Remaining Seeds Started

Today I started the last 3 trays of seeds.  I started 30 tomatoes plants, 5 cells of green onions, 6 cells of kale and 12 cells of broccoli.  I am growing all of the tomatoes I grew last year Bloody Butcher, Slava , Black plum, Yellow plum, Cabernet, and new this year some Sweetie cherry tomatoes.

This gives me a total of 6 tray of seeds under 3 lights.

The seeds I previously started are doing pretty well, almost all of the peppers are up except the yellow Hungarian I have had issues with them in the past but they are very disappointing this year. I don't think I will be trying to grow them next year right now out of 21 seeds I have one that has come up.

Easter Weekend

Lots of activity this weekend, I cleaned out the asparagus plants from last year.  The ground is thawed enough to easily pull/break them off, but still cold enough that there isn't any chance of new growth yet.

The leeks came up on Saturday and are looking good. They came up very quickly and look to have almost 100% germination

The Colossal peppers started to sprout on Sunday, and are looking pretty good there are still a few to come up.

The Chervena Chushka just started to come up this morning giving me a 14-15 day germination.  I'm wondering if I had it slightly too cold in the room causing them to take a little longer than in past years. I also didn't have them under the lights for the first week, thinking that additional heat may have had some affect.

Seed Starting 2018

It has been a while since I updated this blog.  Since being in the new house I have been using Excel sheets, but this way I can look up info where ever and don’t need to worry about losing paper copies or if my computer fails.

Today is the Spring Equinox and I started the Peppers and Basil. I’m using 18 cell trays again and started 9 Marconi Rosso, 9 Colossal Hybrid, 6 Chervena Chushka and 6 Hungarian Yellow Sweet Banana.  I put 2 seeds in every tray to maximize germination because these are all seeds I bought last year.  There are 6 cells of basil that I just sprinkled in, approx. 10 per cell.  The peppers got 10 sprays of water directly onto the seed and then I covered with a little bit more dirt.  The water actually pulled more dirt on top as it settled.  Because this is soil I bought in the fall I am curious to see how it does.  I’m using Promix Organic Seed starting mix again this year the small bags, Costco had a huge bag but I had already bought these last year.  For next years seed starting I will not buy in advance and try and get some cheaper from Costco. 

 

Right now its looking like I will likely have to go with both shelves and get another light, because I am starting a few extra things this year as well as some for my parents.

Spring Planting

Today I managed to finish up the majority of my planting, later for some things but because of moving didn’t really have any other choice.  On my way home I stopped by the community garden to plant beets, and various lettuces.   When I got home I planted 4 different kinds of carrots as well as all my peppers and tomatoes.  The peppers and tomatoes needed to be hardened off better but they should survive.

Rest Of Peppers

All of the regular peppers are up!  They did take longer than the medusa’s, but pretty much right on schedule with last year.

First Peppers

The medusa peppers are starting to come up as well as the green onions

Seeding

Last year I seeded about 3 weeks earlier than I am this year.  My peppers were big and had to have flowers picked off them every couple days and the tomatoes went a little crazy and outgrew the space I had for them.  That is why I am just starting to seed now.  On the top shelf I planted a half tray of peppers, chocolate, and king of the north, jimmy Nardello and sweet banana.  Space is going to be a little more limited this year so I don’t have as much room for everything. A half tray of medusa (because I have tons of seeds that I collected) and the other half of the tray is bok choy and kale. The middle shelf has a tray of tomatoes (Isis, black, yellow cherry tomatoes, alpine, black Ethiopian and polish linguisa tomatoes), and the other tray is half black prince tomatoes and half green onions.  Finally on the bottom shelf I have a full tray of leeks, and in the other tray I have a row of peas, kale and broccoli. My plan is to use that last tray mentioned as sprouts. They are all extra seeds I have leftover that do not have a place in my garden, so figured I might as well try it out.

Peppers and Tomatoes are Done

After the heavy frost last night and the beautiful weather this morning, I decided it was a perfect opportunity to harvest all of the remaining peppers and tomatoes.  I started with the peppers, pulling each plant and then cutting the peppers off of it into a bushel with snips.  I found that it worked really well, cleaning out the plants and making sure I didn’t miss anything all at once.  I ended up with 2 bushels of peppers from my 36 plants. Overall from the whole year’s harvest I figure I ended up with 3+ bushels from those plants.

 

In the picture below you can see the chocolate peppers.  A few were ripe but mostly still green.

 

This is the bushed containing the Jimmy Nardello and the chocolate.  They both did very well, and had my best yields of the 6 varieties. Both had ripe peppers the earlier than the others.

