Seeds in Dirt!

 As prep I filled three window boxes with soil from the composter. Brought that in a week or so ago. This past weekend I planted some seeds in it directly - no sprouting on wet paper towels this time around. We'll see how it works. Planted three types of tomatoes - Roma, Spoon, and Cherokee Purple. Ping Tung Long, the long purple eggplants. Ground cherries. Something called orange berries. Huckleberries. Four types of hot peppers - Jalapeno, Cayenne, Serrano, and Anaheim.

I've still got one long box unplanted, I think I will stop at the hardware store and get some more tomato seeds. Need some cherry tomatoes at least. I've also gotten out the peas and zucchini which I think I can plant soon. Predictions have Thursday as the last day to have freezing temps this month. So maybe we will be good after that. I've got plenty of seeds so I will probably plant this weekend and hope for the best. 

We are underway!

A little garden work

 Today was a bit of garden work. Cleaned out some of the vine in the rock garden. Crazy, it was fine last year and now it seems overgrown. The tomatoes there were mostly deer and chipmunk food, which was disappointing. I may see if I can just grow zucchini there. Deer don't seem to prey on zucchini as much.

Also spread some diatomaceous earth around a bunch of plants. It's been very wet here, I figure slugs will be out in no time. But nothing yet. They really crippled the zucchini last year. May put out some beer to draw them in.

All the peppers are planted now. They don't seem super happy. Maybe a bit of transplant shock, oof. I've got about 6 or 7 buckets that will be home to some tomatoes.

Tomatoes do seem happy in the patio wells by the driveway. That seems to be a great spot for them.

Planted some potatoes. Dug out one of the garden beds by the driveway. Two more are empty, I'm thinking sweet potatoes and beans. Another one has garlic, doing great. The last one has kale which overwintered and seems to be perking up. Also some garlic. I have no clue if it's some extras I planted or volunteers from the year before.

TO DO LIST

• Maybe get some different tomatoes/peppers/something else from a nursey.
• Get those remaining black cherry tomatoes in buckets.
• Some more strawberries? Weed the strawberry bed. Some trellis for the peas in there.
• Trellis the other peas.
• Plant some beans
• Plant some more kale. I feel like the overwintered stuff is all bolting already
• Plant some zucchini in the rock garden.
• Turn the pizza oven base into a planter.
• Prune brush in rock garden and the old garden.
• Plant sun flowers out front
• Find Jerusalem artichokes
• Get straw for strawberries
• The asparagus is still alive! Clear out that area of the old garden.
• Plant the berries. They are off to a great start this spring, but one of the blueberries is not so happy. Better get them in the ground. But where???
• Rescue some black raspberries.
• Plant chives
• See if garbanzo beans I got will sprout

New Year in the Garden

 Just to start off, I have been making breakfast sandwiches to take to work quite regularly. For bread I use focaccia mostly, though occasionally Abreaducation white bread. Most days I grab a handful of raw or sometimes frozen spinach and cook it in a little butter until it's unfrozen/wilted. Then I crack a couple eggs in the pan and cover until it sets up a bit, then flip. After that I turn off the burner and put on two thick slices of yellow deli cheddar and cover again. This melts it nicely and doesn't overcook.

This years gardening got off to a decent start. I ordered some seeds and planted a few types of tomatoes and peppers. I figured I would start a few types, get some more seeds and start some other types. Well, it did not work out that way, so I have two types of tomato plants this year, Black Cherry and Sungold. I think I will be disappointed not to have a slicing tomato variety. And no sauce tomato either, though I could certainly make sauce from the two cherry varieties. One other benefit is that it seems like the prolific output of cherry tomatoes outpaces the chipmunks thievery. Did not get many of the sungold to come up. Only about 7 or 8 plants. But the black cherry plants went hog wild.

Black Cherry

I also tried ground cherries. But none of them sprouted. Not sure what I'm doing wrong with them. Had them one year and haven't worked out much since.

Also one variety of peppers popped up. I think it was "Highlander" a New Mexico green chile type. Got a few plants, not enough to go wild, but I'll hopefully have some.

Green Chile

Also went a little nuts on basil. I'm a bit excited about basil this year. I think I'll plant it here, there, everywhere, in the ground, in containers, all over. Be nice to make a good haul of pesto. Some are doing better than others, but they're all mostly just barely sprouted.

