Gardening 2012 - Planting Part 1

It's planting time! It may seem early but in fact night time temperatures have been in the mid-40's for a few weeks and the forecast has lows of around 50 for the rest of the month.

Tomatoes

 

San Marzano Tomatoes, Parsley, Thyme & Basil

This year we're trying red plastic sheets as "mulch" for the tomatoes. The theory (supported by studies at Montana State University and Penn State) is that the red plastic reflects the wavelengths of light that react with phytochrome and encourage more rapid growth. The stuff comes in big rolls and also 3x3 sheets - the exact right size for our little raised beds. It has hundreds of tiny holes to allow water to penetrate to the soil. (In theory anyway - that little puddle in the right foreground doesn't seem to want to cooperate.)

After leveling the soil and pinning the plastic down with landscape fabric pins, we marked and cut three "X" shaped openings where we want the tomato plants. Then we pulled back the flaps, dug planting holes, mixed in a handful of ground eggshells and popped in the tomato plants. Because San Marzano tomatoes are indeterminate, we're using towers rather than the more common cages. There's another almost identical planting in the new "upper" bed with the Cima di Rapa for a total of six San Marzano plants.

Eggplant

Eggplant, Parsley, Thyme & Basil

It's still just a little early for eggplant, but I popped one into a container so I can bring it in if  night temperatures threaten to drop below 50 F. There are parsley, thyme and basil planted around the outside edge of the pot.

Coming soon: Peppers, Zucchini, and the rest of the Eggplant

Gardening 2012 - Update #2

Things have slowed a bit as temperatures have came back to historical averages.

Cima di Rapa Seedlings

Most of the cima di rapa seedlings have developed their first true leaves so with a few sunny days they should really start to take off. I expect they'll need a second thinning this weekend.

We planted one 8 foot row of peas in the "old" raised bed along side a chain link fence on March 26 and  a couple short rows of beets on April 1.  The "new" upper bed got 2 short rows of Swiss Chard parallel to the cima di rapa at the same time. We'll pop in a couple more rows of each plus some more cima di rapa on the 15th. We should see our onion sets arriving sometime this week - half of 'em will go into the new bed and half into the old.

Leggy Tomatoes

The tomato transplants are getting a bit leggy in spite of the grow light and the south facing porch window. Unfortunately, night time temperatures are rather unreliably in the low to mid-40's so actually setting them out is still pretty risky. We do have more plants than we actually need so maybe this weekend we can come up with some sort of protection scheme and take a shot.

In any case, the parsley and thyme can certainly be potted up and hardened off this week. The parsley is looking great:

Root Development

Parsley Potted On

Gardening 2012 - Seed Starting

Well, it's 8 weeks to the "last frost" date for our area, so it's also time to start starting seeds. For the first batch we've got parsley, thyme, basil, eggplant, and some spicy Calabrese peppers. In a couple more weeks we'll start tomatoes, then about the middle of March zucchini. This year we're also growing broccoli raab, beets, carrots, and swiss chard, all of which will be direct seeded along with some red cippolini type onions that will go in from sets.

To get things moving in our chilly basement, we're using a heating pad underneath the seed starting tray. In a perfect world it will provide just enough (and not too much) warmth to get the seeds moving. According to the instructions, that's 10 degrees warmer than ambient. The manufacturer suggests using a thermostat, but the basement is cool enough that I'm hoping it won't be necessary.

The tray with the first five varieties loaded, the tray looks like this:

And after a couple hours with the heat on it's looking good; not too hot, but warmer than my basement:

The heated seed starting tray is this one:



We've also got a lighting system we won't actually need for a week or so: