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

Tomatoes

...sort of.

I debated posting these photos as it might turn away anyone who thought I actually might know what I am doing here :(

The tomato harvest has been a bit of a disappointment this year....considering we planted 81 tomato plants in this yard alone (over 20 more in our home garden). I thought we would be able to make enough sauces, salsas and catsups to last thru the winter. Sadly, that is not to be the case and I will be heading to the Farmer's Market tomorrow to try to make up the difference....sigh.

Not sure what happened here but because the plants in our more shaded garden are doing fine I think it might have something to do with the unrelenting heat and possibly the fairly new soil. We will continue to amend with our own compost and try to add more manures this year to get the fertility up to snuff.

The plants mostly seem to be dying on the bottom half.

So we decided to try to protect the fruit with screens .

This is just pathetic....these are BellStar paste tomatoes, which are a small determinate tomato plant. Pretty sure they're not supposed to be this small.

This bed of Romas is probably the healthiest of the lot....they are shaded from about 3pm on.

Fortunately, most of the garden has been really productive this year. I'll post pics of our more successful plantings in the next week or so.

Pumpkins

Looks like someone is going to be carving a big 'ole Jack-O-Lantern this Halloween!

Not sure how big these will end up but they are a good size right now and as long as we can fight off the squash bugs, we'll let them stay in the garden. If it looks like they will get damaged, we'll pick 'em and store them in the cellar. Pumpkins were a complete failure last year....and these are the same seeds...so we are quite happy with our success.

And I spoke too soon on our onion failure. This box was planted about 2 weeks after the original sets (the ones that all went to seed) and these are doing wonderfully. I pick a few every day, some get used immediately, some get layed out in the shade to dry. Haven't bought onions in months!

Carrots.....

....finally! We have had amazingly poor results in the past with our carrot crops. The ones planted in the fall never seem to make much progress (last year 6 survived...mostly eaten by snails if they came up at all) and the ones in the summer wilt in the heat or bolt to seed before the carrots fully develop. We've tried planting under the shade of other plants, which works marginally, and planting later in the fall, which works not at all (no germination in the cold). This year we seem to have hit on the right combination of planting time and location. We planted around the first of March....in a bed previously growing broccoli...and the germination rate was fantastic. Tho the plants grew slowly...they grew!!!

We have been pulling up carrots for about a month now and yesterday I was able to make juice with the 8 lbs. the we picked....yippee yahoo! And the nice thing, the bed is still FULL of carrots. Now the question remains as to how much longer they can handle the 100+ temps before going to seed. This area does get a bit of shade in the afternoon but as soon as the plants start to flower we will pull the entire bed!

Garden Progress

Hoping to sit down in the next few days and get some pics of the garden posted. We are picking LOTS of green beans, plenty of zucchini, and some onions (one bed planted later than the others managed to not go to seed, but are still not huge) .

...to be cont.

Big Ole Onion

This one escaped while I was planting the onion bed and grew where it landed. I started calling it our 'James and the Giant Peach' onion.....I thought it fit. The stalk finally fell over yesterday, so I picked it....weighing in at 1.5 lbs.....we're saving it for burgers!

....and more Garlic

The garlic has been outside drying for over 2 weeks now and the cloves seem just about ready to dust off and store in mesh bags in the cellar. Our makeshift drying racks, which consist of an old wire shelf and several refrigerator shelves, pale in comparison to those created by Maybelline's hubby but they do the job. Maybe next year we'll have time to build our own (now that we have plans we can copy :)

Garlic

We're expecting temps of 90+degrees this weekend so the garlic needs to be pulled to make way for the final 1o tomato plants.

The heads will go onto drying racks (old refrigerator shelves:) and sit out for a week or so before storing in the cellar. I'll be back later today to post pics of the haul!

ps. The poppies were volunteers from the compost we added to the soil.

Transition Time in the Garden

Trying to get double duty out of some of the beds in the garden. Here is our tomato/lettuce seed-saving bed. We just tucked the tomatoes between the lettuce plants that we'll be collecting seeds from next month. They are just starting to flower and the process takes a good couple of weeks before we get viable seed. This bed was actually planted with seed saved from last winters crop. It's an easy one to save but because of the time involved I've learned to keep the plants that are going to seed on the outside of the bed (mostly :) so we can plant our summer crops while we're waiting.

ps. the onions on the left side of the bed will be replaced with jalapeno peppers next week.