If you do not have a green house N2 continued

If there is no green house some things can be used instead
Prev post shows the germination start
21 days later we have
lamps raised 3 times 2.5 or 1 inch each time give or take, now lamps are a bit higher than I like but with plants in this size I'm ok with that
Shop lights needs to be close to the plants, that prevents leggy plants.

 

Roots on tomatoes are good. Our spring is very very windy and 40-55mph winds afternoon are not unheard off (40+ is normal) by any means.  So tomatoes get berried a good bit int the dirt, aka planted deep. For that reason and to make lots and lots of roots to feed on that compost. And some carp caught by bow fishers in lakes (it's a junk fish, state pays folk to shoot it to control it in lakes, otherwise it overpowers all other fish and throws the lake of balance, they grow huge)... I get free and plant that fish in the dirt and tomato next or on top of it. Scandinavian fertilizer that works here very well, just have to keep coyotes out :) of it...


Grapes timeline:

started cuttings

 

They start like so, buds not captured, but with this method leaves going first is normal, what is not desirable is leaves and lots of them and not roots, aka lagging root development.

 To speed that up have to put heat mat under the box like so below

these are some struggles in the red box, and them in 4 days in red box planted, from struggles I lost 4 eventually, so only 2 made it to good size (losses within 1 month)

 In tubes, this way they stay put for 1 month at least. they need to have good bundle of roots. Be real careful transplanting them into XL 1 gallon pots

 Transplanted. These went into sunroom many times and came indoors under grow light (hooked to tripod... it holds it ok... but I would not use bogen for that :), it's a spare and has lost plate on it...)

So grapes were already adapted to sunroom and a bit outdoors.
I have 3 snow storms to go including this week before all the spring roller-coaster will settle more-or-less... we can get snow first week in June as well.

Grapes will be hardened in shade in 1-2 weeks, right now it's snow, so not a good time, but it will be all gone as usual in 1-2 days.

If you do not have a green house

set up is very simple and I found it working better in several years in a row compared to 200$+ grow lights
shop light (full spectrum), have full spectrum led -even better.
cinder block (2-6) to vary height
pvc pipe and angle joins, plastic, packing tape

the construction looks like so:
light goes on timer on cinder blocks, as the plants grow raise the light. this prevents leggy seedlings.

 

tarp for mess prevention. the seedlings are on rubber mud shes trays. no mess, wood floors are just fine

Vineyard N2

Several useful things about cordon training

Storing wine cuttings... for example this guy (ps we did not do that, our were refrigerated for a month, and they had mold and fungi issues which I did have to deal with potacium permangonite)

We did it in water

I did 3-4 in one cup, 2cm of water, water did have potacium permangonite. My cutting rooting was close to 80% meaning high

They were soaked in potasium permangonate (weak water) and shocked in stronger solution. if there was mildew potasium permangonite dip was repeated to kill the bad stuff (green sand filter stuff works well and very inexpensive, store away from kids etc proper precautions are always taken)

similar to this, not exact.

I did not do it in the dirt because I did not have the good heated set up. And water worked. It is very important to to dip the tops at least into bee wax.

this helps in arid climate a lot. and we had these on heat mat too after the buds broke. they were transplanted into dirt in tubes when the root was only 2.5 cm long or 3.5... very carefully.

After that they were there for a month and heat mat was removed

and only after that month (no touching let it be, and some still are let be as is) they were put into gallon pots and rooting till late May 

soil prep is going on for that while grapes are in green house type setting (aka sun room, not heated and watched closely)

Useful things about vineyard

These are table grape varieties.

Wine and vinegar varieties did produce last year. Even if Reliance and Mars are considered here table varieties.. I mean they are sweet and edible :)... I think f these as wine and vinegar varieties... 

We not much into the wine so, for cooking, makes real nice marinades and French sauces.

Table grapes are here. And bringing cutting last time worked badly, lots of fungi damage on them and We tried to follow this way.

and failed...miserably, there was fungi and mold and no clauses...

So I put that method aside as no go in my case. And instead I forced these cuttings in water, and we did deal with fungi and developing molds with potacium permangonite solution. 

The problems I did see was buds did open too early

But compared to prev nethod I'd say we were very successful indeed

Now useful thing regarding vineyard (organic, I'm going to go metal and how fences too... or the wire... still thinking), my other grapes are t-posts and hog panels trellis

I'm running not with the sun , I'm running with the slope and water.
So I'm not running north south, cause that would be with the slope of the water, so I'm running the way so my grapes do catch the water. And I tested east-west already and that's how my Mars is
And my Humrod is North-South (on flatter area and it's only 3 of them, so not long)
My reliance is also west-east. And I do not have long rows by any means, I do 3-4-5.

I'll do more on the vineyard later. For example my Mars is not trained as cordons...

Compost tea

Compost teas are innoculants for the soil. In our high mountain desert the autumn and winter and early spring is the time when the moisture is in and one works on the soil.
Days are often warm above 50F and sometimes it freezes, so under the nice layer of leaves one can grow nice organisms for the next season.
Hot compost pile on large scale for me is difficult, so I make larger scale sheet mulch and use compost to innoculate.

Because I'm getting rid of bindweed I go for fungal compost. In my area soils are alkaline and so is the water, 8.5+ is not unheard off at all.  Soils are clay, so they do retain water but also do not drain well. I do have pasture grasses with long roots in my orchard, I want these because they create nice long food web. Because pasture was there for some time already it's a good start, but it's only working its way to high fungal like my garden that grows plenty of mushrooms in spring. That one I did jump start with different organic materials and plenty of wood chips and manure and compost as well.

When one does not have a lot of compost to go around they make compost tea and what is good about it one can re-seed these into compost and create even better bio diversity.

Compost teas:
this is what one can do at home, in garage etc, my kind of a set up for a small scale

For a farm something like this is one nice set up
This one has Elaine Ingham in the video explaining about it

About molasses in compost tea and fish hydrolysate

the product mentioned that helped to grow beneficial fungi is this type
https://www.pacificgro.com/oceanic-hydrolysate

Summer. Retrospective 3, irises

Some irises, for the fun of it. Some bloomed, some I traded and planted this year in opes to get them going next year