Gardening Gardening

I ordered a few things from baker creek tonight. Another 5 weeks and it’ll be time to start the peppers indoors. I still have plenty of tomato seeds on hand that should still be good. Cucumber and squash varieties I’ll get locally, wherever. Usually I let my kids pick out what looks good. The Mexican sour gherkins (cucamelons) were the only oddball thing I mail ordered. They’re fun to grow.

 

My seeds came in. I really like Baker Creek. They always throw in a pack of freebies. This time it was these “spoon” tomatoes. I’ve never seen them before, but they look tasty.

 

Those spoon tomatoes look awesome. I've never heard of those before. How do they taste? I let the kids pick through our cherry tomatoes all they want and they love them. I think they would like those out of the uniqueness.

 

My tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are sprouted and growing. Started these around mid February. I've been putting them outside on nice days to let the breeze thicken them up.

 

I'll let you know around late July or so I've never had them myself.

 

You know it’s been a warm winter when last fall’s greens are not only still alive, but starting to take off again.

 

My wife and I are building a vegetable garden this year. We have been growing vegetables in planters on the back deck for years but decided to expand operations since food costs are so out of hand. We will have four 4x8 garden boxes and will also move the smaller planters here from the deck. Once the boxes are in and filled, I will put in a deer fence.

The rain finally gave us a break this weekend. Went from winter to spring.

 

Did you make the boxes yourselves or order them from somewhere?

 

We bought them from ollegardens.com. It was a Christmas present for my wife, she likes the color. They are well made. It took half a day to build all four. Half that time was spent peeling off the clear film they apply for protection in shipping.

Are they worth the money? In this case I decided not to care. I wanted my wife to have the garden she's been dreaming about so I just closed my eyes and clicked "purchase".

 

Yep, I have the same here.

Soon time for my annual till. Added lots of ash & biochar this winter. Might get a couple bales of peat too.

 

They are nice, 25% off at the moment!

 

We had blizzard conditions Sunday afternoon. (There's still salt stains on the roads). Now (Thursday afternoon) its 79° and full sun. Reminds me of this past start to gardening season.

Hail storm 30 minutes after planting my peppers and tomatoes.
https://youtube.com/shorts/h0G_Q0TMthU?si=L5PmINxKm65qpg1m

 

Finally got enough dry days to get the tiller out. Every so many years I dig around the perimeter, seems to help me w/ weed control close to the timbers.

 

Humble beginnings. 12 cells of jalapeños, 6 ghost peppers, 12 orange lunchbox peppers, and 6 Aji Charapitas. I’ll start my tomatoes indoors in about 2-3 weeks. IME starting them in late March is way too early. They end up about 2-3 feet tall by mid-May, which makes the hardening off process extremely difficult. The second half of this week looks to be prime temperatures to outdoor sow the cold weather crops like lettuce, spinach and radishes. I’ve got the gardening itch now

 

Here are some of my seven apple trees freshly pruned ahead of another growing season.


This tree was girdled all the way around three years ago and I was fairly certain it wasn’t long for earth. I wrapped it in grafting tape around the girdled part and it has survived and produced some excellent honeycrisp apples. There are chives coming up around it.

This newer one I s called an Oldenburg apple tree.


This honeycrisp was severely girdled as well by rabbits so I cut this one down a foot above the root stock and it branched out nicely and now pruned to the open center that I prefer.


This is a green apple that is both very sweet and a little tart.

 

One of my two garlic 4’ X 10’ beds.

 

I've got a bunch of young garlic shoots coming up now, about 3-4" tall each. I didn't plant any cloves this past fall though, or grow any garlic at all in 2023. These must have come from the seeds I tossed in late summer 2022 when I let the scapes go to seed and dispersed them all over the soil surface in the raised bed. I've never done that before so this'll be a cool experiment. Also in that bed are 2-3 crowns of asparagus that I planted in either 2020 or 2021, I can't remember. I imagine they'll be established enough this year to harvest some though.

 

I started moving the cells that had sprouted into solo cups, as they were starting to touch the clear plastic lid. When transferring into the cups I like to blend in a little bit of worm castings with the starter mix, for the peppers anyway. There’s still a few cells in the starter tray that I’ll give another week to sprout. In another week (maybe 2) I’ll get going on the tomatoes.

 

First harvest of 2024 (last of 2023?) My cilantro patch that survived the winter grew enough to do a first cutting. I already have some going in the dehydrator right now, and mixed some in the crockpot with the chili I’ve been cooking all day today.

I planted my potatoes this afternoon, along with some radishes, spinach, lettuce and carrots. I’ll plant more radishes in a couple more weeks so as to stagger my supply when the time comes.

 

Im behind with starting my tomato plants in doors. I just started some seeds indoors last week. Only 7 plants. I want to plant a type of grape tomato my sister had last year. Super high yields and were just delicious.
I did plant 6 cheddar cauliflower plants in the garden, as well as some radishes, and snow peas last week too. Last year I had them planted in march, so yeah, Im behind.