Basil

Current plan is buckets near the house for tomatoes. The deer don't like getting that close.

The rock garden landscaping fabric mostly held up, but it's going to take some work to get it suitable for planting. Lots of vines grow in there. I think I'll plant zucchini there, deer seem less likely to eat that.

Have some peas sprouting up. I built a small raised bed out of the posts I tore down from the fenced in garden. That's got peas and strawberries surrounded by chicken wire. Something ate some of the peas that sprouted. Deer maybe. So I put up the chicken wire and that seems to have put a stop to the predation. 

Got 8 tomatoes growing in the wells by the stairs in the front and a bunch of zucchini in the trough out front. Garlic in one of the raised beds by the driveway. Kale in another, and some kale in the little planters by the house. The kale all survived the winter, it was very impressive.

Also have some berry bushes that survived the winter in pots! Blueberries and serviceberries. Also some gooseberries that I transplanted out of the old fenced in garden before the landscapers cleared it.

So lots going on. As always, never quite get to all the things I want to do, but if I get half of the stuff I've gotten started it'll be nice.

Just Terrible

 I planted like 30 tomato plants. Surely I should be awash in tomatoes, right? Nope. I've gotten tomatoes from like 2 plants. What went wrong? I think the problems are deer and chipmunks. Chipmunks chewed through the stems of three plants. Deer completely violated the plants out in the rock garden. But even with that issue, I should have gotten some tomatoes since they can't quite get at the whole plant thanks for the concrete reinforcing wire cages. But I have not see a red tomato. I think the culprits are chipmunks. I've definitely seen them scurrying away from the tomatoes. In the end, tomatoes were an utter disappointment. If I want to have some sort of tomato harvest next year I am going to need to come up with anti-deer/anti-chipmunk measures. I think I could put up some posts and wire to keep the deer at bay. But the chipmunks are going to be a bit tougher. Maybe some chicken wire around the cages?

Zucchini did pretty poorly this year as well. I got a few, but < 10. Out of like 7 plants. Only a couple of the plants did well getting started, and they're all completely gone now.

Cucumbers did poorly as well. I got basically one small harvest. They seemed to suffer from the heat and dried out way too fast even with religious daily watering.

Hot peppers did ok, I've picked a lot of them. Made some powder, froze some green chile and long hots. Probably the star of the garden this year.

Plans for next year:

• Deer proofing absolutely required 

•  Chipmunk proofing methods needed 

•  The peppers need bigger pots. Need to find a source of decent pots, maybe get a yard of compost or something to fill them. 

•  Better soil and mulching for everything in pots, especially cukes. Maybe a better location for cucumbers. 

•  A berry planter. The strawberries were good, though only got a few, and likely chipmunks ate a few. Maybe a shelter of some sort for them.

I didn't do anything with the planters out front along the driveway this year. Might plant some kale out there this weekend. 

Thinking a lot about maybe a hydroponic setup in the basement. I can afford decent lights and would be cool to get some basil, maybe strawberries or something.

As always, my battle cry is NEXT YEAR!

The Final Buzzer

 Well, it's official, the 2022 season is over. Tuesday morning (11/15) we had a hard frost. We'd had some light ones, but the basil held on, though not flourishing. I did a final pick of basil a couple weeks ago and had some pesto. But this frost turned all the remaining plants to mush. Except kale. KALE DON'T CARE. Actually the dill looked ok, too. Funny, I grew dill but never picked or used any. I brought the oregano inside, along with the peppers.

In the end, I brought in 28 pepper plants on 10/16. The basement seedling tables are packed with peppers now. If I can get them through the winter I will have a huge head start next year.

Peppers for overwintering!

They seem pretty happy with their situation despite the absolutely savage cutting back of the plants and removing all their leaves. But in the last month they have blown up, and they almost all have an explosive growth of new leaves on the remaining sticks.

End of the Season

 Well, not exactly the end. Still getting a dribble of tomatoes, and maybe a couple zucchini I could pick now. But the basil is trying to flower, and a lot of it is brown. The dill is yellowing. The oregano looks pretty good though. And the pepper still had a TON of fruit. So today I picked them. 2.011 kg (4.43 lbs) of various peppers. Probably mostly Anaheims.