 

These are the purple peppers.  I found that they didn’t start to produce until after the others, and when they did the peppers were of a medium size with thin walls.  The plants were fairly brittle so when picking them you had to be careful.

The Alma paprika did well, but also had slightly lower yield and most of them didn’t ripen up. 
 

King of the North produced great peppers, but took until almost September to give me red peppers.  They did have big green peppers, but were later than the other sweet non bell peppers.

Sweet Hungarian was another great producer, there were lots of them on the plants and they ripened up steady throughout the year.  I would have them at 3^rd on my list for productivity, possibly second.

Finally there are the golden Cal wonder.  Last year these didn’t even survive from the seeds.  This year they grew into nice big plants with my largest peppers.  I had 2 plants and both produced 4 large peppers and a couple smaller ones.  It did however take until the very end of September until I had a yellow one. This is a pepper that would defiantly be on the edge to grow again. There are defiantly better bell peppers out there.

For the tomatoes, I just filled a flat with ripe ones and filled another with any that were still green.  The ripe ones are going to be either used up in the next week or preserved in some way, and the green ones kept around until they either ripen up or go bad.  It’s hard to judge how well they did because they were so crowded but over all they did pretty well.

Barnyard Peppers

After picking a bunch of peppers from my garden last week I decided I better check out the barnyard garden and am really glad I did.  I ended up taking just under a half bushel.  A number of those were green peppers; now that I have some that are finally ripe I might as well have a good variety to eat.

I also picked a couple more baskets from home of ripe peppers across all varieties.

 

The Peppers Continue

Picked some more peppers today this time I'm guessing around 9 liters were picked.  It was a blend of every variety with the exception of the golden Cal wonder, they still aren’t yellow yet.  I did get a king of the north that was ripe though.  Based on the amount that I have picked so far I would say half of everything that will be taken out of there has been picked.

 

Tidy Up

Went out and picked a bunch more peppers approximately 6lts of a couple different varieties.  They were mostly jimmy Nardello and chocolate.  There are tons of them still on the plants that I am just waiting to ripen up.

I also stopped on the way home to clean up the barnyard plot.  I have definitely been neglecting it and it was in need of a good weeding.  Thankfully there are a couple of plots that look much worse than mine, so I haven’t felt too bad.

Saving Peas

On the way home from work today I stopped at the barnyard garden to pick a few peppers and get my share of potatoes.  Overall we only ended up getting slightly more potatoes than we planted due to the summer drought we experienced.  The way I look at it is its better than nothing.  And the peppers I picked looked great, including a couple really tiny purple ones.

After I got home I hit the garden again to continue my harvest.  I picked a bunch of peppers again, a basket of chocolate peppers and basket of jimmy’s as well as a mixed 4lt basket of tomatoes.

These are Jimmy Nardello's

Sweet Hungarian Banana

Alma Paprika

Sweet Chocolate

This is a Golden Calwonder before it has ripened

Purple Beauty

 

I finally managed to get the time to tear out all of the pea plants.  They all came out pretty easily but I'm going to need to leave the trellises in for a little longer so that I don’t kill off the flowers.  The netting is going to be raised off of the ground, to allow me to dig it up and plant buckwheat.  After ripping out all of the plants I shelled all of the peas that have been drying inside.  I ended up with around a 500ml jar full of dried peas.

These were all of the tomatoes I picked. The polish linguisa after trying it is extremely meaty and a great paste tomato.

Black Prince

Kansas Depression

Polish Linguisa

Black Cherry

 

Isis Cherry

 

 

 

Lots of Peppers

Tonight went out and picked a ton of peppers and a few tomatoes as well.  The peppers are all starting to ripen at once.  In the picture below you can see the jimmy nardallo peppers.  There are 34 peppers in that picture.  I also had a few chocolate ones and some sweet Hungarian ones. 

 

The tomato experiment worked!  A little over a week ago, tore out about half of the plants I had planted in the garden and then proceeded to cut back hard the one I did leave.  I figured that there was too much foliage and not enough tomatoes.  By cutting back the plant I hoped that it would trigger the tomatoes to ripen because the plant was “dying”, and it worked.  I picked about a dozen and there are more ripening.
Below are the chocolate peppers.

 

 

 

Preserving Peppers

So on the weekend I was down in Hamilton and they happened to have bushels of peppers on sale.  Because I can't resist I ended up buying a bushel of red Sheppard’s for $20 and a half bushel of green bell for $10.  I kept about a 1/3 of a bushel for fresh eating and to go in the tomato sauce my family was making and the rest I am preserving.  I have started to cut some up and freeze them raw, the majority of them are going to end up this way.  But I am also going to dehydrate some of the red Sheppard's and am currently roasting some of them.  I have them on the bbq to blister the skin and then I am going to peel them, place them in a Ziploc bags with olive oil and freeze them. There will be an ton of peppers but they are expensive in the winter and this way I will already have a bunch.

