I should have known.
Tomatoes are self-pollinating- they pretty much take care of themselves when it comes to pollination. However, once I have blossoms on my plant, if I give the plant a shake every once in a while, it could assist the pollination by encouraging pollen to fall to right where it needs to.
So. Tomatoes may be in my future yet. Looking forward to them.
I’ve been going through my seldom-written in notebook from the past three growing years. My, how the obsession has grown!
Three years ago, in 2007, the bulk of my garden was planted by April 30th. A second planting of lettuce, turnips, and red beets in July that year failed.
That was the year I tried growing my tomatoes in pots. That was also the year I swore I would never grow tomatoes in pots again. My note says “next year, herbs in pots, tomatoes IN GROUND”.
I also have a note to do a better job reading seed packets- followed by some angry eyes. Lol. I remember that one. I tended and nurtured some melon plants that year- wrestling with disgusting ground squirrels the whole time too- only to find that the melons I grew were not actually going to get any larger than a baseball. While cute, they weren’t especially juicy and sweet, and one melon was enough for one person. I devoted about 16 square feet of garden space to three tiny baseball sized melons.
The following spring I hatched a plan to expand my garden by adding a third bed to the yard. I was torn between one on the side of the house, and one on the blank side of the shed. It turned out the shed side had more sunshine all day long over the side of the house. What a good move that was! That fall we had landscaping installed and would have lost an entire garden’s worth of produce.
In 2008 I determined I was going to figure out this multi-season gardening thing. I have a neat and tidy list telling me what seeds I had- what seeds were being ordered, and a schedule as to when I should plant. 2008 (just two years ago!) was the first time I started seeds instead of buying tomato plants. (Who knew what THAT was going to lead to!) I started tomato seeds April 4th, and they were potted up already by April 17th.
On April 17th I started Okra, Tomatillos, Peppers and Eggplants
I started two pots as well- one pot of radishes, one pot of spinach, hoping to get a jump on spring. I also started, on April 24th, onion, scallion, leek, radicchio, broccoli, kale, basil, bunching onion and celery.
Shelling peas and snap peas went IN GROUND May 1st.
Starting the radishes and spinach in the pot a month early ended up being a waste. By the time they were ready to harvest, the spinach and radishes in the garden were ready to eat- and of a better quality.
Big discovery that year: Heirloom tomatoes are worth every ounce of energy and money that goes into them. Big time deliciousness.
Other notes: Fennel, while delicious, and one of my favorite vegetables, not so worth it for the home gardener. No herbs or vegetables like to grow near fennel. So in order to successfully grow it, you must have a space devoted to just fennel. Also- the Di Firenze variety I grew two years in a row does not produce a big fat delicious bulb. It was edible, but the stalks were more valuable as an herb.
Tomatillos are awesome! They grow okay in pots, but will thrive if planted in pairs in the ground in a nice sunny place. Given enough time, I suspect they will also produce two harvests in a year. Will do these again when space allows.
Onions: Not worth it to start from seed. Scallions and leeks- yes. Bulbing onions- not so much. Buy onion sets and use those if bulbing onions are desired.
Okra: Rumor is that if I can find the variety Pentagreen, that I can get a decent harvest this far north. However, trials of the variety Cajun Delight produced small pods just two or three at a time- hardly enough to do anything with. If I ever find the pentagreen, I may try them again.
So just now I went to water one of my tomato plants. It’s very interesting- I have three plants, and two look drastically different from the third. Drastically- I’m beginning to wonder if they are actually different varieties or…what? I dunno.
Anyway, as I’m watering this plant, I noticed that a blossom is on the verge of cracking open. A tomato blossom! On the first of March! But then the realization struck- I have three tomato plants- and NO POLLINATORS!
I have research to do- because I’m pretty certain my tomatoes are not self-pollinating, but I’m not sure. I may have to don my bee suit and grab a paintbrush in a few weeks.
I’ll post a picture later of my plants.
Was it just a week ago I mentioned that I was going to buy established herb plants this year instead of starting them myself?
I’m seriously missing my herbs!
This past weekend I had some rare time all to myself to peruse the seed racks at my favorite garden center. I took my time- I was alone after all. I picked up a few varieties of herb seed that I knew I didn’t already have, as well as a few radishes, an organic orange delicata squash, and a chiogga beet. I just couldn’t help myself.
If I attempted to grow all the herbs from seed that I already have seed for… well, I would have about 14 varieties of herbs (give or take).
