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Seed Starting & More Mexican Vegetables
We are still planning on getting things planted around May 15th this year, so with that in mind we had to get some seeds started at the beginning of the week. (If you are looking for step-by-step directions on planting seeds, here’s my post from last year: http://thedemogarden.org/2011/03/29/planting-tomato-pepper-seeds)
Because each of our garden beds usually has a different arrangement of plants, we have to divide all the seeds into how many of each plants we need. You can also see my notation of 1 seed per pot. A lot of people will put multiple seeds in a pot “just in case” a couple don’t grow. I hate to do that, because then I’ve got a bunch of plants in a pot that I can’t easily separate without damaging the roots, and I have to snip the extras out. I prefer to plant 1 seed per pot, but then plant an extra pot or two of each (depending on how much extra space I’ve got). So the tomatoes pictured on the left say “Plant 4″ and what we really need is 2 plants. By doing it this way I know that we’ve got up to 4 healthy plants, 2 that we need and 2 more just in case. If only 3 of the 4 germinate, then I’ve already used up 1 “just in case.” It is pretty rare with fresh seeds to have poor germination.
We have almost 100 pots of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant for the garden this year! Because of the planned late planting date, we are also starting a few other things indoors that wouldn’t necessarily have to be. Those include the Red Aztec Spinach, culantro (not to be confused with cilantro!), and Aka Red Shiso. The spinach and the culantro are for the Mexican garden and the Shiso is for the Beautiful Vegetables garden.
Here’s a look at the seeds of the Red Aztec Spinach (aka Huauzontle). They are quite small and look a bit like tiny snail shells. We actually did plant multiple seeds in each pot for these, since the seeds are so tiny!
The culantro seeds are also extremely tiny. There seems to be a range of seed sizes and shapes, which is unusual. Maybe the seeds weren’t cleaned very well? Again, we went with multiple seeds per pot.
I took a picture of the back of the culantro seed packet, since it has some interesting information. It is supposed to be more heat tolerant than cilantro, but I find it interesting that the seed packet suggests growing it in the shade…we’ll have to see how that works out!
As of today (Thursday) the Red Aztec Spinach is already growing, as are the marigolds for the edible flower garden. Everything else is still waiting to pop up. Of course, the jicama, thunbergia, and roselle are still growing too. Hard to believe that in about 5 weeks we should be out planting in our brand new raised beds!
How Early is Too Early to Plant?
With the unseasonably warm spring, it is even more tempting than usual to plant some of our summer vegetables early. With the memory of last summer still fresh, most tomato gardeners are looking for a way to get their tomatoes going soon so they can get a good crop even if the summer turns hot and nasty again. (More on that later this week!)
How do we decide if we should plant early or wait until the usual planting time? Is it okay to plant some things early, but not others?
I think it is important to remember that however warm it is on a given day or week in the early spring, that doesn’t prevent a cold snap before the beginning of May. Thinking back to 2007, many parts of the country experienced a warm, early spring followed by a swift dip down to well-below-freezing temperatures. We certainly do not want to set our vegetable gardens up for failure by planting too early.
In the Demo Garden, we really are not presented with this question this year, as we will not have all the raised beds and soil in place and ready to go before sometime in May.
My thought on planting early is that in a spring like we have been having so far, it would be crazy not to take a little risk and try planting earlier for some crops. What I plan to do in my community garden plot is to plant my tomatoes around mid-April rather than wait for May 1st. However, I am not just going to blindly go out and plant on April 15th! Conditions have to be right.
First, the long-term forecast for the 2 weeks between April 15th and May 1st should look nice and warm. If there is even a chance that it is going to get below 35-40 degrees one night, I would rather wait to plant. The other key factor is that I want the soil temperature to be nice and warm. As of this writing, the soil temperature was measured at 57-60 degrees on March 20th! However, with cooler temperatures and rain, that can drop. Tomatoes need at least a 55 degree soil temperature to thrive. Right now it is looking good, but I want to make sure it stays that way. The last thing is that I need to be prepared to provide some protection for those tomato plants if temperatures do dip down into the 30s.
How about other vegetables? Theoretically, when the soil temperatures reach 60 degrees peppers, eggplant, squash, melons, okra, and most other warm season vegetables can be planted. These vegetables really love the heat, so I will tend to wait to plant most of them until closer to May 1st. Likely it will not get cold enough to severely damage them, but they will grow better when the weather is consistently warm. Again, you can take a chance and plant earlier, just be prepared to provide some protection and replant if necessary.
I have some thoughts about the summer long-term forecast that I’ll share later this week. Stay tuned!
Garden Plans for 2012: Tomato Garden
I would say that of all the gardens we have planned for this year, the Tomato Garden is the most standard. We’re not doing anything too crazy this year, in large part because we wanted to choose varieties that we thought would be successful even if we get them planted late. We also are re-trying a number of varieties from last year that just didn’t have a chance to really show what they can do.
Since this raised bed is 32 feet long (8 feet longer than we have been used to), we realized that we didn’t have enough tomato cages to really make good use of that space. Hence the design you see above. We are planting half of the garden with tomato cages for support and the other half using the Florida Weave (aka Stake & Weave) system. We have chosen 8 tomato varieties, and we will plant one plant of each in both halves of the garden. This will give us the chance to really see the difference in how the plants are managed in the two systems. I don’t expect to see any yield or fruit quality differences, but it might show the pros and cons of using both systems with indeterminate and determinate tomatoes.
