shelf rack in the family room, which I normally use for seed starting. Think I am going to be tighter on space this year, since I also have all the fig cuttings. Might need to shuffle trays around and reorganize, to fit in as much as possible near the south facing windows.
On this snowy day in February, I think it would be a good time to look forward to spring and post about seed starting for the 2025 garden. It is winter outside, but I am growing tiny plants inside. In the first week of January, I sowed: leeks, red and white onions, shallots, celery, peppers, and dazzling blue kale. Alliums are slow growers, so the longer head start I can give them the better. I managed to grow a few onions last year, but they were very small bulbs at harvest time. I want to improve this year. I have learned from experience that celery takes a very long time to germinate, often taking 4 weeks before the tiny sprouts make an appearance. Then the tiny seedlings take forever to start to size up.
Seedlings after about one month of growth: leeks, sage, kale, peppers, cabbage, and calendula.
Last year I failed at my first attempts at sowing peppers, so I’m giving myself plenty of time for follow up sowings. I’m starting kale earlier than I have in the past because it is a year-round producer, and cold hardy. I am hoping for better slug resistance if I can plant out stronger, larger plants with thicker stems. I use grow lights on all my seedlings and the shelves are in south facing windows. I have heat mats which I use for pepper and tomato seeds to help improve germination. Once it gets close to spring the greenhouse will also give me a season extension and some cold hardy plants can be moved out there before the last frost date.
In the first week of February, I started my second round of pepper seeds. I have about a dozen seedlings from my first round of seeds. I started 4 different varieties of peppers, but want to have backups in case anything happens to them. This second round includes different varieties than from the first sowing. I tend to grow small and medium sized peppers, as I have found they provide more harvests per plant than with bell peppers. No one in my family likes really spicy food, so I don’t have to worry about any of the hot peppers. The varieties Violet Sparkle and Circus are both new to me, they are small brightly colored snacking peppers.
Second round of pepper seeds
I checked on my dahlia tubers in the garage last month and they were still dormant. I will keep checking and if they haven’t sprouted by April, I will bring them inside and pot them up to wake them up. I also ordered a couple of new varieties from Hudson Valley Seed Company, so I am looking forward to growing a couple new colors.
I’ve also started two trays of ginger pieces to pre-sprout them before planting. Much like potatoes ginger has eyes, certain spots that will regrow. However, it can take a very long time to get started and is a nutrient hungry, tropical plant, and it also requires a long growing season (10 months!). These two shallow trays are filled with half lobster compost and half coco-coir with some worm castings and balanced light fertilizer added.
They will now go on heat mats for the next couple of months. As the pieces sprout and put out their first green growth I will carefully lift them from the trays and plant into deeper pots, with lots of compost. Doing them in trays allows me to fit 30 pieces into a small area and ensures that I’m not wasting valuable growing space on pieces that might fail to germinate. After a couple of months, I will check any remaining pieces and then compost the ones that don’t show any signs of growth.
When the warmer weather arrives, I will probably plant a few of the ginger the greenhouse under the shelves since they don’t take up a lot of vertical space. The rest will go in planters, which I typically put outside the greenhouse, but right up against the wall so they get some extra heat. I haven’t managed a bumper crop yet, but I also don’t have the ideal climate for ginger. I have grown a decent amount of small ginger pieces which are perfect for tea and baking purposes.
Tiny bell pepper seedlings
I will probably start tomato seeds in early-mid March, since they grow relatively quickly. After that I will start dye flowers such as marigold, indigo, madder, and cosmos. I typically direct sow sunflowers, and hopefully the chamomile self-seeded and will come up all over the place like it did last year. Most root veggies will be direct sown after our last frost. Squash and cucumbers get started inside at the beginning of May because they grow very quickly but are not frost tolerant. I like to get a head start by sowing in plug trays, which also means better protection for the vulnerable seedlings.
This year I am going to try to have extra seedlings ready to go in case of loses along the way. I also want to practice at succession sowing this season, by having plants ready at different points of the season for continual harvests, and keeping the soil used and covered. All the garlic I planted in the fall is currently under a nice layer of snow. I look forward to it poking through and starting to grow green shoots in spring.
Looking ahead to the new gardening season, here are some of my hopes and ideas.
Adding another raised bed to the garden, mostly likely to be used to protect my dahlias from the voles. I plan to put hardware cloth down on the bottom before filling the bed.