Which has me re-thinking seeding some herbs. (Can you see me rolling my eyes here?) I’ll tell you, what I wouldn’t give for a good 14 feet of undisturbed south-facing window. Then I could line the windows with 12 x 12 pots, fill ’em up with soil and seeds and start on some herbs. In a perfect world, they would do fine in the pots in the cold weather, and then once it got nice out, I would set them outside. As cold weather comes back in the fall, the plants would come back inside. In my mind, this idea has merit. And a lot of it.
I just really, really am missing fresh herbs. Mostly parsley, interestingly enough. And while I can buy that reasonably priced, it just doesn’t last long enough.
Maybe I’m just yearning for spring. But just for fun, these are the herb seeds I have:
Of these, I know the dill won’t do too well in pots, and rosemary is tough to start from seed. Sage and thyme will winter over just fine, so if I can get them established in the ground I won’t have this dilemma year after year. It just occurred to me that I don’t have any chive seeds. I will have to fix that, as my chives never popped out of the dirt last year. It didn’t affect me too much, I simply used a bit of scallion in place of the chive. But still. I’d like to pick up some chive seed and some more specialty herbs. Things like Thai basil, lemon thyme, and cinnamon basil. I would give my right arm for a bona-fide tarragon plant- but those cannot grow from seed. Real tarragon grows from a cutting. I don’t care too much for oregano, so I’m not sure I want to be growing that.
I feel like there’s something missing… what am I missing?
The first year I cracked open my Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog, my chin literally dropped. As I leafed page after page and saw heirloom tomato after heirloom tomato, I was instantly smitten. I wanted one of each. There are literally hundreds of varieties from all over the world! It can be so easy to just randomly order a few handfuls of seeds to try, but I have found over the last few years that there are a few things key when it comes to selecting varieties to grow here in Wisconsin.
The main thing is to look at the origin of the seeds you are looking at. Chances are if the location they are grown in says “warm climate” or “tropical” or “favorite in the south” it might not do so well here in the frozen tundra. Tomatoes that are bred for Texas or Florida or New Zealand may not do so well here. On the other hand, I have had amazing success with tomatoes from Siberia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. And of course, ones bred right here in Wisconsin or next-door Minnesota.
I find this true with many plants other than tomatoes, sadly. Exotic Asian eggplants don’t seem to like our weather too much- it just doesn’t get hot enough. My experiments with okra proved less than desirable. If I had space to grow several dozen plants I could get enough okra to do something with, but growing one plant and yielding five little pods is hardly worth the gardening real estate.
It’s all trial and error- and it’s not to say that maybe YOU won’t have some success with that beautiful Israeli tomato seed, but your odds of success are better if your tomato seed comes from a region with a similar climate.
Oooh, have to come back and add something. If you’re not like me, and you don’t have an addiction to starting your own tomato plants from seeds, there is nothing wrong with buying your plants already started. If you go to a reliable garden center near to you, they should have plants that will grow well in your climate. Ask if you have any questions about it. If the people working there can’t answer your questions, find a different garden center until you find someone who can answer your questions AND assure you that the plants they have will grow well in your climate.
My tomato plants are doing very well. They started out terribly slow. After the sprouts emerged, it seemed to take forever for real leaves to appear. It occurred to me that a lack of heat may be the cause for this, so I took my sprouts and put them in an empty cheese-ball barrel, which served as a mini greenhouse. Bingo- the leaves emerged, and I was able to pot up my seedlings.
The seedlings went back into the barrel and have been growing like gangbusters. Today I had to take them out of the barrel, and I added supports to two of the plants.
Tomorrow I will trek out to the shed and see if I can find some slightly bigger pots. They would like to be potted up I think. The ones that I added supports to were leaning up against the sides of the barrel- with the barrel removed, they kind of want to flop over. If I can put them in bigger pots, I can bury those stems a good four more inches.
It’s pretty exciting to see the growth on these.
In other news, today I went through my seeds. I have 31 varieties of tomato seed to pick and choose from this year. It will be a task to pick and choose- I have a few for certain that I want, but other than that, I will see which way the wind blows. Of those 31 varieties, 2 I don’t care for, and 3 my brother is starting, so that reduces my total to 26 varieties.
I went through my Baker Creek catalog with my seeds today to really see what I had, and discovered that one of my favorite varieties from years past was not in this years catalog. German Red Strawberry is missing from the red varieties of tomato, so that is one that I will be growing for absolute certain. I will need to save seed from that one, because it is one of my favorites, and I don’t want to lose it, or not be able to find it anywhere.
Peppers and tomatoes are on my mind, as the seeds will need to be started in March and the beginning of April. Everything else I will direct sow this year. We will be moving during this time period, and the less plants we move, the better. I think I have ordered everything I am going to order this year. In the weeks to come I am hoping to make a stop by Steins to pick up random seeds that I am missing.