Onions Harvested

I had some ambitious plans for tonight and managed to taken care of most of them.  On the way home from work I harvested all of the onions from the barnyard field.  I ended up with around a bushel, from 400 onions.   It was less than I was hoping for, but with the weather and the fact that they were planted late, it could have been worse.  They will be spread out in the blacksmith shop on Saturday to dry out before I clean them up. 

While I was there I also picked my first good purple peppers of the year.  They are very purple, a decent size and I am quite pleased with how they have turned out. As you can see some of them went to seed.
 

After that picked all the white carrots and cut the tops off of them for the horses.  There was also a generous chunk of carrot on most of those tops as well.  The white carrots although sticking out of the ground weren’t as big as I thought they might be.  For the entire box I ended up with about the same amount as I had for the Atomic Red carrots but with twice the space used.  Below is a picture of what they look like.  Weighted in at 2lb 4oz for the entire box.

 

They defiantly don’t have the sweetness that you get with orange carrots, but still taste like a carrot.  I’m not sure if I would buy seeds for these again or not.

 

Then proceeded to stop at the field to get rid of the carrot tops and dig some baby potatoes.  All the potatoes coming out of the field will end up being small and for some reason slightly bitter.  I think it’s because of the soil and lack of water but was still worth a shot to grow them this year.

After that went to get a best man for my wedding and then home to clean and freeze the carrots.

Dead Potatoes

So checked out the barnyard garden earlier and my plot is looking good. The peppers are doing much better after that rain.  I actually have about 5 pretty big purple peppers growing.  I was kind of surprised because at home I have nothing, and they were supposed to be the better plants.

The peas are officially done.  The plants are dying off and the squirrels beat me to all of the purple peas before I could pick the dried pods.  To be honest they weren’t very good as snow peas unless you picked them very young, and that was my hope to have purple snow peas.

After checking on my plot I decided to check on the potatoes…..to find them completely devastated.  There aren’t any potato plants in the field living at all.  I'm not sure if the bugs multiplied and killed them off or if the sun finished them before it could rain.  Either way they are dead so now just waiting to hear back as to when we will be digging them up.

Field Status

Tonight headed into the field to harvest the garlic I had growing there.  It is most defiantly ready.  In fact if I had checked it before I went on vacation it probably would have harvested then.   I ended up digging up 27 bulbs and there are still approximately 30 left with scapes.  The plants are all dry with the leaves snapping off of them but none of the bulbs broke out of their skins.  I'm attributing this to a couple factors: first we haven’t had rain in 3 weeks so any additional moisture to increase their size didn’t happen and second because of the heavy clay soil they are pretty small.  They are about the size I ended up with last year from the bulbils.   I did not intend to leave in access of 30 plants with scapes on them in the field.  The plan was for originally for 5 but was time constrained when I cut them last time and kind of forgot to come back.  Oh well the bulbs are pretty small anyways and this garlic was planted because I had the cloves already.

The scape below grew without any bulbils. It was a music scape from the field

While at the field I checked on the rest of the garden.  Not good news at all.  It appears that deer enjoy watermelon and cucumber plants.  So on all of those hills there aren’t any leaves just vines.  This really bugged me because last year they grew no problem and this year they look terrible.  The pumpkins and gourds are growing but because of the lack of water not the best.  Same goes for the potatoes and peppers, they are there but small and unlikely to get a large harvest from them.  The tomatoes are up but harvest is looking like it will be smaller than last year, few tomatoes per plant.  Only a few of the corn and beans came up.  Not sure if something ate the seeds or if the soil and conditions just kept them dormant.

The potatoes and gourds that were planted in the brush pile are however doing excellently.  They are approximately 10 times the size of their field counter parts and have leaves all over them.

Next year I don’t think that anything is going to be planted in the field.  It just doesn’t grow well.  The soil is very heavy and when it does rain sits on top in pools and floods everything out.  The compost might get a few pumpkins next year but that could be it.

Field Co-op

Today I stopped by the barnyard garden to plant some more potatoes.   With about 40% of them rotting in the ground using some we already had we are going to replant some of the bare areas.  I ended up planting 2 rows of blue potatoes and then 10lb of whatever variety someone else had.  I also slipped in another 100 Spanish onions.

While I was there I checked on my own plot.  The peppers are doing better than they were lots of new growth on them and they needed to be weeded badly.   No peppers yet but I do expect to see some in the next week.

