The Old Guy's Garden Record

Clicking through one of our banner ads or some of our text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.

Sunday, March 1, 2026

I post this stuff sometime in January each year, but for me, it's time to take another look at it. I obtain our frost free date from a Dave's Garden tool. You just enter your zip code and it gives you your spring and fall frost dates. Entering that information in a very helpful interactive tool from Johnny's Selected Seeds, their Seed-Starting Date Calculator, produces a long list of dates to start vegetables and flowers both inside and direct seeded. Do note that the tool only includes varieties Johnny's sells.

As I looked over the calculator list, I realized that I had missed getting some spinach transplants started on time. So I put to soak about thirty Abundant Bloomsdale seeds from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I'm hopeful the planting will go well, as the seed was some I purchased just last year.

I also noticed that I'm running way behind the calculator's recommendations for starting stuff. But after our late start experience last season, being a bit late on getting things started is better than having transplants getting too old when the ground is too wet to work.

I moved some dianthus and vinca from their communal pots to a fourpack and three inch pots.

While it's cool out today and probably tomorrow, it appears that we may have a warm, but very wet stretch coming soon. We really do need the rain.

FTC Required Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Park Seed, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. We're also a consumer member of the Fedco Seeds Cooperative.

Saturday, February 28, 2026

It's been a bit of a slow month getting things started for our garden. We have a full tray of onions, 12 geraniums, 32 parsley plants, some dianthus, petunias, vinca, and some snapdragons just coming up. There's also a communal pot of celery seeded, but celery often takes a long time to germinate.

Our plant rack isn't very crowded as yet. That will change next month as I get more transplants started. And when things get too crowded, some plants can go to our sunroom. Geraniums especially benefit from some cool nights.

Thursday, February 26, 2026

The Wandering Jew cuttings I took over a week ago had just begun putting on water roots. I dipped the roots in Clonex Rooting Gel and popped them into a sixpack filled with sterile potting mix. If all goes as usual, the stems should root and be ready go into a hanging basket pot in a couple of months.

I made a double recipe of Chicken and Tortillinis today. Most of it is going to a friend whose wife is down after some serious surgery. I did save a little of the stuff for our supper.

I may not be able to post anything here for several days. Our landline phone has been down for a week. And whenever we call Frontier to get it fixed, they knock out our internet service while taking a week to respond.

Monday, February 23, 2026

Our splashshot for today shows a lovely sky outside. But it's also just 27°F out with a predicted high around freezing. Of course, we're much better off than the folks along the east coast who are experiencing blizzard conditions. And we're headed for a couple of fifty degree days later this week.

While trying to arrange stuff in our kitchen freezer yesterday, I came across a small chunk of boneless beef roast. After thawing it overnight, the beef got cut into chunks for a beef stew. As I added carrots, celery, and potatoes to the stew, I realized that those ingredients were all store bought instead of what we often have saved from our garden. At least the canned tomatoes were from last season's garden.

The image below popped up as my desktop background a day or two ago. With all the crazy weather our country is experiencing, I thought it might be nice to share a summer image of a honeybee on a buckwheat bloom.

Saturday, February 21, 2026

The geraniums I seeded to three inch pots in January were ready to be moved to larger quarters today. I used regular, non-sterilized, potting mix to put them into four and a half inch pots. Twelve of the fourteen pots I started in January have produced nice little plants.

These are the pots the geraniums will remain in until they are transplanted into our garden.

Friday, February 20, 2026

Some strong storms came through east central Illinois and west central Indiana late yesterday. Tornado sirens went off here as several touchdowns occurred in both Illinois and Indiana. No deaths have been reported yet, but lots of houses and businesses were damaged. I looked around a bit today, and we seem to have emerged unscathed from the storms.

Our luck with avoiding wind damage may be due to a nearby geographic formation. We live several miles from Merom Bluff. It's an area along the Wabash river that rises about 200 feet on the Indiana side over the Illinois side. Local folklore suggests the bluff stops low level winds and forces up higher level winds. Those strong winds sweep across the fields west of us, but the nasty weather seems to go over us. An exception to that was a couple of years ago when a storm sucked up our weighted cold frame and dumped it twenty yards away. And maybe, we've just been lucky. But the storms when viewed on radar moved north and south of us last evening.

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

It appears that we may have a record high temperature for today...72°F. I have a bunch of boxes I need to burn off, but with 30 MPH wind gusts, that's a no go. I should have burnt them when we had a foot of snow on the ground.

