Stevia woes, arghhhh ----- trying again

Stevia is so fricking hard to get started!!!!  Looks like only 1 of the ~9 that had germinated might actually be taking after having been moved from PT to soil -- I think all the other 8 are kaput.

So, today, the next round of seeds that popped in PT, today, instead of putting them into the soil mix, I put a layer of vermuculite on top of the soil mix, then carefully placed the popped seeds, then just a few pieces of vermiculite on top.  I'm not sure if they'll be able to grow fast enough to reach the soil/nutrients before going kaput, but, this is at least worth a try.  There's quite a bit of vermiculite underneath them to provide buffer re: fungus gnats -- might be too much distance for their roots to travel to nutrition but we'll see.

Yellow sticky traps definitely work for adult fungus gnats

Yellow sticky traps definitely work for adult fungus gnats -- quite a few flies are stuck to them, whereas the duct tape and clear tape didn't have any at all.

The apple cider liquid traps have a few but hardly any compared to the yellow sticky traps.

FUNGUS GNATS!!!!! -- Going on the attack

Oh no!!!  I've never had fungus gnats before, in all my many years of starting seeds indoors.  (Had thrips one year, that's it.)  But I'm pretty sure that's what these are.  Noticed them in the house even before the start of seedling season, so I'm pretty confident they didn't come from any of the materials (most of which are left over from last year).

I had seen the occasional fly here and there in the seedling room in recent weeks, but last night while watering I saw quite a few and decided to take my head out of the soil and do something about it.

So:

- Last night I watered the soil with a mix of hydrogen peroxide and water.

- Last night I set out two traps of apple cider vinegar with dish soap, but these haven't caught any yet.

- Today I put up yellow sticky traps (already caught two :( ).  (Last night I had put up clear packing tape and duct tape but those haven't caught any.)

- Today I ordered mosquito dunks -- they should hopefully arrive by Friday.

- As of today, all seeds that move from paper towels to soil are getting a layer of pure vermiculite on top, so that the top cm or two is just vermiculite, no soil.

Here's hoping this action plan will put an end to the gnat situation.  I'm eager to get those dunks but must wait until they arrive since neither Ritchie's nor Canadian Tire had any at this time of year.

Started broccoli (Belstar & Piracicaba), cauliflower (from clear baggie), & round 2 of stevia

 The stevia round 1 looks like some will hopefully take, but some not, so started round 2 to make sure I have enough.

Started stevia

^^^

Started Red Globe onions, and more leeks and more green onions

The New York Early onion germination was a bit spotty, didn't make efficient use of the big tray I put them in, so today I started, in paper towels, some new bulb onions which will go into the same tray to make use of the space.  I went with a new-to-me red onion (Red Globe) so that I'll be able to distinguish the varieties (since they'll all be jumbled together).

The leeks and green onions from round one also weren't as thick as I wanted, so started more of those.

Here we go! Started leeks and onions (New York Early, and random onion seeds collected in 2019 to use as green onions)

Used up all of the rest of the New York Early onion seeds.

GA: Popcorn popped!!! Yielded 3/4 cup of kernels (since raccoons got most of the ears)

After sitting in a stainless steel bowl since harvest a few months ago, today I pulled off the kernels from the few sad ears that had escaped the raccoons.

The kernels measured up to 3/4 cup.

Popped 1/4 cup of them on the stove -- and it worked fabulously!  Used margarine, with some salt; heat at medium.  Started by putting just three kernels.  After the first three popped, added the rest of the kernels and shook the pot nearly continuously until they were pretty much all popped.

Only three or four kernels didn't pop, and these were nicely easy to crunch/eat.

Very tasty!

Will definitely try growing it again, and will try to harvest before the raccoons find them.

Stevia yielded 1 ~3/4 cups after grinding -- will this be enough until next year's harvest?

Dang, all those plants, and all that harvesting and drying, turned into only 1 ~3/4 cups after I put it in the mini blender.  Will use only 1/2 tsp per thermos and see if this lasts through until next year's harvest.

GA: Carrot haul!!

WOW, what a carrot haul!!!  Between the first/main bed, the second/smaller bed near the north end, and the third/smaller/late-planted bed along the west edge, today's harvest consisted of the following:

- ~3/4 blue bucket

- overflowing white rectangle bin

- blue bin

- and a flimsy berry basket for the late-planted bed, which had some decent-sized carrots but also a lot that were too small (this bed was sowed on August 4th and suffered from poor soil and little water since it was very dry and I didn't water very often).

When I got home, most of them I just rubbed off soil and spread them out to dry, on the 3-level metal rack (with a mix of towel / newspaper underneath each layer), as well as on newspaper on the table.  

For a sizable batch, which I'll donate to food banks, I removed most of the soil very easily by dumping them in a bucket of water and swooshing them around.

GA: Harvested the rest of the carrots, beets, and celery. So, all done for this year at GA.

And WOW, what a carrot haul!!!  See other post.

First frost in yard (GA had first frost quite a while ago)

Last night went down to -5 and now the tuberous begonia is a begoner, so this was the first true frost in the yard.

Leaf collection started and finished tonight -- two garbage bins full = enough to cover yard and put 1 bag in basement

Leaf collection started and finished tonight -- two garbage bins full = enough to cover yard and put 1 bag in basement.

And, there are still some leaves in the basement left over from last fall -- one nice bag, plus two bags of finely shredded.

(I no longer shred anything, way easier this way.)

GA: Final (?) weeding of the year done -- didn't weed paths though (hence the "?" -- might weed the paths another day this fall)

Hardly a weed to be seen!

Except for the forget-me-nots and coreopsis that are popping up :D

GA: 49.5 pounds of potatoes was the total (or 50.5 including 1 pound from the backyard)

Writing this on Jan 2nd 2026 only because now is when I got around to adding up the potato harvest notes.

Total of 49.5 pounds from GA, and 1 pound from the yard (which had just a few random leftovers planted).

50.5 pounds total, not bad!

Garlic part 2 planted (Music)

 Part 1 was planted Sep 28th.

Today (Oct 11th) was part 2.

See photo in October/garden folder of my hand-drawn map of today's plantings + Sep 28th's plantings.

No frost in yard yet

So far the cherry tomato plant and a couple of zukes are still going, not hit by frost in the yard yet.

GA: Raccoons got most of the popcorn!!!!

Argh!!  The popcorn had been untouched up until today, when I found most of the cobs vanished and some of the stalks broken.  I presume raccoons.  Sigh.  So, I harvested what remained.  It's definitely still nowhere near being dry, but hopefully it will be okay to dry on the counter.  If it works, then next year I'll try again and would just harvest much sooner rather than thinking they can last until fully dry on the stalk.

Garlic round 1 planted (will plant round 2 in a few weeks)

Here's what I did:

Forked/fluffed the area.

Added pre-soaked alfalfa, and mrp, az, and kelp.

Smoothed everything over.

In the east-most two-square (north-south) are 4 elephant cloves harvested from the one huge elephant bulb that I harvested this year.  

To the west of that is a two-square east-west of the biggest Music cloves bought this year.

To the north of those are a two-square east-west of medium/small Music cloves bought this year.

See photo in September/garden folder of my hand-drawn map of today's plantings.

That's it for today.  In a few weeks I'll plant the rest of the Music.

(Today's planting is earlier than normal because of people saying earlier is better -- and the second round in a few weeks will be for comparison.)

GA: Bush beans didn't put out fall flowers!

Weird -- normally I find the bush beans put out a second round of flowers/beans in late summer / into fall -- that didn't happen this year.  Maybe the lack of rain was an issue especially since I didn't keep watering them after the first harvest (but the plants still survived).