This year I will also be purchasing my herbs from Steins as plants. Except maybe parsley, that one did well for me from seed.
In the weeks to come, I want to help out my fellow Wisconsin gardeners with some tips from years past. What works here and what doesn’t seem to work- or hasn’t for me at least. Stay tuned. Gardening is on the brain, and I’m happy to be back.
Late in the evening, I planted 3 Sungold Select tomato seeds.
This afternoon, January 7, 2010 I found 3 tomato sprouts.
My intentions with these tomato seeds are twofold. One- I intend to see if I can successfully grow a cherry tomato plant in a pot indoors in winter and early sring. Purely to satisfy a desire for real tomatoes, of course. But secondly, I intend to perform a second experiment of a more … spiritual nature. Will blessing a plant cause it to perform differently from its mates? I intend to find out with the first potting up of the seedlings. Stay tuned.
Hey- I needed something to do while we’re waiting for spring. And waiting to find a new yard to plant in of course.
I swear it was just a few weeks ago that I was staring wistfully out this very door, waiting impatiently for the snow to melt so I could start planting.
How time flies.
And how badly I’ve done at updating the garden.
This year was…well, just not a good year for the garden. Over the fourth of July weekend this summer, we decided that we were going to move. This meant moving before the garden finished producing, and since we need to restore the lawn when we moved out, I stopped watering and taking good care of the garden. Basically, I harvested what was harvestable, but stopped nurturing tender sproutlings, thinking I was going to be yanking them out before they really produced.
*Sigh*
Then we changed our minds, but by then the damage had been done, and I got a really small yield out of my tomato plants and really, everything else. The end result was that at least everything was finished being harvestable during reasonable weather, so that Andy could actually take out the gardens. It stayed warm long enough for quite a bit of grass to grow in- not surprising at all, given how much grass tried to take over the garden this year!
So the ground is fully at rest now, thanks to a 14-inch layer of snow dumped overnight.
The great news about this- the snow will insulate the ground, and provided it stays, the frost line should be very, very shallow this year. We really only had a few days of hard cold before the snow hit- this means great things for the spring to come. This means that when spring does announce it’s arrival, the snow will melt and have a ground to sink into instead of rolling about creating muck. It means my husband will be able to go to work early, and well, as much as I dislike the snow- this is a great thing for next spring.
Next spring will be a whole new adventure, as it is our intention to move at the end of this winter. I’m looking forward to our new yard and making plans. Right now, all I can do is plan varieties, as we don’t know the where part of moving yet. But oh, those seed catalogs will start rolling in any day now, and I can dream.
I can dream of spring, and I can dream of digging in the dirt and nurturing seeds- and somewhere in here, I’ll get to actually start some seeds.
But I will be patient this year, and next year I expect I’ll be rewarded with the garden I’ve been striving for the past four years. I can’t wait to share.
Wow, has it really been nearly a month since I updated? Shame on me! The garden is slowly coming to life a bit at a time. The weather kind of foiled us here as the temperatures have been inconsistent, and the wind has really been something this year. I’ve been trying to harden off my tomatoes and peppers for several weeks now, and every time I get a few hours of sunlight in, the next day the wind is just way beyond what my tender plants can handle. The hardening process is not going so well this year… I’ve sunburned a few leaves here and there, and my plants are just ready to be in the ground size-wise, so I’m really having to stay on top of keeping them watered. If all goes according to plan, Thursday I’ll get some of these plants actually in the dirt. Here are some of the plants, the rest are on the balcony upstairs- which is a great unused space, so it’s perfect for the plants right now.
Let’s see, the spinach has come up, and while we could certainly pick and eat it right now, I’m letting it get just a little larger before we start indulging- we can’t wait for fresh spinach. I’m trying to figure out where I can start a second succession of seeds. I just don’t have enough room! Oh- the spinach I did in rows here, and I think if I figured it out, I have more spinach plants than if I’d done them in squares. Go figure. I had planned the first two feet for spinach, but then when I actually measured after planting, discovered I barely used one foot- so just behind the spinach is this year’s chard, which is slow to grow. I can’t wait for that either!
My sage plant is taking over! It’s full of flowers too, which concerned me at first, but I guess it will be okay to use, even though it’s flowering. The thyme is flowering too. I may have to trim back the sage a bit though, it’s really expanding into the surrounding squares.