I am currently propagating figs via cuttings and will be looking to sell them come spring. I have over 20 that successfully rooted so far, and have a second round in the works now. There may be three varieties available.
I received a few free elderberry and black currant cuttings from a coworker in the fall. I planted them outside, and am hoping that they survived our strange winter. It has been mostly mild weather, but we had a streak of 4 days of non-stop wind and a few quite cold days. Not much snow overall.
I planted a bunch of strawberry runners from last year’s plants. This should allow me to increase my total number of plants (by up to 30%) and provide more berries for this season. I am currently battling spider mites on the plants.
I purchased a Meyer’s lemon tree in the fall and it has spent the winter in the basement. Looking forward to potting it up and moving it to the greenhouse for the summer.
My dahlia tubers are out in the garage in small boxes of coco coir. I will bring them inside in a couple months to re-pot them and wake them up from winter dormancy. Starting them indoors will give them a head start for the season.
I plan to start pepper seeds earlier this year than last year. My plants were very slow to produce and I only got a few ripe peppers before frost. The plants were covered in tiny peppers and flowers in October.
I plan to spread my small batch of homemade compost over the beds in late April/early May.
I managed to grow a few small onions and leeks last year but want to improve my allium game. I do very well with garlic, but not any other types.
I received a new dehydrator for Christmas with temperature and timing controls. I plan to put it to good use this season to preserve my harvests, especially herbs and dye flowers.
Strawberry plant in the vertical tower from last season.
2024 was a challenging year for gardeners worldwide, and since I had some time off at the end of the year I decided to reflect on the successes and failures. Here in NY the toughest environmental challenges were pests and lack of rainfall. Last winter was very mild, with barely any snow, and I think that led to an increase in pest pressure. I had to water a lot more than in previous years, and my sandy soil was a detriment to moisture retention. Some plants thrived and were very productive but many struggled.
My only ripe snacking sized pepper of the season
Pests
Problems:
I saw slugs and snails everywhere, and I tried several different deterrent methods which were only partially successful.
Voles ate a couple of my dahlia tubers and tunneled under and killed my butterfly bush. They also burrowed under and killed about a dozen heads of garlic.
We caught and released many chipmunks, but they ate some of my tomatoes.
Rabbits and slugs ate two rounds of climbing bean sprouts, so that delayed harvests.
Caterpillars on brassica plants and apple trees cause significant damage.
Lessons learned:
Beer traps for slugs are more trouble than they are worth in my opinion. Wool wrapped around plant stems worked better for me. I also used plant covers/domes to protect young plants from the critters. Whenever I saw snails and slugs I killed them.
Dahlias will produce when grown in pots. This was my first year growing them so I wasn’t sure. I dug them out of the ground as an emergency measure (one of which was almost blooming) to save the remainder from being eaten. I got a few very pretty flowers once I moved the pots to the greenhouse.
I started using mesh bags to cover the clusters of tomatoes while they were still green. This helped protect from chipmunks and slugs.
I purchased a mole sonic spike in the hopes that it will protect my garlic crop from the voles, especially over winter.
We chased a bunch of baby rabbits out of the garden, since they were small enough to fit through the chain link fence. One remained inside, and moved in beneath our deck, where we couldn’t reach it. It became a nuisance once it was too big to get itself out of the garden.
I need to be more active in preventing pest infestations. Next season I plan to check the apple trees and brassicas more often for pests. One apple tree had severe caterpillar damage before we noticed it and sprayed it. Hopefully the tree survives, but it will be set back because 80% of its leaves were eaten. I lost a few brassica plants entirely to cabbage white caterpillars when I was away camping for a week.
A blueberry harvest from the potted plants
Productivity
Problems
My squash plants barely produced anything before dying off. The only winter squash I harvested grew itself from the compost pile.
I sunburned my container figs and cost myself an entire growing season.
I did not weed the herb bed and it was completely overrun by grass and chocolate mint.
I only had a couple of very small indigo plants, which did not provide very many leaves for dye. I did manage a couple of hammered leaf towels from the handful of leaves that I got from each plant.
One of only 2 figs I harvested last year
Lessons learned:
The compost pile grew a ton of tomato plants, which I allowed to grow. Free produce from an out of the way corner.
Next season I will harden off the fig trees and provide shade cloth once they are ready to be moved outdoors in order to combat the chance of sunburning the leaves.
I want to start more seeds than I have space for so that I can fill gaps or have succession crops ready to go after I harvest. I have homesaved indigo seeds from 2 years ago that I will be using to see if it grows better than freshly purchased seeds.
