Monday, January 22, 2024

Peppers & Tomatoes for '24

Peppers:

  • Bell peppers: seeds from grocery store peppers.
  • Baby bell peppers:  red, yellow & orange, also from grocery store peppers.
  • Aji peppers (little bit of heat): seeds came with another order.  
  • Shishito (almost no heat): seeds from last year's plants
  • Lemon Drop (hot & citrus): last year's plants.
  • Scotch Bonnet (hot & spicy): last year's plants.
  • Carolina Reaper (record-breaking heat): Etsy. 

Note: All peppers are started. 

 

Tomatoes:

  •  Stewing Tomatoes: San Marzano.
  • Cherry Tomatoes: 
    • Assorted leftovers from years gone by. (Hanging pots & ground pots)
    • "Spoon" pea-size tomatoes (hanging pots only)
  • Slicing Tomatoes
    • Brandywine
    • Fireworks
    • Green Zebra
    • Cherokee Carbon. I have high hopes.
    • Assorted leftovers from previous years. 
  • Greenhouse Tomatoes: 
    • Brandywine
    • Cherokee Carbon
    • Fireworks

Note: A few Brandywine started, for greenhouse. Will start the rest in early March / late February.
 


Sunday, March 12, 2023

First Day of Daylight Savings

March 12th, 2013. I did a fair bit of work in the garden this weekend.    

I started by topping up the soil in all of the raised beds. It took a full cubic yard altogether. Lot of shoveling. 
 
I used the Garden Mix from Western Soils: 1/3 manure, 2/3 topsoil, or so. Pretty rich. 
 
The soil in the raised beds had settled a fair bit during the last couple of years. 
 
That's partly because soil settles, and partly because I filled the bottoms of the raised beds with scrap wood; an attempt at hugelkultur: a permaculture technique that involves branches and wood under the soil, decomposing, for long-term enrichment of the soil. 
 
Before I filled the bins, I removed the things growing there (well, most of them). In the process, I found a whole bunch of red onion starts. I think one of my red onion flowers last year went to seed before I got to it and this spring, I have scads of little baby red onion starts!  

I was terrifically excited to find all these free onion starts, and my favorite onions at that! So I planted all the volunteer onion starts, and some of the Walla Walla Sweet Onion starts that I'd been working on all winter in the greenhouse. We'll see how well they do.
 
After two days of shoveling and raking, I looked into what could be planted already. 

I've always waited until later for a lot of my spring gardening, but several seeds said, "Plant as early as soil can be worked." And I'd clearly been working the soil. So I planted some things.
Four rows of things here. The first was supposed to be radishes, but when I planted them, it turns out they were beet seeds. Whoops. Well, they're both red, found root crops, aren't they?
Then carrots, then more beets (on purpose this time) and finally, some actual radishes. 

I also planted a row of sugar snap peas (I soaked the seeds for a day in advance). Actually, I laid the (soaked) seeds on the soil, and added the new soil on top.
Yesterday, I had dug into the soil under that space and added both blood meal and bone meal. Hoping for good peas again. Excellent for friends and family grazing opportunities. 

Note that the first bed in the back has been growing garlic all winter. I added to it (there was some elephant garlic among the little onion starts, rescued from the other beds). 

I've also got some Swiss chard growing on the near end of this bed: it's been out and under cover for a week or more (with one out from under cover), and they seem to be doing pretty well. 

There's one Romaine lettuce under cover at the other end of the bed; been there for a week, too. 

Mid-winter, we'd discovered some red potatoes growing in a dark cupboard. I stuck those in dirt, hoping they'd survive and maybe grow. They're growing well.


Saturday, February 11, 2023

2023 Winter Update

A friend wanted an update on the Red Door Green House.

I didn't have time to take (and edit) photos or to write (and edit) a lot of text. 

Let's see if we can do this as a video, shall we? 

Saturday, February 5, 2022

2022 Starts

12/15/2021: Planted papaya seeds, from a papaya from the grocery store.

12/20/2021: Planted pomegranate seeds, from a pomegranate from the grocery store.

Both sprouted well. 

1/15/2022: Planted a number of peppers. These are always slow to sprout. 

1/15/2022: Started some cuttings from a lime tree. These did not take. 😢

1/20/2022: Finished pruning all the pepper plants that are over-wintering. Nearly all of them are in good shape. 

1/28/2021: Planted squash and cucumber seeds. Martini cucumbers sprouted very quickly.

1/28/2021: Planted various brassica seeds. Broccoli is first to germinate. 

2/5/2022: Planted a few tomato seeds. Yeah, it's too early, but I'm excited for spring. 

2/5/2022: Planted yellow onion seeds. These are later than I'd like. 

Sunday, May 2, 2021

First of May

Just a few photos to document the state of the growing things as of the beginning of May.
 
Greenhouse is doing pretty well. Lost a lot of pepper starts this year just from trying to do too much. Still had some successes.
Also kept about a dozen pepper plants from last summer. Nice.
 Fig tree doing well.
First tomatoes of 2021 on the left. Last tomatoes of 2020 on the right. It was my goal to cross this year's harvest over last year's like this. Fun.
I discovered these starting trays this year, end of April. Magnificent! Too late for the peppers, but just in time for pretty much everything else. Spectacularly useful. Nearly all the plants in this year's gardens will have a start in one of these trays. 
 Rhubarb is doing great. Peas are getting started.
Salad is getting a start. We caught scrub jays eating the young plants, hence the screen. Had real trouble finding actual Romaine lettuce seeds. We have Swiss Giant romaine variant, Red Romaine and the prettiest: Trout's Back Romaine.  
Asparagus starting nicely. Still needs another year or two before much harvesting.  
Garlic on the left, onions on the right (Walla Walla sweets and Red). Some Swiss Chard left over from last year for the chickens. 
Growing a lemon tree from a seed from my own lemon tree. 
Growing a kumquat from a seed. Got this one from a grocery store. 
Overview: early May in the garden.








Sunday, April 4, 2021

In the Garden, April First

The first week of April was very much Spring like. T-shirt weather, lots of sunshine. I cannot help but garden.

 

Half a bed of garlic, half a bed of WallaWalla sweet onions. With some kale/chard for chickens at the end.

 
Broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi. They're doing great! 
  Lettuce and carrots, both from starts.
 Going to have loads of rhubarb.
I've discovered that the Scrub Jays really like eating the baby pea plants. So we've protected them.

Getting the tomato patch ready for tomatoes.
Exciting.
(Only six weeks to go. . . )