We tried to select varieties that are 75 days or less to maturity after transplanting, although we fudged a bit on a couple of them.
‘Valley Girl’ is a early tomato producing medium sized tomatoes that is supposed to set fruit under both heat and cold stress.
‘Country Taste’is an indeterminate hybrid “heirloom type” tomato that we tried last year with little luck. It’s supposed to be a larger tomato with great flavor.
‘Bellstar’is a determinate paste tomato that is early producing with high yields.
‘Martha Washington’ is a brand new hybrid “heirloom type” that boasts wider adaptability and productivity with an heirloom flavor. A little bit later producing.
The 4 heat set varieties, ‘BHN-189,’ ‘Solar Fire,’ ‘Super Sioux,’ and ‘SunMaster’ we grew last year, but we wanted to give them a better chance this year, hopefully planting them a little earlier and closer to “regular” tomato planting time. Of course, we’re also hoping for a summer that is less crazy hot!
Garden Plans for 2012: New & Unique Vegetables
Despite the totally muddy state of disrepair that the garden is displaying right now and despite the lingering memories of last summer, we are forging ahead with our plans for the garden this year!
One of the themed gardens we are planning for this year is New and Unique Vegetables. Of courses, this is right up my alley!
This is a smaller bed, at slightly less than 12 feet long, with our typical 4 feet wide. Because we aren’t quite sure when we’ll be able to plant, we have plans for regular May planting, with a long list of options if something goes wrong and we can’t plant until July or August. (If we get to that point, I’ll share those ideas with you. Assuming you are still reading this blog when all I have to say is along the lines of, “Gee, maybe we’ll plant something sometime maybe.”)
But we are still positive and hopeful that we will be able to plant by sometime in May to early June. Just like we’re hopeful that this coming summer won’t be so terribly hot.
Anyway, let’s talk a little bit about what’s in this garden.
There are two types of zucchini – one is yellow and the other green. The fun part about these squash is that they both are striped squash. So while the plants aren’t crazy out there, the zucchinis themselves should be interesting.
Then there are the 2 eggplant. Even I can’t avoid eggplant every year. We managed to have ZERO eggplants in the garden last year, so I guess it is okay to have a couple this year. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I did eat a quite good eggplant dish at one of the local Indian restaurants last weekend. Anything is edible with enough spices…!) One of the eggplants is a white variety that produces small, egg-sized fruit. ‘Prosperosa’ is an Italian eggplant that is not the full dark purple, and instead of being an oblong, teardrop shape is much more rounded with slight ruffling near the stem.
Two tomatoes – although technically only one is a tomato. ‘Indigo Rose’ is the new purple tomato that is a very dark purple with an orange/red interior. The skin is supposed to get darker with more exposure to sun. The second “tomato,” the Litchi Tomato is technically not a tomato at all, although it is a cousin. The plant itself looks more like an eggplant, and the fruit are the size of cherry tomatoes with caps kind of like tomatillos. It is very sweet in flavor, but the plant protects its fruit well with prickles on the caps, stems, and leaves.
We are going to continue to make good use of our cattle panel trellises throughout the garden, and on this trellis we are growing one melon and one squash. The melon, ‘Lambkin,’ is a type of melon called “Piel de Sapo” or “skin of the frog.” Sounds appetizing, right? Actually, I had one of these melons at a farmers market in Rochester, MN a couple summers ago, and it was incredibly sweet with an interesting floral flavor. I’m excited for us to grow it here! The squash we had originally selected was a tricolor acorn squash, but we are already on plan B for that one…tentatively we are going to try ‘Fairy’ Squash, which is a 2 1/2 lb. winter squash that doesn’t seem to readily fit into any of the normal winter squash categories.
So those are some of the different things we’re trying this year…are you trying anything new or unique in your garden this year?
Friday PhotoEssay: A Look Back at 2009
Last week I finally finished uploading all of the 2009 Demo Garden photos to Flickr. I have to say…the vibe from those pictures is much different than you get from looking at a lot of the 2011 pictures! I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures from that year, since I got to enjoy them again as I was uploading them. To see all the 2009 pictures, click here.
We overwintered this radicchio from 2008, and this is what it looked like just after Valentine’s Day in 2009! Still one of my all-time favorite Demo Garden pictures.
I think all of the radishes we planted in 2009 were Easter Egg Mix Radishes. At least, all the pictures I took were of them.
2009 was the year of the cherry tomato! We had them coming out our ears. This bowl was one of the first harvests in early July.
This was the year we had a full bed of zinnias. The flowers were extremely photogenic, even if the rest of the plants weren’t particularly beautiful.
We got lots of rain in 2009, and the garden was lush and full of insects. This big grasshopper was one of my favorites, but there are lots of pictures of spiders, grasshoppers, butterflies, and other bugs in the archive.
Fall 2009 was the season of beautiful Bok Choy. And rain, as you can see. I think that was the season that our Bok Choy looked its absolute best. The weather was perfect with no insects and no bolting.
Since 2009 was the year before our raspberries succumbed to Phytophthora Root/Crow Rot, the berries were large, luscious, and still ripening in November!
Doesn’t looking back at some pictures of a really good gardening year make you a little more excited for this year?
Have a great weekend!
