Author: Erika

Seed Starting Alert

Well, there’s no artichokes for me this year.  I’m not sure what I did wrong in starting the seeds, I’ll need to do more research on them.   I dug them out yesterday, and the seeds look the same as when they went in- nothing going on.  They may need warmer temperatures to germinate, or they need to be scarified, because they have one hard shell!

Anyway, yesterday I started all the pepper seeds.  I’m not starting any pepper seeds for anyone this year,  yet I filled 18 little cells with pepper seeds- 13 of them with hot peppers.  I wasn’t as sparing with them this year either, in most cells I planted 3 or 4 peppers, thinking that then I can cull them to the healthiest seedlings.  But I want to ensure that I have at least one seedling from each pepper.   Here is my list of hot peppers:

  • Hungarian Hot Wax
  • Black Hungarian
  • Chile De Comida
  • Cascabella
  • Aji Cristal
  • Georgia Flame
  • Hinkelhatz
  • Maule’s Red Hot
  • Joe’s Round
  • Bulgarian Carrot
  • Serrano
  • Anaheim

Many of those are small peppers- intended for the pickle pot.  I love pickled peppers, but hate paying for them.  The rest are all different varieties of hot peppers that I cannot wait to use in salsa.   One of them is specifically a great one for drying and using as crushed red pepper- I think that’s the Georgia Flame.   This is my last year for the Chile De Comida, as I’ve had poor germination from it, and most of the rest are new to me this year.  I can’t wait! I’ll also have a few jalapeno plants coming from Minnesota.

For sweet peppers, two of them are varieties Zander wants to grow- those are the first two, the rest are pretty basic, just some bells and some minis.

  • Red Mercury
  • Yellow Belle
  • Sweet Red Stuffing Pepper
  • Sweet Yellow Stuffing Pepper
  • ACE Bell Pepper

The sweet peppers I plan to intersperse in the gardens wherever, while the hot peppers will have their own bed.

I also sowed a few more herb seeds yesterday.   I had intended to do a couple a few weeks ago, but decided to just wait until I got out the pepper seeds.   My parsley is doing well, and I actually potted that up yesterday too.  In addition to the parsley, I have these herbs now sown, and I am hopeful for good results.

  • Lovage
  • Marjoram
  • Thyme
  • Summer Savory
  • Sweet Basil
  • Genovese Basil

My lettuces are still growing like gangbusters, and I’ve harvested from the patch once already.  I added some thinnings to a salad we were having for dinner, but from the looks of things, it looks like I’m going to need to do some more harvesting quick, as the patch is bursting at the seems.

I’m just over a week away from starting tomato seeds.  I better get that grow list finished up here!

Quick Note About Growing Under Light

Water.

That little seed tray needs frequent watering.  I’ve been watering my lettuce patch, but sparingly.  Yesterday when I went to check on my seedlings, they looked terrible.  Like, I thought I was going to have to start over terrible.  I decided to give them a good soaking- and it was definitely a good soaking, I probably poured a full gallon of water in this little flat.  But look what I have today:

They’re thriving.   Now if we can only get past this sub-zero frigid temperatures outside, I can start to think about setting the lettuce outside in the screen porch.  My plan is to put them in my greenhouse rack with the plastic cover on, in the plastic covered screen porch.  That should put them at around a zone 7, and I expect the lettuces will grow wonderfully, and in no time we’ll be eating salad.

I need more lights too.  Because I want to start another flat of lettuces, only I need my trays and lights to start actual seeds.

Here’s a quick pic of my onion flat.

You can see the alliums all came up nicely- including the 50% germination Tadorna Leek.  They came up with better than 50% germ, so I guess you never know.  Far to the right you can see the parsley seedlings.  Still no artichokes.   If they don’t come up in the next week here, I’m going to dig them up and see if the seeds are doing anything.  Maybe they need to be scarified? The parsley I’m going to have to pull out soon and plant in bigger spaces.  The onions should be doing just fine here for a while, as long as I give them a haircut from time to time.   If I end up pulling the ‘chokes, when I pot up the parsley, that square of starter tray will be filled with thyme, marjoram and lovage.

Planting Schedule

Whew!  This took a while to assemble.   First, I had to go through and decide what I wanted to grow this year.  I haven’t nailed down specific varieties yet, just a general idea of what I want to grow.  I am getting close to a tomato grow list though, and my hot pepper list is pretty solid too.

