Tomatoes are in!

Spent yesterday morning planting the next batch of seeds. Six varieties of tomatoes (including my first attempt at saved seeds thanks to my mother in law) with the majority of them being Roma's for sauce. Also got some more lettuce going and cauliflower.

Although we are not big users of herbs, I keep trying them. We have a small clump of chives near the back door, though we didn't use them at all last year. I planted oregano, basil and coriander to create a small herb garden with. I didn't grow any last year, it would be nice to get some decent growth this year to add to our tomato sauce.

For the non-edible portion of our landscape, I started some left over forget me nots, black eyed susans, purple cone flowers, and alyssum. In addition I started some flowers to include in the veggie garden to help attract pollinators (marigolds and nasturtiums, also saved seed).

I was tempted to try the plant peas on St. Patrick's day saying, but I'm glad I didn't as we got an inch of snow today and the rest of this week looks cool and wet. Better to wait and ensure the seed doesn't rot in the ground. If the long range forcast looks good come this weekend, I may plant some just to try.

A new home

This spring we undertook the monumental task of selling our condo and purchasing a house in a neighboring town. As a result, I gave up our community garden plot in anticipation of a much more convenient backyard garden.

With all the work involved in settling a new house, there has been precious little time for gardening. However, I did manage to find enough time to supplant an existing flower bed with a small vegetable garden. The plantings are as follows:

1 Bloody Butcher Tomato
1 Brandywine Tomato
6 Roma Tomatoes
6 Bell Peppers
6 Jalapeno Peppers
100 White Onion Sets
100 Red Onion Sets
10# Red Seed Potatoes
2 Hills of Summer Squash
~10' of Green Beans
~20' of Wax Beans

With the exception of the potatoes (local sources of seed potatoes only came in 10# bags), the garden is quite a bit smaller than in years past. Given the length of my to do list, however, this is all I can handle for this year.

Late Blight Watch

Thanks to those big box home improvement stores (you know who, one orange and one blue), those of us in the Northeast have an additional threat to our Potatoes and Tomatoes, late blight. Not familiar with late blight? Ever heard of the Irish Potato Famine? Yep, caused by late blight.

By all accounts it is pretty nefarious stuff, not only does it attack the plant, but it ruins the fruit/tuber as well. It spreads like wildfire too. The only upside is that unlike many other fungi, this one does not live in the soil and, assuming you do not create cull piles of ruined potatoes, should not survive the winter to resurface next spring.

The disease has been spotted all over CT in commercial farms. I'm sure there are many backyard gardeners who are losing their tomatoes (tomato seedlings imported from the south spread the disease initially) and have no idea why. The cool wet weather this summer has been a boon to spreading all sorts of fungi.

Being in a community garden I am quite fearful that we will not escape this disease. I am keeping a close watch on the my plants, so far I believe all I have is some early blight and septoria leaf spot. I am taking an agressive stance on all fungi in my tomatoes. Clipping out any diseased leaves and spraying regularly with Chlorothalonil, which the only fungicide I've found that helps battle this disease. It should be noted that Chlorothalonil does not treat an infection, but will help slow down the spread. Commercial farmers have fungicides available that will treat an infection, however these chemicals are not available to backyard gardeners.

UCONN IPM Info Page

Another info page

Cornell Potato Late Blight Photos

Cornell Tomato Late Blight Photos


Good luck out there!!

Seedling Update

Three weeks into my seed starting exercise and as with most gardening exploits, the results are mixed.

All varieties of tomatoes are up and growing extremely well. Shortly, I will start applying periodic wind (via a fan) to help promote strength of the young seedlings.

The broccoli and onions are also growing quite well. I had a bit of an issues with the onions, however. I am using the bottom of gallon milk jugs for my 'pots'. I did not put any drain holes in the bottom and managed to overwater them a couple times. Unfortunately that has led to one of the four pots losing almost all of it's seedlings. Another pot lost about half its seedlings. Lesson learned, be certain to include drain holes in all seedling pots. Be careful not to overwater your seedlings, they are very sensitive to 'drowning'.

I've had mixed success with herbs this year. Most of them have come up, however, I managed to kill off quite a few seedlings with careless watering. Today, I tossed in some additional seed to make up for the losses. In the end I am not as concerned about the herbs as I am the vegetables. We use some oregano and basil in our tomato sauce, but the remaining herbs (cilantro, parsley & chives) have not found a regular use yet.

Lastly, are our poor pepper seeds. I thought my light setup would warm the plantings enough to enable all the varieties of seed to germinate. It seems however, that it was not sufficient for the peppers. After 2-1/2 weeks they still showed no sign of germination (I dug up a few seeds to verify). I have replanted them and moved the trays out of the basement grow area to the solarium. There's still plenty of time for the pepper plants to grow sufficiently for a May transplantation. But it is disappointing that they weren't successful the first time around.

Seedlings are up!

In just over a week's time about 70% of my seedlings are up. Almost all the tomatoes, onions, broccoli and basil have sprouted. The peppers, both green and jalapeno varieties are lagging. But that is to be expected. What is unknown is if the green peppers will come up at all.

I had a bunch of seeds given to me that dated as old as 2002. So I planted several of them in each cell, we'll see how many actually come up. A year or two isn't a big deal, but 7 is asking a lot. I probably should have done a germination test in some wet paper towel, but I didn't think of it in time.

If they aren't up by next weekend I'll throw in some of the seeds from last year that I had left over.

I had also started some lettuce that is beginning to pop up. Lettuce and I have a long and tortured relationship. I had one awesome crop 3 years ago, I've tried every year since, sometimes both spring and fall to repeat that success. I might have succeeded last year but I seeded the window planter too heavily and never thinned them so they crowded each other out and died off.

I'm not exactly doing myself any favors this year. I threw the seeds into a window planter full of garden dirt from last year. Needless to say I have about as many weeds coming up as lettuce. But, I didn't want to waste a lot of effort on something that will probably fail once again.

Time to Start the Veggies!

The time to plant is upon us!

At least in my part of the world, (Connecticuit) that is. Last year I started my seedlings the first weekend of April. Unfortunately, only the onions thrived and the rest weren't ready when I wanted to transplant them. So this year I decided to move them up to the second weekend of March.

It might be a little early, but I'm willing to take that chance. The worst that can happen is I buy plants, again.

That adds nearly 3 weeks of growing time to the peppers and tomatoes. I snuck the onions in even a few days earlier. They can use all the time I can give them and more in our cold climate.

Some day I will try store bought sets. For this year I had some left over onions from last year, some of which had started sprouting, that I am giving a shot as stand in sets. My onions got cut short last year, I think due to thrips. They stopped growing between dime and quarter size. They tasted good, but were small. So some of them *should* work as sets, we will see. I suspect many of them will bolt, but they were inedible anyways.

For now I have planted them in a window planter to give them an early start. I am hoping they can provide an early harvest. If so, maybe I'll give intentional sets a try in the fall.

I'm also giving broccoli from seed a start for the first time. We did plants last year and they did ok, although we got mini-heads instead of nice big heads.

Plant counts:

Green Peppers - 12
Jalapeno Peppers - 12
Roma Tomatoes - 12
Orange Tomatoes - 3
Cherry Tomatoes - 3
Broccoli - 6

Herbs:
Oregano
Chives
Cilantro
Parsley
Basil

Red Burgundy Onions - one package