Today's Haul

So today was cleanup day. I pulled all the cukes, they were mostly dead anyway. I did get one suitable for use in a salad, that was nice.

Current setup

Next worked on bringing in the peppers for overwintering. A titanic task!

Anaheims

Trimmed them down to sticks, pretty much. Was hard to do.

Trimmings

They looked so sad!

The Remnants

The stems were big and woody. One jalapeno was easily as big as a nickel.

Jalapeno Stem

And here's their winter home. Gave them a healthy dose of water and fertilizer with low N. They shouldn't need much attention over the winter, but if I can give them a little dose of water not and then I'm hoping they can hit the ground running in the spring.

28 pepper plants

I will have to come up with a plan to start seeds in the spring, this is usually where I do it. Maybe I will expand things a bit and have some more lights by January.

Some Repotting

 So I've got two locations that I refer to as "compost heaps". The first is a black plastic container in the near back yard that mostly gets grass clippings and weeds pulled elsewhere in the yard. That does a pretty good job of turning that stuff into compost. I have not been truly scientific about it, it doesn't have the right ratios of "green" to "brown" materials, but it make a nice rich puffy soil. Out back further is a pile near the tree line of mostly grass clippings and overflow waste when the black container is full. Also makes nice fluffy compost. Today I pretty much emptied the black plastic compost heap filling up various containers, some two gallon buckets I got from work (originally used to carry pre-shelled hard boiled eggs), some plant pots, and the bottom half of a recycling container that got sliced up the side and didn't work anymore for its intended purpose.

White Powder is bone meal.

I pulled one garlic plant that was clearly done.It is pretty small, but usable.

At this point, the remaining plants are running low on places to go.I think I will try to fill a few more containers to try to salvage as many peppers as possible. I do have some room in the kale bed - I could put a few tomatoes there. Also the garlic is almost done, I could put a few there. If history is any guide, the ones I transplant last generally produce hardly any tomatoes.

I decided to see if I could make a comparison picture of the tomatoes since I transplanted them and ran into a picture from last year.

There's a bit to unpack here. Firstly, They seem to have put on a lot of growth in just 11 days! The weather has been alternately sunny and hot then rain, so plenty of light and plenty of water. But compared to two weeks earlier last year they seem positively anemic. Last year I don't have an exact date for when I started the seeds, but it was about the first week of March. This year it was the second week of April. Also I did not prune last year, or put up cages even. By the end of the season they were draped over the side of the planter and not very happy looking. This year I am savagely pruning. And I was good about getting cages up.

Nice progress!

The weather has been hot and sunny and the plants are loving it. I'm babying them and making sure they have plenty of water. I'm very happy I got those four tomato plants out early, they are really flourishing.

The basil is starting to overgrow it's planter. Now I get to see how well it transplants.

Something ate a few bean plants, so I hopped into action and built them their own fortress.

Rutgers. Getting very bushy. I should probably prune a bit to keep them happy.

Brandywine in back, Cherokee Purple in front. Lots of flowers!

  

Like this!

Strawberries still hanging out in the basement.

Garlic starting to get close to being ready for harvest.

Kale bolted. They did survive the winter.

Most of my peppers look like this. After transplanting they slumped over, then recovered in a day or two, but kept their bad posture.

Seed Starting

Well, it's about that time. Maybe a smidge late to get my seeds started indoors. But no matter, I'll do it anyway! So I carefully lay out 200ish seeds in plastic take home containers on a nice wet paper towel to sprout. I want to be scientific about it, so I lay out ten of each seed, I want to see what percentage, if any, of my older seeds will sprout. I carefully lay them out in little lines on the paper towel. I rip one corner of the towel so I know which line is which seed. I write up legends for each tray of seeds carefully detailing which breeds and which years the seeds are from. I set them in a nice spot to germinate. Day two of the process, I knock over a broom and all three trays topple to the ground, seeds going every which way. *sigh* The peppers, fortunately, seem to have been less scattered, so maybe still have some idea which is which. But the tomatoes may be mostly hopeless. Plus side, they're all good. Minus side, if I end up with 10 cherry tomatoes and no San Marzanos, I will be one unhappy farmer.