Beans are up. I decided on bush beans this year, and I’ve also got a few varieties that are meant for drying. I’m very curious if we have enough warm weather here to dry beans. I only planted a few of those ones. Along the trellis here are the winter squash- I’m planning on training them up the trellis, we’ll see how they do there. This morning I was pleased to see the first squash sprout digging out from the dirt. I haven’t had luck yet with winter squash- but I sure am hoping this works this year!
The peas are still growing steadily… I guess there’s not much more to say about them. Except you’ll notice all the weeds in front of them. I have about 12 squares in the whole garden that are not planted or designated for tomatoes. Yikes. I am going to have to squish and squeeze and see just how many peppers, eggplants, and celery plants will fit. Again, if the plan holds, this will be done Thursday morning.
Ah, my pride and joy so far. THIS is the way to do the cole crops. I started them way early- some as early as February, and they are loving this weather. The kale could be picked as young kale, and I’m seriously regretting not planting more. The cabbages are curling up beautifully, the broccoli look like they are going to start putting up heads any day now, and the brussels sprouts are growing like gangbusters. The cauliflower doesn’t look near as robust, but I have hopes. I’m really hoping most of these will be ready before the cabbage moths are out in full force- I’d love to be able to avoid the row cover if at all possible.
And that’s about it so far. This barrel below is where I am trying some container zucchini. I just don’t have room in the beds for it- but I would like to have just a few to make ratatouille and zucchini bread with. I’ve also seeded in the lettuces and the asian greens. I have to say- starting lettuce in the house just was a waste of time. I may try again next year as a windowsill garden for cutting and eating, but starting the seeds indoors…. just didn’t work so well.
I’m slowly nurturing the herbs. My chive pot of seven years is empty this year, sadly. There is one lonely shoot- despite the mass quantity of flowers I had last year. All the herbs I’ve started have me disappointed so far, and I’m contemplating just heading to the garden center next week and starting over with larger, established plants.
And that’s it to date, I think. My succession planted cilantro in the windowsill is still going too… two weeks wasn’t enough time between starts though- next time I think four weeks would be better. The first pot is going to seed and the second one isn’t far behind it. Overall though, I think I may just try to keep a few going this summer to see if I can keep fresh cilantro on hand.
Time for a small update. 🙂 Saturday I planted the peas. I used innoculent, and this was my first time using it. What the innoculent is supposed to do is help the peas and beans fixate more nitrogen to their roots. This will result in prolific beans or peas, and also will be a nice boost to the soil. I decided to omit the shelling peas this year. As much as I raved about them last year, it really takes a lot to make a mouthful, and with my square foot space… well, I just decided not to allocate the space. I did divide my space between snow peas and sugar snap peas- both the kids favorites, and I know they will be thrilled when we finally see some results there.
Currently, the peas are in the spaces where the cucumbers will be. I planted them along the fence line and left the rest of the square foot space empty. Te reason for this is that the peas will grow and be finished growing by the end of June, early July. The cucumbers won’t even get planted until early June. I will plant these as seeds in the square foot space not occupied by pea plants, and by the time the cukes are really ready to grow vigorously, the peas will have been picked and the plants removed. If all goes according to plan, of course.
The cole crops are still looking good. I snapped a couple of pictures today, as I went out and planted four squares of romaine. I just can’t wait to harvest some romaine from the garden! Here in the first photo you can see my cabbage plants doing quite well. The row next to them are cauliflower.
Then here is a wider view of the cole patch as a whole. Look in the far back left, you can see the scallions that wintered over. I’ve heard it said that these really will just go to seed, but in the meantime, hello? Green onions- anything fresh from the garden is a wonderful thing! You can’t see the thyme behind the onions which is doing beautifully as well!
The sage plant in the other garden bed is finally beginning to show signs of life. We snapped off some of the dried branches for Andy to use on the grill, but for the most part, it looks like the sage successfully made it through the winter. The spinach and radishes I planted a few weeks ago are finally sprouting as well- that’s very exciting! I was sorely tempted to plant more lettuces today, as well as some chard and beets, but the garden those are going in is still in need of some manure. I’ll get that in by the end of this week, so then I can plant away. Oddly enough, as much as I couldn’t wait for spring, now that it’s sprung, I have a rather calm patience about getting the garden planted.
The tomatoes and peppers and eggplants are still doing well inside, and many of the herbs as well. I’m debating what to do with the herbs- I had originally planned for them to go in the gardens proper, but now I’m leaning more towards pots. Only because then maybe I can squeeze a few extra months out of them by bringing them inside.
Overall, I’m a happy vegetable gardener. The chard still hasn’t come back, so I’m going to write it off and just plant new- it grows so fast, it seems silly to keep waiting for what looks like is never going to happen.