I need to stay on top of weeds, in the late fall I started to fix up the herb bed and planted a few more perennials to fill in some of the gaps. Coreopsis, sage, lavender, chives, delphinium, and thyme were all added.
Greenhouse jungle, in the height of summer
Garden Successes
Tomatoes and pole beans were prolific last year. I grew multiple varieties and once they got going they did really well. I made tons of pasta sauce and blanched and froze a lot of beans.
Herbs: I was successful with herbs such as oregano, thyme, basil, chamomile, lavender, sage, and lemon balm. The lemon verbena and rosemary were less productive, but I still got a few harvests.
I added a very large gardening bed in May which allowed for a lot more growing space. I threw a lot of plants in it but didn’t necessarily put them with the best spacing in mind.
The sunflowers were gorgeous and a couple of them were huge. Very satisfying to look out and see them towering over the garden.
The blueberry plants are finally in the ground, so I’m looking forward to better growth and productivity going forward.
Straw mulch on one raised bed helped preserve some of the moisture in our sandy soil, and also in the potted figs. Helped to keep down weeds as well.
Grew strawberries for the first time in a vertical tower planter. They were a fun success.
Carrots finally worked out for me. I grew both orange and yellow and got some nice big ones.
Grew a ton of marigolds, harvested and dried several different colors for future dye projects. Moderately successful with growing and harvesting cosmos flowers.
Even with the voles, my garlic patch was a success, and the new batch went in the ground in mid-October.
Self-sown chamomile allowed me to get a huge harvest, enough to make a couple of different tea blends. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s a good idea to leave “free” plants to get in some bonus harvests.
Grew my first ever watermelon, and 2 tiny cantaloupe melons.
Saved a nice variety of seeds from the garden, mostly beans and flowers. About half of the garlic I planted was from homegrown heads.
Purchased 3 pear trees and planted them in the garden.
I made my second ever batch of slow compost, and have a very large pile going for next year. I do a combination of bokashi fermentation for the kitchen scraps and a throw everything else in a pile and forget it for a year method. Garden waste, grass clippings, small branches, and fall leaves mostly, with a tote of chicken manure from my sister’s chickens.
Dahlia flowers are gorgeous. This was the first year I’ve ever had cut flowers on the kitchen table as a decoration. Sunflower, zinnia, and nasturtiums were also included.
We dug up and divided the canna lilies to overwinter in the basement, and ended up with 19 pots, some with multiple bulbs.
I grew enough calendula to collect and infuse in oil for herbal salves and balms.
I planted one Chicago Fig in the ground to see if it survives the winter.
I grew a total of 139 pounds of produce last year. 50 pounds of that was tomatoes!
Looking forward to more of these types of harvests!
As I enter my 6th season of gardening, I thought it might be fun to track the growing season through more than just random Instagram photos. I have been a hobby gardener since the pandemic lockdown of 2020. I live in upstate New York and my native soil is straight up sand from a former glacial river valley. This provides benefits and challenges: it drains well but dries out quickly and it does not contain enough nutrients for annual plants. I have an 8×20 foot greenhouse and use a combination of in-ground, raised bed, and container gardening spread across my backyard. I also make extensive use of my basement for overwintering frost tender plants like fig and citrus trees, and canna lilies. I have grow lights, heat mats, and shelving units for seed starting indoors.
Over the years I have converted more and more of the backyard from grass into garden beds. We had a few trees removed from the backline of the property last spring and this has increased the sun exposure for the garden. I have a container fig tree orchard; they live on the back patio during the summer months. Two years ago, I planted 3 apple trees, and this past year I added 3 pear trees. I enjoy propagating figs and houseplants by cuttings, so those projects will be shared as well. I grow many herbs for homemade teas and herbal infused oils, and I also grow flowers for use as natural dye and printing on fabric.
We may be in the depths of winter right now, but I am looking forward to this year’s growing season and am already taking steps to start off the season. I can’t wait to fill up the greenhouse with seedlings in the spring, and each year I look forward to seeing the magnolia tree in full bloom.
I see my garden as a place to grow food as well as flowers. I like to use it as a way to slow down and enjoy being outside; as a space to walk, observe the plants, and see what pollinators might be around. I want my garden to be both productive and relaxing.
I will be utilizing this space to showcase garden successes and failures, plant propagation, natural dye projects, dehydrating/processing harvests, and home made herbal remedies.
