Tomatoes

Starting April 15th, we've been gradually getting our seedlings into the ground. It would be a faster process but our Army son surprised us last weekend by coming home for a visit......yay...before he ships out to Iraq...boo. I just don't want to spend time in the garden when he's here; it's such a precious time. Even when all he's doing is playing Mario brothers with his sister in the next room, I savor the moment.

Anyway, when he goes to hang out with friends, I rush out to the garden and put a few more plants in the ground. Here are some of the slicing tomatoes planted in our late carrot bed....hopefully we'll get some carrots harvested before they are completely shaded by the tomato plants.

Jubilee, Mortgage Lifter, White Queen, Jet Star, Copia and Gold Medal.

A second wave of slicing tomatoes went into the spinach bed.

Early Girl, Goldie Yellow, Thessalonika, and Consoluto Florentine are planted with the last of the calendulas and chrysanthemum. We'll continue to save and dry the calendula flowers to use to make teas and antiseptic salve.

We're leaving the kale in to save the seeds...it's one of the easiest to save and this one plant will provide all the seed we need for next years crop.

Our first bed of paste tomatoes....2 each of San Marzano, Roma, Consoluto Genovese and Goldmans.

Progress....slowly but surely.

Then.....

...and now.

Lovin' the old washer and dryer that used to sit by the back fence...

...not lovin' the cardboard, but if it kills the weeds we can live with it temporarily.

We were written up today in the local newspaper, The Foothill Sun-Gazette, and wanted to say thanks to Mo Montgomery for the very nice and comprehensive article (it was great Mo...and not just because we're in it:)

Rummaging thru old photos reminded me of how far we've come in the 2 years that we've been gardening in our wonderful neighbors yard.....and how much work is still left to be done ~

DG pathways (instead of cardboard:)

Take down the rickety shed and put in more raised beds.

Plant more fruit trees.

Build a proper compost bin.

Lots to do....good thing we like working in the dirt!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fruit trees are a new addition to Joyce's yard (upper left corner)....we'll be posting more on that process in the next couple of days (as well as the tomatillos that went in today). Potatoes and oregano are waiting harvest in the left bed, garlic in the one on the right.

Edit ~ I should point out to those just stopping by because of the article- this blog is a journal of our sharecropping adventure in our neighbors yard. We are entering our third year of gardening in this yard but we've been growing food in our own yard for over 20 years (seems like we'd be past making mistakes......not the case). My personal blog is where I write about our garden as well as canning, dehydrating, bread baking, soap making and other aspects of this cheap hippie lifestyle :)

Brrrrrrrrr

Our current weather situation may not impress the rest of the country, but this is cold for springtime in the valley....and it isn't doing the recently transplanted tomatoes much good.

So we have set up an improvised greenhouse on the dining room table for the overflow from the downstairs shelf. The plants will be spending the next couple of nights here....hopefully they can go out and play in the sun tomorrow.

They don't seem to mind it so far:)

More Tomato Transplants

The rest of the tomato plants needed to get out of their little cells and into the sunshine. These larger pots will give them enough space for their roots to expand in the next few weeks before they go into their permanent homes in the garden.

Our very kind neighbor, who happens to work in agriculture, gave us several flats of these 3inch pots. Not as big as the first ones we transplanted, but much easier to move around

(and less tippy).

120 more tomatoes! Hopefully we will find the space for most of these to get planted....if not, there's always Freecycle:)

Peas!!!

We didn't do a great job of keeping them trellised....

...but they are producing.

Just takes a bit more work to find them:)

Transplanting Tomatoes

The tomato seedlings planted in January are outgrowing their little six-packs so we've started the process of transplanting them to bigger pots.

Decided to transplant a flat of 72, mostly because that's all the shelf space I have under the grow-lights. Some will probably be going straight into the ground this week as our expected temps. are pretty encouraging (80 degrees by Friday).

Mixed up some potting soil with a bit of leftover seed-starting medium....

...and planted some in picnic cups, while others went into saved nursery pots.

This year I shall try to keep tags in their pots to avoid the seemingly inevitable mystery tomatoes.

ps. check out the wonderful soup I made with garden goodies:)

What's for dinner?

Not sure...but it's going to involve what I pulled out of the garden today.

(and chicken:)

Purple Cauliflower!

It's called Graffiti and next year we will definitely be planting more. Tastes the same but I just love the color!