The peas are doing great.  There are beautiful purple flowers on them and even a few tiny blue pods.  I'm planning on picking them as snow peas to add that great color to salads or raw to a stir fry.  The plants aren’t attaching themselves to the towers like I thought they might.  I did add some string for them to cling to but even then I didn’t have enough of it apparently.  In the future all climbing peas need a very small diameter surface to wrap their tendrils around.

Everything In

It has been a while since I did a full status report on the garden and this morning I had time while it was raining to put one together. 

The corner bed that has the peas in it is doing very well.  They are all up and clinging to the trellis’s.  I have been winding the vines back into the trellis because they are reaching to the south east for the sun.  So far the weeds haven’t been too bad and I'm hoping the leaves that I laid down as mulch between the rows keep them that way.  I have had an issue with creeping grass the last few years and because it is almost impossible to get out, I'm hoping I can smother it.

The bottom bed with the tomatoes, peppers and beans has been finished.  The tomatoes are doing pretty good.  They have started to send out new roots and new shoots.  A couple plants were damaged during the storm we had last week but nothing that should effect their long term growth.  I also noticed that some leaves have bite marks in them but again nothing that should hurt the plants too much.  The leaves that were spread out are keeping the weeds down so far and you can still really smell them.  The peppers just like the tomatoes are sending out new roots and are setting new leaves.  The plants that I was worried about are looking better and the new leaves that are showing on them are darker.  The beans aren’t up yet, but should be through any day now.

The top bed with the garlic, asparagus, rhubarb and greens is the only bed to produce anything yet.  The garlic started to send out scapes around a week ago.  There are a couple scapes on the polish white that have started to curl and others on the northern Quebec that have not appeared yet.  The Viking asparagus that was transplanted last year has been doing very well.  I have been harvesting for about 5 weeks and think that it is time to let the remainder go to seed.  I have had a ton of asparagus beetles that are attacking them and want to make sure I have strong plants for the future.  The Mary Washington is doing better than they were, but I do have some plants that I thought should be stronger than they are.  There are also approximately 10 seeds that have taken seed by themselves.  All of the info I have read says to pick them out so they don’t compete with your other plants.  Because I appear to have something eating the crowns in the wintertime I might let some of them stay.

The rhubarb is doing very well; it has doubled in size since last year and is being picked regularly.  There is something that is nibbling on the leaves but we don’t eat the leaves anyways so it’s not a problem.  The kale, bok choy and broccoli are all going strong.  The transplants survived and all of the new seeds are coming up.  The bok choy has already started to go to seed, so they will be eaten as baby’s and then reseeded throughout the summer.  Of the 5 varieties of lettuce, 2 are fully up and the other 3 it’s hard to tell.  It looks like some of them are coming up but there are a lot of little sprouts there right now.

The carrots boxes are looking great.  I have carrots up in every box and every row I planted except for 2 rows of the scarlet Nantes.  I think it was because of the sandy soil and the fact they just needed a little more water than they were given.  Because I have tons of seeds I have replanted those rows.  In a few of the other varieties I tried to space the carrots exactly so that I didn’t waste seeds or have to thin them, but in a few cases if a couple seeds didn’t germinate I have a 4” gap. I will finish reseeding the very few bare spots next week.  The parsnips are doing just as well as the carrots.  I always read that it’s hard to get parsnip seeds to germinate, but in 2 years I have had great success.

There are also the herbs.  I noticed sprouts this morning in every box but will have to wait a few days to see if its weeds or herbs.  They are literally day old sprouts and could be anything, although I think they are my herbs coming up.

Last but not least is the flower garden. Although I don’t usually talk about it I recently found a plant that I have been looking for since last year. It’s a sedum called red dragon’s blood.  It is a low growing sedum and to be honest I liked it because of its name as well as the red colour that will give the flower bed a little more colour.

Although it’s not really part of my garden I put the fish out yesterday and here is a picture of them, they were moving pretty fast so just look at the blur in the bottom left.

All Peppers Planted

All of the peppers have been planted.  Tonight I brought up the box I made and after covering the inside with landscaping fabric I filled it with a 50/50 mix of topsoil and decomposed horse manure.  I have read everywhere that in pots and boxes you are supposed to use potting soil but because all of my boxes are quite large I just use regular garden soil with a little extra manure.  In it I planted 4 medusa peppers.  They should receive sun from noon to dusk. 

With the remaining 6 King of the North and 3 medusa plants I took a quick trip to the filed to plant them. It was time to get everything in the ground and just let nature take its course. Next year I will be starting my seeds much later. While at the field more bok choy, kale and lettuce was planted.