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. 

 Injuries side lined us for much of 2021 so things I wanted to do didn't happen.  We did get a nice crop of potatoes so will try them again this coming year.  Some of my other attempts didn't work as well...  Groundnuts need more shade and moisture.  I think the squirrels ate my sunchokes,  Runner beans were another winner.  Among my tomatoes Dwarf Pink Passion and Black and Red Boar were both winners but few others were as outstanding.  And those injuries meant that potatoes, tomatoes, and runner beans were about all we got planted... 

Hopefully 2022 will be better.  We really liked the fresh potatoes so will be growing them again.  In fact we have already ordered our seed potatoes.  We are bringing back AmaRosa a late red fleshed fingerling I really liked and Adirondack Blue a mid season blue fleshed potato that we both liked.  Then I added two yellows that are new to us Natascha which is an early season and Daisy Gold a mid season potato.  For storage I added Kennebec a white fleshed favorite in the US.

AND I once again joined in the MMMM seed swap.  Got my envelope mailed in today and of course now I get to wait and see what shows up.  I asked for more varieties of Runner Beans to trial as I liked what I got last year.   

Runner beans are a different species then regular bush and pole snap beans.  They prefer cooler soil conditions so I can plant them earlier and if I do a combo of regular snaps and runners I should pretty much have continuous bean production. That of course depends on the local insect population as unlike normal snap beans runner beans require insects for pollination.  But any pods I get can be eaten as snaps, left to mature and eaten as fresh shell beans or left to dry and cooked like dry beans in the winter.  Plus of course they have lovely flowers and are often grown for the flowers alone. 

My tomato plans for next year like much of my garden will be up in the air until I get my returned package from the swap but I do have a few will be grown already picked out...  I will post about those later

Ever hear of a step over?

 Neither had I until this week.   A stepover is a form of espalier.  They are only about 15 to 24 inches tall so you can easily step over them...   and work best for apples, pears and vines.    They are also used in cold areas as a way to provide protection for figs.  Since the trunks are under 2 ft tall you can easily mound  mulch and dirt over them to provide protection for them.  This lets them be raised as far north as parts of Maine!  I still think I will stick with a pot for my fig tree(s). 

So back to a stepover.  They are often used alongside walkways as a way of defining a yard.  I would have to figure out where the safest place would be to plant the trees but I can visualize a step over on the east side of the front yard with two trees planted 8 ft apart.  That would give me the pollination I need for a crop of apples.  AND make a nice little barrier for the public

Lots of changes happening in the back garden. I added my tumbling composter and was thrilled to discover it fit perfectly into a formally unusable corner :)

While I liked last years design there were some things I wanted to improve.  I had thought of moving the south box up in line with north box making a U that faced west.  And moving my narrow box next to the trellis that was in the wider box I moved.  While I liked how this worked the amount of effort involved in moving that one box and me worried.   

New idea hit me yesterday.   What if I move the north box instead.  Leave the east and south box in place, turn the north box so it runs north to south and line it up with the edge of  south box so I am one again making a U but this time with the open end facing north.    And leaving my narrow box in place.   Tried it in real life today and it looks like it will work EXCEPT the narrow box will interfere with the arch I want over the gateway...  AND for some reason I don't seem to have as much outside room as I did the other way...  I will have to give this some more thought but I do like the fact that would have 3 boxes running north to south giving my garden boxes better sun exposure.  

I need to get out there with a tape measure and a notebook and make sure I really have accurate measurements for the area and my boxes.   I need room for my potato grow bags, my asparagus bed, my short perennial vegetables I wanted to get started and my cherry tomatoes and peas...  so that will take a bit of work to figure out. 

A what?

Jerusalem artichoke aka sunchoke aka sun root is a type of sunflower that grows a tuberous root that can be used as food.  They are HIGHLY invasive in most area but can make a nice windbreak or privacy "fence" as most varieties are about 10 to 15 feet tall.   However there are some varieties that are down around 5  to 8 feet tall, those are the ones I looked at.  Oikos Tree Crops has a a variety they call Saint Charles that sounded just like what I wanted.  Shorter at about 8 ft tall, it takes only 90 days to produce chokes that can be harvested and has shorter stolons and smaller chokes just right for soups and stews.  4 tubers of that one hopped into my cart... 

The next a what? thing I got is called a groundnut.  Apois Americana is a vining plant that forms small tubers spaced out along a long stolon like beads on a necklace.   The vines can get up to 10 ft!  Again Oikos Tree Crop to rescue.  The have a new variety they call Clusternut Groundnut.  It is another early cropper perfect for our shorter growing season. And like the name says instead of long stolons with beads strung along it this one produced shorter stolons with the beads very close together.  It also is a shorter bushier plant.   Yep 4 tubers for that one hopped into the cart. 

I mentioned my two White Aster Dahlias in the last post, those will arrive about April/May just in time to plant them.  Not sure when the 8 new tubers from Oikos will arrive but I do need to start working outside this weekend if our snow is melted enough... 

My asparagus plants will also arrive about mid April so that bed needs dug and prepared for them.  Those of course a long term project with our first very small harvest in a year or two... 

I also settled on my new fruit tree.  I will be looking for a Mormon/Chinese apricot for the front yard.  They are hardy, late flowering, small at about 15 feet tall and best of all they are self fertile so I only need one not 2 like most other fruiting plants I looked at.   

Today is also another seed starting day or rather yesterday was supposed to be but I forgot to plant them even though everything is ready.  I will need to do that tonight before I go to bed... 

I saw this video last month so yep I got a tumbling composter like him and plan on doing this...  the tumbler is here but I need to wait for the snow to melt so I can set it up in the garden and get a batch of compost going...   I also got us a little bucket for the kitchen for our coffee grounds and tea bags plus any vegetable scraps so those can be saved to go outside in a tumbler.  

I will be a busy girl if everything goes as plans...