Peas...

 While looking for information on something else I discovered that pea seeds don't have the same longevity as tomato seeds.  In fact 3 years is about what most folks say... and looking at my pea seeds from the swap I realized I really needed to test the germination and get to growing them.   I have 3 types.  Dark Seeded Early Perfection from 2016,  Thomas Laxton from 2017 and Salmon Flowered Crown Pea from 2018.  

I let my peas soak over night then moved them to damp paper towels to see how many would germinate.  My loser was Salmon Flowered Crown Pea with only 4 of the 20 seeds germinating. :( Of course this was the variety I wanted to raise the most.   Dark Seeded Early Perfection had 7 of 11 seeds germinate. Thomas Laxton blew me away.  All eleven of the seeds I had germinated! Looks like I need a bigger pea patch... 

I still need to go though my beans and see if there are any that really need grown out but mostly I am looking at fresh seeds that have properties I want to put into my bean collection.  Like a fast, tasty, productive dry bean...  

First potting up day for this year...

 And I am pleased with most of my numbers...  Normal procedure for me is to plant 3 pellets with 2 to 3 seeds per pellet.  Move the seedlings to a cup soon after they show signs of growing a real leaf...  

This year I am not sure what I was thinking but Big Hill was planted in 6 pellets as was Micro Tom Gold.... and then there was Lucinda OMG I don't know what I was thinking but I planted 12 pellets with the seeds for this variety and have ended up with a large number of these to hand out...  Lucky me these may go as a novelty as they are carrot leafed and very distinctive.  Also very distinctive is the bright green of the Cherokee Tiger Black.  This one also was planted in 6 pellets and I ended up with 9 plants.  

Sadly there were a few failures...  Melon Ball only gave me one seedling out of the 6 seeds planted.  Large Barred Boar has not come up at all but I will give it a bit more time... and some varieties I really wanted to plant got misplaced and started very late 

I may be slow but some of those tomatoes aren't!

 Micro Tina was planted either 24/4/2022 or 25/4/2022 and today 29/4/2022 I have at least one seedling!  Kilimanjaro marigolds planted in the same time frame are also up and I can see signs of life in the Teddy Steak and Teddy Globe peat pellets...  

Of course I still have a few pellets that are open and I am trying to decide which greens I want to get an early start on or should I do more tomatoes... 

  

2022 garden is off to a slow start...

 I have lacked the energy to do much so everything is either not getting done or as I am slowly gaining energy some things are getting done late.

The last 3 days I have been getting my tomato seeds planted into starters.  That is about a month late so I dumped most mid season varieties and tried to stick with early season.  I still ended up with 18 varieties in the seed starters. 

Indeterminate 

1. Black Cherry - early/mid brown cherry

2. Zluta Kytice-  mid season multiflora yellow

3. Large Barred Boar - early/mid brown green stripes 

Determinate 

1. Melon Ball - white regular leaf midseason

2. Dwarf Artic Rose - 60 days seeds back

3. Fuzzy Wuzzy - dwarf bi color fuzzy early 

4. Utyonok - orange dwarf early

5. Puck - red -determinate 55 days

6. Northern Light - red determinate 55 days

7. Silvery Fir Tree - red carrot leaf early

8. Cherokee Tiger Black - purple green stripes chartreuse foliage

9. Lucinda - green on green strip carrot leaf

10. Big Hill - bi color big flowers

These two varieties were selected out of Big Boy and Better Boy, by a TomatoJunction member. 

1. Teddy Steak

2. Teddy Globe 

Hanging Basket Tomatoes

1. Pendulina Orange

2. Shimofuri 

3. Ladyfingers

I also got some Thai Lavender Frog Egg eggplant seeds and some flower seeds but still have some open spaces I need to fill up... 

We got our onions and potatoes about 2 weeks ago as well as a sunchokes and  horseradish roots for growing.  Stuck the horseradish in a pot and hope it is fine there.  The sunchoke roots went outside in planters and yep blasted squirrels dug them up and munched on them.  So no more sunchokes for me...  The horseradish is inside. 

Today I planted some of the onions spacing some for green onions and some for bulbs.  I still have about 20 onions to plant soon but ran out of get up and go. 

The potatoes are sitting in the light chitting but will probably need to go in the ground fairly soon. 

So that is the start of the garden season here.