Actually, taking a look at the trays, one is all San Marzanos, and that tray was largely unaffected by the incident. The tray of peppers is hopelessly scrambled though. Solution - plant all of them? Only need 40 or 80 buckets! Which might actually be doable. Probably not all of them will germinate though. The big catastrophe is the other tomatoes - Red cherry large fruited, Yellow pear, Rutgers, Mortgage lifter, and Brandywine. Hopelessly jumbled.

Winding Down

Things seem to be winding down. The lower leaves are dying off in most everything. Some nice peppers.

Serrano

Anaheim (New Mexico chilis)

The Serranos were a little hot, but not as hot as I expected. I roasted the Anaheims in the oven and gave them a place of honor atop some green chili bacon cheeseburgers. Planting more Anaheims next year. That's the one thing I miss about living in New Mexico.

Tomatoes are still coming in. Done a few different things with them. Right now got a tray of cherry tomatoes hopefully turning into sun-dried tomatoes in the oven. Oven dried? Faux sun-dried?

Pound of mostly Sun Golds.

Tomato Jam

Homemade bread and butter pickles, olives (storebought), pickled banana peppers (not my peppers, but I did pickle them - very crunchy), and pickled black cherry tomatoes (so good).

Pumpkins and sunflower heads. Pumpkins were pretty small, but we got about 9 of them.

Pumpkins and sunflowers

The Zucchino rampicante is starting to die off like the rest of the zucchini, but I did manage to harvest this.

Zucchino rampicante about 13" long

Zucchini on the vine

Basil is starting to go south. The lower half of most of the plants are getting much lighter green and developing dark brown spots. So I harvested everything and made over a quart of pesto. Recipe:

• Loadsa basil
• Lotsa walnuts (pine nuts are crazy expensive)
• Lotsa parmesan
• Buncha garlic cloves
• Some olive oil

Blend it all until smooth.

Can't really go wrong with this one. Make it plenty thick, you can dilute it later if desired.

The basil harvest.

Mmmm, basil.

Half pound of fresh basil = 1 quart of pesto

Next year will grow more basil, gave a bunch away and more people were interested.

Hot Sauce Time Again

5 oz peppers, 1 cup vinegar, 1/2 tsp salt. Blend, boil, skim, pour in hot jar. Cover with thin cloth tied with a rubber band. Now to wait three days and see what develops. I sampled tiny chunks of each of the peppers 20 min ago and my lips are still burning.

Hot pepper sauce

RIP Tomato Hornworm

Finally, a helpful animal in the garden! Thanks wasps for disabling this tomato hornworm. 

Tomato hornworm hosting wasp eggs

Got a weird range of new peppers. Except for the one dark green, thin serrano, there were all supposed to be jalapenos. I took the seeds out of jalapenos we grew in the garden last year. Some pretty weird stuff. Must have crossed with the hungarian wax.

Jalapeno non-purebred offspring

Pumpkins getting large. There are several of them, should be a nice harvest.

Pumpkin

I need to water more

We're going to be going away for a few days and I've been a little worried about my plants and how well they'll do in the scorching heat without watering (90 - 100 degrees some days). A few of the peppers in pots out front have been wilting in the heat pretty badly, though I'd water them and they'd come back. So I figured there's no way the wilty ones will survive in their pots, and I decided to plant them in an open spot in the garden.

Normally I water them a little bit every day. I don't want to underwater, but I'm maybe a little too afraid of overwatering. So I give them each a little water. I think I'm underwatering by a long shot. Today the heat wave broke and we got a torrential rain storm. I figured the plants were all soaked and happy. So I went to transplant one of the wilty peppers and this is what I saw.

Jalapeno that's not watered enough

That was a wake up call. I'm just not watering enough. I hit each wilty plant with a nice deep watering, until water flowed out the bottom of the pot. I'm thinking they won't be wilty tomorrow. Guess we'll see.

Transplanted about 10 basil seedlings out into the garden. Also 3 pepper plants. We'll see if they perk up.

Back from Vacation

Just before we left, we had approximately zero ripe tomatoes, and a seeming handful of green ones. Yes, the squirrels were even eating the green ones. So we built an impregnable wall of steel around the tomatoes (ok, chicken wire...). The squirrels were DEFEATED!

We even have some red tomatoes in there. Tomorrow we work on extraction.

The peppers that were turning red have now actually turned. Very nice looking.

Beans are thriving, flowers all over the place. Suspect we'll have a decent harvest.