Stalling

Sorry about my absence of late....I will be posting tomato seedling progress in a day or two. In the meantime if you just have to read something, take a look at my post on the Urban Homesteading brouhaha.

see you soon!

Seed Starting

Finally got around to buying some decent seedling trays this year and what a difference! These are really solid and should last many years (unlike the cheapies that we'd been using that sprung leaks on the first use...sigh). Wish we could afford to buy more, but at $12 a pop our limit was four this year.

We usually order most of our seeds from Fedco, they are non-GMO and probably the least expensive of all the companies we order from, but this year decided to try some varieties from Baker Creek. I also found an organic seed business based out of Fresno that carried several 'heat tolerant' tomato varieties, so we are adding them to our list of acceptable seed companies.

I mixed up a big batch of seed-starting medium using 3 parts peat moss, 3 parts vermiculite, and 1 part potting soil (amounts are not exact). We bought 72-cell trays for the tomatoes since we need so many and the peppers are in a single 48-cell tray (not pictured).


Planted 204 tomato plants total ~108 paste, 90 slicing, 6 cherry...and 12 tomatillos.

Under the lights and on a heating mat for faster germination.

With a timer for the lights and a temperature control for the mat we have quite the high tech system here. Actually, the timer is a convenience and the temp control came with the mat (and is kind of useless).

The peppers were actually planted Jan. 15th and sat on top of the fridge until they sprouted (I didn't want to use extra electricity until I absolutely had to) and then were moved down into the cellar. The tomatoes were planted on the first of February.

Peppers are VERY slow growing and that extra 2 weeks will be needed later in the season so we can harvest them at the same time as the first tomatoes.....salsa here we come!

Potatoes....ever again?

It might have been a very good thing that we got a few potatoes last month since the freeze has dealt a pretty severe blow to the ones currently in the ground. Not sure how much the damage will affect the potato harvest in the Spring....if they survive....but it's a 'wait and see' game at this point.

...and I'm thinking row covers for next years crop!

Potatoes in December?

Yup...the freeze killed a couple of the plants that were planted in Sept. and when I went to pull them out yesterday, there were 4lbs. of potatoes in the ground....yay! Amazingly the younger plants (not yet up in this photo) weren't affected. More plant out of the ground made them more vulnerable?

I really didn't think that they were mature enough to get a harvest, so was pleased that our attempt to salvage sprouting potatoes hadn't been entirely in vain. Next year we may go ahead and plant more spuds early in the fall so that we can have home-grown tots for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Progress

This is our first year growing everything from seed and though the plants are still small, we are optimistic that we will be doing more of the same in the future. In the past, all our brassicas were planted as transplants bought from the local nursery, with lettuce, spinach and peas planted as seeds.

In August, the 6-packs were set out with seeds of cauliflower, cabbage, and brocolli (and onion, but that's another post). We didn't direct seed because our garden was still in production and with weeks of heat left in the Valley, we could protect the trays of seedlings from the hotter afternoon sun.

Around the middle of September another flat of seeds was sown. I could say that it was to stagger the harvest, but actually it was an incident involving the cat and our precarious tray set-up...sigh.

Most of the work in our winter garden comes in October, pulling out the summer veggies (of which several still remain) amending soil, and planting the cool-season crops...

....and eventually we'll get to that bed of BERMUDA in the background....geez.

One of the neatest things about starting from seed is that you can pick out varieties that aren't available at the nursery. We chose4 kinds of cauliflower ~ Violet Queen, Graffiti, Charming and Snow Crown....3 kinds of Cabbage~ Early Jersey, Super Red and Ruby Perfection...and 2 kinds ofBroccoli ~ Waltham and Tendergreen. Can't wait to see what Graffiti Cauliflower looks like!

We are Here, We are Here!

...but probably we're the only ones that are:)

This is the mess that is our winter garden at the moment.....more pics to follow....soon!

Watermelons!

We haven't grown watermelons in a very long time, for all kinds of reasons... mostly bug related. The aphids always seem to kill off the plant long before the fruit can ripen. This year was no exception to the aphid issue...we still got plenty and they have managed to limit the number of big melons....but several made it to the red stage and were edible. Not as sweet as they could have been but tasty nonetheless. Yeah for us!

This was the biggest at just over 10lbs. ...the others were 6, 8, and 8lbs.

Yummmm