Starting plants inside requires careful timing and preparation.  There have been years where I started them a little too early, and others a little too late.  This year, I hope to hit the sweet spot and have everything just so.  With my interest in growing in cold frames this fall, my grow list is pretty much never-ending.    It’s a lot of work planning this year!  There are the new raised bed vegetable gardens, and then other areas- like I have chosen a space to be a dedicated herb bed, and as such, I’ll be able to grow as many herbs as I want.  So many of those I’m going to try from seed- and some I will buy established plants.  I really want a strawberry bed, but I’m just not sure how much time Andy will actually be able to devote to yard prep this spring- in addition to building and filling my garden boxes with soil.

So for now, here is my growing calendar.  I am using May 15th as my frost-free date when planning my seed starts.  It’s a very rare year we get frost beyond that, and we’ve had years where there hasn’t been frost beyond the end of March, but the plants can be flexible as far as when they get hardened off and planted.  My dates are really approximate, a few days to either side will be okay.

Spring/Summer Sowings:

January 26:  Onions, Leeks, Artichokes, Parsley (all up except artichokes!)

February 12-26: Lovage, Marjoram, Thyme, Eggplant (unsure on eggplant)

February 26: Hot Peppers, Sweet Peppers

March 12: Basil, Summer Savory

March 12-19: Tomatoes

March 26: Chives, Sage, Scallions, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts

April 9: Chervil, Cabbage, Melons

April 23: Cucumbers, Borage, Cilantro

Between April 23 and May 31 the rest of the garden will be direct sown- dill, carrots, beets, spinach, tons of greens, potatoes, peas, beans, radish, etc.

July 12-20 I will sow a round of peas for fall harvest

Planting for Cold Frames:

June 1-15:  Swiss Chard, Carrots, Parsley

June 15- July 1: Beets, Parsley, Carrots

July 1-15: Carrots and Parsley (successive sowings of these ones)

July 1- August 1: Kale, Turnips, Sorrel, Mizuna, Swiss Chard

August 1-15: Spinach

August 15-September 1: Mache, Mizuna, Claytonia, Radish, Endive, Escarole

September 1-15: Arugula, Claytonia, Minutina, Mache, Radish

September 15-October 1: Radicchio

The cold frame crops will be sown directly into the beds set aside for them.   I will also try and add a few lettuces to them, and see how long I can harvest of those.  Once cold temperatures arrive, I should be able to add my cold frames to the beds and thus, my late fall, winter growing will begin.

Up next, I have to physically plan out my beds.  This is going to be tricky.

New Beginnings

This week I started some seeds.

*Insert happy dance*

The first step to seed starting for me this year was a lighting set up.  A serious lack of sunlight in a window at our home made getting seeds growing under lights a necessity.  Having never grown under lights before, I’m sure there will be a bit of a learning curve, but so far, I am encouraged.

We took an old metal shelving unit and Andy rigged up a series of shop lights on the various shelves.  The lights are adjustable, so I can move them closer to or farther from the seedlings as needed.

The lights are also on a timer.  The plan is that the lights will be on 24/7 until we have seedlings.  At that point, a timer will be used to give the seedlings 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness.

This week I wanted to start my onion, leek, artichoke, and some parsley seeds.  As long as I was going to be sowing seeds, I thought this would be a perfect time to sow a flat of lettuce to eventually put out in the screen porch.  Lucky for me, my local garden center sells Botanical Interests seeds, so I was able to pick up a few packages of assorted mesclun mixes.  I love Botanical Interests.  They are usually the first catalog I get in December, and I love that they are a small family owned company- and how can you not love the artwork that they use on their seed packets?  Their prices are very reasonable, although since I can get them locally, I’ve never actually ordered from them.

I sowed several small rows in one flat, and then towards one end of the flat I sowed two rows of Giant Noble spinach seed.    I sowed my onions in cells, and then both flats got a plastic dome over the top, and then they were sent to the basement grow center.  I did all this sowing Tuesday afternoon.

I have to note that I didn’t expect to see any sprouting for at least 5 days, but expected much longer- the chokes and parsley could take two weeks before I see any sprouts!  So imagine my surprise when I am doing laundry on Thursday and decide to take a peek under my domes and find sprouts!  Quite a few mesclun sprouts, and even one onion and one leek sprout.  Just two days after sowing!

Here is what my lettuces looked like Friday morning:

And here they are today:

They’re growing like gangbusters, and today I took the plastic dome off the mesclun, as I didn’t want to cook the seedlings.  I just want them to grow and reach for the lights.

The hybrid Lexton Leek seeds that I sowed are also doing really well- there’s easily a dozen just starting to poke through the soil.   I have a few Copra onion sprouts as well, and I sure am encouraged that I can be successful at growing under lights.

The Book That’s Changing Everything

I’ve seen this book on and off ever since I was bitten by the gardening bug five or six years ago.  I would see it advertised in catalogs, or on Amazon, but never got around to reading it.  During one of our recent trips to the library, I happened to see it on the shelf, so I brought it home.  And I got sucked right in.

Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman

This book is changing the way I’m thinking about gardening completely.  I have always heard that using cold frames and tunnels and greenhouses was a way to extend the gardening season, but no one every really explained to me exactly how to do it- or how it works.  This book explains, in detail, exactly how you utilize a cold frame to extend your season.  And then he goes a step further and tells you what crops he’s had success with as well.

I guess I always assumed that a cold frame was a way to grow from seed throughout the winter.  I had no idea how it actually worked.  Instead, what you do is plant your seeds in early August into your coldframe spot.  The seeds germinate and grow, and just as they get to the point where they would normally bolt and go to seed in the summer, the weather gets cold, you pop your cold frame on, and the plants go into a kind of dormancy.  They stop growing, so there is no danger of bolting, and they live in a suspended animation until the point where it gets just too cold- even with the cold frame.  Even if the plants freeze overnight, Mr. Coleman says that the coldframe will warm up the box to reinvigorate the greens within, so that a harvest later in the day is entirely possible.

I’m psyched.  I’m beyond psyched.  As I’ve been planning out my garden beds, I have already decided that two of the smaller ones will be home to cold frames.  Andy already has storm windows hiding around somewhere just waiting to be used for this purpose.  Can you imagine?  Walking out to the cold frame to harvest some greens and leeks for an amazing Christmas Day salad?  It’s entirely possible.

I was so excited with this book that I immediately reserved his newer book, The Winter Harvest Handbook at the library.   As soon as I got it, I devoured it, but I’ll confess to being a little disappointed with it.  Oh, it was great, but, it really is written for those who are thinking about using greenhouses to extend the harvest.  By using both greenhouses and coldframes, they have managed to have a successful harvest year-round.  It’s an exciting prospect, to be sure, but living in the city here, I don’t think we’ll be assembling dozens of greenhouses on our lawn.  The neighbors might not care so much for that.  And yet, I did glean bits from this book as well.  So many bits, that I took a look at our screen porch, which is currently covered in plastic, and realized that I already had my own sort-of greenhouse.   I promptly headed to the local garden center and picked up several packets of different mesclun mixes and sowed a flat of salad greens.  They are sprouting under lights right now, but in the days ahead, I intend to get a thermometer out in that screen porch and grow me some winter salad.  I have visions of a mid- March harvest of delicious home-grown salad greens.

In the next few weeks I’ll share how I’m changing my garden planning.  I’m carefully planning planting dates for everything- including the planting of the cold frame beds.  I’m planning for multiple sowings of other things, and that’s the first step.  Once I get timing planned, then I’m going to need to go through the planned beds, and make notes about what goes where.  And then I have to stick to that plan.  Gardening is officially underway, and it’s going to be an awesome year.   And as soon as Andy gets back to work full-time,  Year-Round Harvest is going to find a permanent home on my bookshelf.  It’s the book that is going to revolutionize how I garden almost as much as the Square Foot Gardening method has.

Germ Test Results

It’s been one week since I tucked my allium seeds into plastic bags to see how they would germinate. The results are not surprising for some.

My Red Of Florence, a red bulbing onion from Johnny’s seed had the poorest test.  Out of ten seeds, I had one sure sprout, one that looked like it was just emerging, and one that apparently emerged and promptly turned into goo.   Too bad, because there are about 250 seeds in this packet.  These will be tossed.

My American Flag Leeks were the second poorest.  These are old seeds- packed for 2007, and were Wal-Mart seed of all things. I had 4 sure sprouts, and if I was short on leek seeds, I would probably keep them and just sow them heavily.  But since I have other leek seeds, these will be tossed as well.

My Ishikura bunching onions from Johnny’s gave me a 50% test.  I will keep and sow these because they are tasty and dependable.  AND when I went to order some new seed, they were out, so I want to get what I can out of them.  I’ve never let a scallion go to seed before, this may be a first time for that.

The Tadorna Leek seed from Johnny’s was packed for 2009, so they are a few years old.  I have a germination rate of 60%, and considering that the packet actually says 75% germination, that’s not a bad rate of deline over a few years.  I will sow these seeds, as it will be nice to have a variety of leeks growing.

And finally, the surprise of the bunch.  My Evergreen Long white bunching onion.  These are a Burpee seed, and packed for 2007.  I got 8 out of 10 seeds to sprout.  It’s funny, because I was just going to throw this packet out, but this goes to show that you just never know.  While these aren’t my favorite green onion, I will still sow them.  That means I’ll have three varieties of scallion in my garden.

I’ll admit, the sprouts got me excited! Sprouting seeds! It’s almost time! Next week I need to get the first phase of my light set-up arranged, and I also need to clean off the fridge.  My plan is to begin with the alliums.  I will sow them in cell-packs with a clear plastic lid, and set them on top of the fridge to germinate. It’s a little warmer up there, which is what you need to get sprouts.  Once they’ve sprouted, they’ll move to the basement grow station, and then I will wait to repeat the process in February with some brassicas.  Ah, gardening.  I love it.

Germination Test

Today I took all my garden seeds out for a good look through.  Oh my.  Here I’ve been thinking these last few months that I really needed to do some serious seed shopping.
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Um.  I don’t think so.   There are a few things I would like to amend with, but for the most part, I think I need very little as far as new seed goes.

I have 32 varieties of tomato seed, and as of right now, I am planning on just 16 tomato plants for my garden.  However, I could be persuaded to bump that up to 24, but I’d like to try and keep it around 16.  Some of my seeds need to be eliminated as contenders, and then there’s the ones I would like from the Minnesota garden.  Sigh…

I need to get some more varieties of lettuce- and a mesclun mix of some type.  I also am thinking that I need to get some new hot peppers this year, as my seed is several years old, and pepper seed is reliable for about two years.

And that’s where the germination test comes in.  As I was going through the seeds I found several different varieties of onion, leek and scallion seed.  Allium seed is notorious for only being good for a year or so- and some of this seed is 3 years old.  I have new seed already for this year, since I was convinced to try onions again, but what about all these old seeds?

Well, rather than try and sow them and see what happens, I am performing a germination test on the five varieties of old onion seed.   It’s really very easy, the tough part is waiting a week for the results.  Basically, I took some paper napkins (paper towel is recommended, but it turns out I’m all out) and got them nice and damp.   Then on each one, I laid out exactly 10 of my seeds.
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That napkin got folded up and placed in a plastic zipper bag.  The bag was labeled, and when all was said and done, I placed my stack of baggies in a nice warm spot.
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In a week I will check to see how many of my seeds have sprouted.  Using exactly ten seeds will give me an accurate percentage to go by for planting consideration.  If seven sprout, I have 70% germination, and I’ll know to sow fairly thickly.  If less than five sprout, I will either have to sow thickly or just discard the seeds.  I will likely just discard in those cases.

In other news, I did receive my first seed order of the season, compliments of the Minnesota Garden Team. 🙂 I received a Johnny’s gift card for Christmas, and was delighted to find all kinds of goodies on sale on their website.  I placed my order, and using the gift card, I was only charged 30 cents for my order.
seed order
Well, when the order came in, I saw to my delight that Johnny’s had not charged me that 30 cents after all.  I imagine that small amount is a waste of time for them to run through a credit card machine, and would likely cost them more than it’s worth.  But it was still a sign of a nice company that they discounted my order that simple 30 cents.

In this order are my new onion seeds, some cucumbers for both pickling and slicing, an artichoke, (which I am very eager to try growing here) as well as a few lettuces and a few varieties of squash.  I did well on this order, considering I hadn’t checked my seed stash first, nothing was duplicated, and I did indeed need these seeds.

Very soon, I am going to share some thoughts on winter harvest.  Thoughts I never really considered before, but let me just say, my eyes are being opened to a whole new way to garden.

Catalog Sightings!

Today two more catalogs arrived in the mail, bringing my total up to six so far for the month of December.  My Baker Creek and Seed Savers Exchange will be late, as I had to re-request catalogs from them this year.  Moving does that.

But so far I have RH Shumways, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Totally Tomatoes, Seeds of Change, Botanical Interests, and Vermont Bean Seed Company.  The only one not pictured below is the Botanical Interests.

I’m not too impressed with Totally Tomatoes, as I prefer heirloom varieties over hybrids, but I am contemplating a few determinate tomatoes this year, and it’s at least a lovely catalog to look through.

Vermont Bean Seed is completely new to me- two pages in and I’m excited- I had no idea there were so many varieties of  beans.  I may be ordering from them for my beans and peas this year.

I’m anxiously awaiting the remaining few and then the real planning can begin.

Erika’s 2010 Tomato Report

Despite my poor growing year, I do need to take the time to reflect on this past summer’s tomato harvest.  I had a few stars, a few that were a waste of time to grow, and still others who didn’t produce well for me, but did awesome in the garden in Minnesota.  I have a few that I need to try again because by the time they were all producing, they were at the very end of the season, and I didn’t keep track of what came off what plant.  So, here is my limited tomato report from the 2010 growing season.

I will not grow white tomatoes again.  The White Tomesol I planted was actually quite productive, but they didn’t taste like much of anything at all.  I think if I had space or did market gardening, I would consider it for the novelty.  But I have limited space, and this just wasn’t flavorful like so many other tomatoes.

Black Cherry tomatoes are by far the best cherry to date.  I think I am going to skip the Sungolds this next year and focus on Black Cherry, Reisentraube and find a green cherry as well.  If we can find an elusive sweet yellow pear, we might try that again as well.

A surprise hit for me was the Woodle Orange.  Such a pretty, vibrant orange color, with a TON of sweet tomato flavor.  This was a favorite, and quite productive- even in poor growing conditions.  This one’s a keeper.

The Black From Tula and the Black Krim both were quite productive as well.  However, I didn’t think the Black Krim were near as tasty as other purple varieties of tomato.  While mine didn’t do as well as Tomatobug’s , I really enjoyed the Vorlon and Carbon that I had from both his and my gardens.  The flavor is great, but I’m not crazy about all the green shoulders the purple tomatoes seem to have.  I wonder if that’s a regional growing thing, because when I would leave them to ripen further, they would go bad before any more colors changed.

For green tomatoes, Malakite and Green Zebra are just such reliable deliciousness, that I don’t see replacing them anytime soon.  The Malakite are also some of the first to ripen up.

My Brave General was a brave general indeed and put out a great effort towards the end.  The straight up red fruit was tasty and since the plant produced well in stressful conditions, I’d like to see how it does in a better environment.

The Coeur de Buie was a disappointment.  I was expecting a lot of flavor from this heirloom variety, and it really didn’t deliver.  I don’t expect I’ll be trying this one again.

My purple Gypsy tomato was also a good plant- the fruit it produced was very pretty to look at, and tasty.  Not very productive, but might be worth another shot.

Golden Sunray was an early producer and produced heavy fruit as well.

Those are the standouts from my garden this year.  My Grace Lahman’s had issues this year, so I plan to try a new batch of seed, because two years ago that one produced wonderful tomatoes.  The Arkansas Traveler’s did okay, and the Cosmonaut Volkov’s were good as well.

I’m on the fence about the Fox Cherry for next year.  I know I say that every year, and then I plant them and then I enjoy them.  But they’re only an okay tomato.  They’re bigger than a standard cherry, but not as flavorful as other cherries.  What keeps me planting it again and again is it’s productivity.  It does great and just keeps on putting out more fruit.

As I think about next year’s garden and scaling back…sigh… what an effort when every day there are new varieties of tomato to discover.  I’ve even been reading about the efforts to breed blue tomatoes- which are loaded with anthocyanin to produce a stunning looking true blue-purple tomato.  The seeds are not available commercially yet (thank goodness) but it just shows that there is always something new out there to try.

The rumor is on the street that Baker Creek’s catalog is in transit right now… I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold off reading that baby until after Christmas, which is what I try to do.

Next year I also want to do better with pepper production.  I would like to be able to make salsa without having to go get anything other than garlic and onions- and that’s only because I don’t want to devote precious garden space to plain old onions.  Leeks, scallions and chives yes.  Plain old cheap onions, no.  Ooh, the Allium Bed! How I can’t wait to give it attention.

Andy has started building my raised beds for next year, and I just can’t wait to see more of them put together.  He has a plan in mind to also be able to convert two of the beds into a hoophouse, so that I can get in the garden earlier in the season, or make it last longer into the fall.

I’m so excited!

And maybe now that I have put together my 2010 Tomato Report, we can all wait with baited breath for the report from Minnesota.  His report is going to be a good one.

finis.

That’s it.  The 2010 growing season is officially over.   The fact that we made it to October 28th is actually pretty remarkable.    What makes it officially over?

This is, or rather, was, my basil plant.  Last night the temps got down below freezing, and that was the end.  Of course, you can still see the parsley and the rosemary there next to the basil looking alive and vibrant, but the demise of the basil and any other tender growth is confirmation that the gardening year has drawn to a close.

I just went out and harvested my one lone butternut squash.  It’s still got a faint green tinge to it, but it feels solid.  I need to find out if it will ripen further now that it’s off the vine.  If not, it will be dinner tomorrow night with an amazing homegrown roasted chicken.

I’m getting anxious for those seed catalogs to start rolling in!

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