The onions I started on January 12 were ready for their first "haircut" today. Despite giving the plants lots of light, they get too tall and leggy and need to be trimmed a couple of times before they go into the garden. It happens every year.

I was pleasantly surprised by our stand of onions. Onion seed doesn't keep well past a year or so. While I freeze our extra seed, the one year rule is a good one. But these onions were all planted with second year or older seed. I did seed the rows heavily.

The biggest surprise was a row of Red Zeppelin onions. I got the seed from Hazzard's Seeds in 2023. Because their seed is expensive, I decided to just try the old seed. And, we got a nice row of my favorite red onion.

Another gardening job for today was taking cuttings from our Tradescantia zebrina (Wandering Jew) plant. I'd made the job a bit harder than it should have been by trimming the plant back a week or so ago. The short cuttings went into a jar of water on our sunny windowsill. Once they begin to put on water roots, I'll dip the stems in rooting hormone and plant them in sterile potting mix.

Tradescantia zebrina plants only remain attractive for around eighteen months. Our start for them came as a gift from a daughter over a decade ago. I've taken cuttings each winter so we have a nice plant in one of our kitchen windows.

Monday, February 16, 2026 - Presidents Day (U.S.)

I started some snapdragon and celery seed today in communal pots. The snapdragon varieties were saved Madame Butterfly and some mixed variety seed. I think the Madame Butterfly didn’t germinate well last year.

The pot of celery was the Ventura variety from the Turtle Tree Seed Initiative. The variety has done well for us in the past. I just need to remember to start more seed every so often to give us a steady supply of celery from the garden.

Friday, February 13, 2026 - Vienna Bread

I finally modified our Grandma's Yeast Rolls recipe to make a good Vienna bread. The changes to the recipe were minor. I substituted milk for half of the water required and used about 1 1/2 times the suggested yeast. That's a heavy tablespoon and a half of yeast. And our yeast comes in a jar, so I’m not tearing open multiple yeast packages.

After the dough made its first rise, I worked in three tablespoons of melted butter along with more flour when kneading the dough. While the first rise of the dough took the usual two hours or so, the second rise as a long loaf only took about forty minutes. I attribute that to the extra yeast I used.

I corrected the problem I had last week when I made a very flat Vienna bread by simply using a long bread pan.

The bread was delicious.

Still in a cooking mood, I made a batch of chicken salad to go on some mini Hawaiian Rolls.

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Our deep snow cover is finally melting off. We got into the upper fifties yesterday, and our extended outlook shows some above normal high temperatures. One local TV weatherperson keeps noting how dry things are, even with a foot of snow. I suspect the water table here is low, as our deep well is drawing more sediment than usual, making for more whole house water filter changes. The relatively dry weather may also impact our spring plantings.

Believe it or not, I haven't ordered any garden seed as yet. With the years creeping up on me, I don't know how much of a garden I'll be able to maintain this summer. I did, however, order some Daylen Trellis Netting that we use to grow our tall peas between a double trellis. Our tall peas are usually the first seed I put into the ground. Preparing the soil, pounding in T-posts, and planting may give me a good idea of how much gardening my not-so-gracefully aging body will tolerate.

Sunday, February 8, 2026

It's Super Bowl Sunday, so I'm getting ready to make our annual Super Bowl snack of Texas Nachos. With the game not kicking off until early evening, I had plenty of time to transplant thirty-two parsley plants into fourpacks.

The parsley plants are all supposed to be plain leaf varieties which are better for drying than the Moss Curled types.

FTC Required Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Park Seed, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. We're also a consumer member of the Fedco Seeds Cooperative.

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Well, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday, so we're in for six more weeks of winter. Actually, our extended weather forecast suggests that we'll eventually melt off our heavy snow cover in a week or so. But it will still remain cold.

Aghast at the price our local grocery was extracting for a loaf of Vienna bread, I tried my hand at it again yesterday. I've done so several times before, using online recipes that didn't quite satisfy.

This time around, I adapted our family recipe for Grandma's Yeast Rolls with a few modifications. For the usual cup of warm water, I used half water and half milk. And I almost doubled the amount of yeast recommended for yeast rolls or most of the online bread recipes. I probably used a bit less flour that Grandma's recipe calls for.

The bread was delicious, just what I wanted. But...the tight roll of dough I began baking spread across a cookie sheet instead of going up. I have a cure for that on order...a long bread baking pan (13x5" interior).

We still have about a foot of snow on the ground. I've run my truck up and down the driveway several times to open it up.

Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening