Category: Wisconsin Gardening

It’s A Garden!

I am just so excited to have my garden back!  Yesterday as I measured out my squares and carefully planted my seeds, it was like a reunion with an old friend.  I really love square foot gardening,  and trying to do without it last year was more than enough trying for me.  Never again.

I have four main garden beds, three of them measure 10 x4 and the fourth one is a few inches shy, so it’s more like a 9×4.  Total,  that is 156 square feet of growing space, and boy, did I plant a lot!

I have 21 tomato plants, 27 hot pepper plants- including one habanero plant, 7 sweet pepper plants and scads and scads of other edibles.  I planted tons of new-to- me greens, like claytonia, mache, mizuna, cress, two kinds of endive, and many different kinds of  lettuce and spinach.   There are 13 square feet of assorted carrots, kale, broccoli, chard, lots of radishes and 5 varieties of beet- some prized for their greens, some for the root.  I planted six square feet of pole beans, and then six square feet of bush beans, PLUS the 9 square feet that are half bush beans, half cucumbers.  The six varieties of cucumber will be trained up a trellis, and I’m hopeful that I’ll have enough picklers to make pickles this year.  We even plopped in a watermelon and a cantaloupe plant.  Not sure how those will do, but the kids wanted to try them out.

I made the decision that for this year at least, the herbs and onions will not go in the raised beds.  Rabbits pretty much leave herbs and onions alone, so tomorrow I will spend time cultivating the herb bed and planting what I have ready in there.  My basil, marjoram, thyme and chervil are all doing really well, and will be so happy in the ground.

It was so wonderful today to walk out to the garden and see that my pepper and tomato plants survived yesterday’s crazy wind all right.  Today I am a bit on the sore side from yesterday’s efforts, but I certainly feel that all is right with the world now.  The garden grows, and we eagerly await a harvest.

For the record, these are the tomato and pepper plants I have growing.  Most of these tomatoes are new varieties to me- I’m excited to try them!

Tomatoes 2011:

  • Tigerella
  • German Johnson
  • Roma
  • Moskovich
  • Lemon Drop (two of these)
  • Woodle Orange (this one is rather pathetic looking…we’ll see)
  • Purple Calabash
  • Cherokee Purple
  • Striped German
  • Black Cherry
  • Yellow Brandywine
  • Green Zebra
  • Pruden’s Purple
  • Aunt Ruby’s German Green
  • Valiant
  • Purple Russian
  • Pineapple
  • Sweet 100
  • Black Krim
  • Ananas Noire (also rather sickly, but worth a shot)

Hot Peppers 2011:

  • Serrano
  • Cascabella
  • Bulgarian Carrot
  • Maule’s Red Hot
  • Joe’s Round
  • Hinkelhatz
  • Georgia Flame
  • Aji Cristal
  • Habanero
  • Jalapeno

Decimation And New Hope

I’ve been putting off updating here on the garden blog.  In fact, the Minnesota gardeners have been putting off updating as well, because we’ve been stymied this year.  After growing like gangbusters, for apparently no reason at all, my tomatoes began dying.  And not just a little wilting or leaf-dropping, but full out keeling over of plants.   When I first noticed that my plants were on the decline, it was at the beginning of a busy company weekend, and the plants had to wait several days before attention could be given, and that was the beginning of the end.

I suspect that my first culprit was over-watering.  Growing under lights was a whole new ballgame, and there obviously is a learning curve.  I over-watered, and I watered from the top, so the roots on my plants had no incentive to grow and expand south as they normally do.  Once I realized this, I re-potted my tomatoes, using Miracle Gro soil (hoping the added nutrients would help) and then I didn’t even water them for a few days.  But by then, the damage was done, and they started dropping like flies.  Of the 48 heirloom tomato plants I started with, I have about 6 remaining that I’ll put into the ground, but don’t really expect much to happen there.

This whole time, my peppers and herbs, which were grown under the exact same conditions were thriving like gangbusters.  They’re all beautiful plants and almost ready to go into the ground.

So I resigned myself to having to buy tomatoes this year, knowing full well the limited selection of heirloom tomatoes that I would find at my favorite garden center.

Then, this past weekend, hope arrived at the St. Paul Farmer’s Market.  We were out visiting the Minnesota gardeners, and our great big planned plant swap consisted of just a few of my hot peppers arriving in Minnesota.  But that farmer’s market!  We found heirloom after heirloom, and at SUCH reasonable prices.  Not only did we find hope- we found joy, as we recognized these tomatoes.  While I will go yet another year without knowing how Pink Grapefruit and Emerald Evergreen taste, I will get to enjoy some new varieties, such as German Johnson and Moskovich, Tigerella and Cherokee Purple.   We both found ample heirlooms, and it was as if everything in the world was right again.   We also now know for years to come.  Should we experience further problems with tomato propagation, we now have a fallback plan to be able to plant those wonderful heirlooms into our own dirt.

And now the growing season can begin.  The sun is finally beginning to shine, and the waiting game begins.   Pictures are forthcoming, as my first 40 square feet of garden was planted this evening, and the remaining 120 will be planted tomorrow.

As long as there are new seeds, there will always be new hope.

The Garden Does Grow

As I write this this morning, we are under a “Winter Storm Warning”.  Seriously.  We are expected to get anywhere from 3-12 inches, though I think we’re far enough south that it will be closer to 3-6.

I am really, really glad that I was patient with the plant starting this year.  Though I had the itch to start them early- because what if it was an early spring? I waited, and my patience is being rewarded.  Sort of.

The garden is growing, it’s just growing in my basement right now.  I think we finally got the set-up the way we like it, and I wanted to share a picture.

Here it is, five rows of lights, four-feet long.  You can see each shelf will hold two flats, and all the shelves are adjustable, so as the plants grow, I can lift the lights a little farther away from them.  Or, as it is right now, since I have various stages of growth, I can just move the flats around.  So far it looks like all my seedlings are doing well.  I had a horrible mishap with one of the flats a few days ago, yet it looks like the plants will pull through.

In the next day or so I have to actually go through and inventory what is growing down there.   I have no idea how many of each tomato and pepper plant actually germinated and got potted up, since they did so in stages.  I can tell you that my Basil, Thyme, Parsley and Summer Savory are doing well, but as far as specific peppers and tomatoes, that will come.

I do know that I had no Sungold or Brave General tomatoes sprout, and that my Serrano and Bulgarian Carrot Hot Peppers are in plenty.   I have no Hungarian Hot Wax peppers either now that I think of it.

As far as I know, the peas have not sprouted outside yet, but the parsley plant is doing well.  It should tolerate a snowfall okay, as long as it doesn’t do a rain/melt/freeze into ice thing.

Spring?  Are you out there somewhere?

Yes, Yes I Did.

Today was the first day that I determined the ground was drained enough that I could walk outside without sinking into the lawn.  Ah, what a joy to just walk around the yard!  I smiled at the crocuses popping up in various places, and noted all the little bluebells that are poking up as well.

But then I walked past my little display of pots out back and just had to stick a shovel in one.  Sure enough- completely thawed out, a touch warm from the sun, and just begging for something to be put in it.  So I threw caution to the wind and went in the house to grab one of my parsley starts.  I happen to have three of these little pots, so if this one doesn’t make it, I have two more.  Over the last few days, though, this particular parsley plant has been looking very sad, like it wants more room, so room it has.  Parsley is a very hardy plant, so there is a chance it will do okay.  I realize it would have been better with a bit of hardening off, but like I said, I have back-ups.

And then I had to play in the mud.  I just had to! I scraped some remaining snow off the dirt, and found a few spots where the ground underneath was not still full of frost- there were a few of those spots too.  I found some mud, really.  Which was all I needed to find.  So I worked the mud a little bit, because there was also a layer of leaves, so I wanted to distribute the leaves into the mud a little better.

And then I made nine little rows and planted nine little rows of peas.  Shelling peas, to be specific.   For years, I’ve wanted to get peas into the ground “when the ground can first be worked” as I’ve read about over and over.  I finally did it!  My shelling peas are to the left of this small patch of scallions leftover from fall. (I’m looking forward to those scallions perking up too!)

To the right of the scallions is another patch of mud that I thought was still too wet.  I’ll check it out tomorrow, and if all goes well, either some Snow Peas or some Sugar Snaps will be going in that spot.

I also liberated my Lemon Thyme plant from the snow as well, and it looks like he survived the winter okay.

Other than some serious thunderstorm watches/warnings for the weekend, it looks like spring really and truly is here to stay.

Tomatoes Are In!

Exactly two weeks after I started the first round of pepper seeds, I decided it was time to get the tomatoes in.  In addition, I thought I’d try Minnesota’s trick of soaking pepper seeds and then planting them.  When I planted dozens of seeds, and only had four or five up, I was concerned that I wasn’t going to have hot peppers.  They still may come up, but I feel that soaking seeds overnight, and then planting a second round of hot peppers will be insurance.  I can always give the extras away, or find another space of ground to plunk them in.

For the tomatoes, I have several people that I am starting some for, so first I had to determine what varieties I was starting for which people.  My brothers each had specific requests, the two others I am starting for had requests for tomatoes for canning and cooking- good producers.  Then I had to make my list, taking into account the amount of space I am planning for…

All told, I need 41 tomato plants, minimum.  So this year, when I placed the seeds in the soil, I added 2 or 3 to each cell for insurance purposes.  Yes, that means I could have a super abundance of tomato plants, BUT since my seeds are from years past, the germination might be less, so I wanted to be sure.

The hardest part was choosing the tomatoes for myself.  I have six plants coming from Minnesota, and I have 16 spaces designated for heirloom tomatoes.  4 determinate tomatoes will be going in their own spaces, so that meant that out of the 30+ varieties of tomato I have, I needed to narrow it down to just 10 plants.  TEN! Do you have any idea how difficult that is?   It took no time at all to choose the ten most reliable and most abundant- as well as my favorite flavors.  But then I would wistfully look at a packet that didn’t produce last year and wonder how it was.

You do know where this is going, don’t you?

About eight  extra varieties made it into the cell trays.   I had eight  extra little cells when all was said and done with my tomatoes and peppers, it seemed only right.  I’m sure I can find plenty of patches of dirt to put extra plants if I need them.  Plus they are added insurance that I will have a good crop this year, and I am always willing to share extra plants as well.

So, this is what was planted:

  • Black Cherry
  • Green Pineapple
  • Emerald Evergreen
  • German Red Strawberry
  • Woodle Orange
  • Lemon Drop
  • Pantano Romanesco
  • Sub-Arctic Plenty (one of 2 determinates)
  • Cosmonaut Volkov
  • Brave General
  • Arkansas Traveler
  • Amish Paste
  • Pink Grapefruit
  • Grace Lahman
  • Golden King of Siberia
  • Siletz (the second determinate)
  • Roman Candle
  • Ananas Noire
  • Gold Medal
  • Reisentraube
  • Green Zebra
  • Malakite
  • Sungold
  • Gypsy
  • Valiant

I swear I can taste some of them already.  My only concern now is that I’ll have enough room in the grow center as they turn into plants and need to be potted up.

I’ve already determined that I’m going to be saving seeds from many varieties this summer.  Some of my seed stock is getting old, so I want to replenish it with fresh seed. Since I grow heirlooms, that’s entirely possible.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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