Category Archives: Planting

Starting Seeds – Take Two

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The Mary Washington asparagus crowns never did sprout. It’s been a long, wet, cold spring here. Maybe they are still down there thinking about it. Probably the ground was too cold and wet when I put them in and they have succumbed to rot. I will dig them up when the sweet potato slips arrive from Sand Hill Preservation and see. In the mean time, I am starting asparagus from seed. Italian seed, no less. The packet says, “Asparago Precoce d’Argentuil” which I am pretty sure means early asparagus and leaves a bit to be desired on the descriptive end. For $2.99 I figured it was worth a try. I’ve already lost this year’s growth since the 1-year-old crowns didn’t make it and I really want enough asparagus to pickle some eventually. I broke down and bought asparagus this year, planning to pickle some of it, but we devoured it.

And speaking of things being devoured. Where are my beautiful Appaloosa beans? I know I planted an entire 4′ x 4′ of them! OK, it was mid-April. And that same wet, cold rainy spring that I mentioned earlier. But still, they are in a raised bed against the house in a nice sunny spot. ONE bean came up–and something ate the top of it off. Ugh. Remind me to reseed that planter bed now that it is finally warming up. Where did I just read not to rush to plant your bean seeds because you will just end up wasting a lot of seeds? Sometimes I think I am just gardening to learn patience.

But then I have a week of eating like we just had. I have a big board in the kitchen and last weekend I wrote down everything in or from the garden that was ready for us to eat; shell peas and snap peas, potatoes, salad greens, spinach, chard, beets, green onions, strawberries, oregano, celery, chives, carrots and the last of the kale and parsnips. Then I set about eating or finding a way to preserve all of it. It was actually fun trying to ‘live off the land’ there for a little while. And the vegetable curry I prepared in the middle of the week made it all worth while.

Today I also started some of the Principe Borghese tomatoes that I love for drying. I know, it’s mid-May. But last year, I was wishing I had started a second round of them by the time the first group were finished and the tomatoes were all in the dryer. Assuming it ever warms up this year, I may want them again. I also started Bottle, Dipper and Corsican Hard-shelled gourds. It’s probably warm enough for them to sprout outside, the watermelons and pumpkins are coming up, but I figured, why torture the poor things? They can get started under the grow lights with the last of the peppers and go into the garden when it really is ready for them. Plus, I don’t know where I am going to put them yet. And there’s all those sweet potatoes yet to fit in.

And did I mention that I started 40 or so quinoa plants? I was thinking about experimenting with a quinoa and sunflower version of The Three Sisters. I got some nice looking Hopi sunflowers from Native Seeds to mix in with the quinoa. I started a couple varieties of pumpkins in the bin to shade the soil and keep the weeds down. And I’m wondering if I can grow some pole beans up the quinoa. I think the sunflowers will be strong enough. The quinoa part might be crazy. I’m still reading up on it.

Melons by the Moon

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Melon varieties

Seven Select Melons

The Old Farmer’s Almanac includes this weekend on the list of “Moon-favorable” dates to plant melons, which is a good enough excuse for me. Though I did check the soil temperature in the beds slated for the melons. Several hours after the sun was off the beds the temperature still held at over 65 degrees. Frank Tozer, in the Vegetable Growers Handbook, says we can expect germination in about 8 days at that temperature, though 70-90 degrees would be optimal. I’m soaking the seeds overnight to help improve germination. I figure with that, some good compost and all the moon power, we ought to be set.

This year’s melon trials will include ‘Will’s Sugar‘ and ‘Yellow Desert King‘, both donated by the Victory Seed Company, ‘Cris Cross‘ from Seed Savers, ‘Mickylee‘, an ice box watermelon sent to us by Botanical Interests which sounded perfect for our trellising, a ‘Blenheim Orange‘ heirloom muskmelon Seeds of Change sent us last year, ‘Iroquois‘ and Thai Melon ‘Golden Round‘ both donated by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Trellised Watermelon

2009 'Rainbow Sherbet' Icebox Watermelon

Melons need hot weather to be sweet and delicious, hotter than what we usually have in Northern California. Our average high temperature here even in July and August is only 84 degrees. But we were able to produce a dozen or more ice box style watermelons last year with excellent flavor which the kids really enjoyed. My sister is trying half of these same varieties in her garden in Union, Kentucky. Her latitude is pretty much the same as ours and her July average temperature is only two degrees hotter than ours, but the humidity there may affect the melon production. Or is it only humans who feel like it’s hotter when it’s humid out?

I don’t know how much the phase of the moon matters to the melon seeds–there seems to be some actual science on it, but not much in the way of conclusions. But I do know that melons like compost, so we’ll be digging in a 2″-3″ layer of compost mixed with our own earthworm castings where the melons will be growing. And, just in case it really is too early to be planting melon seeds outside, I think I will start half the seeds from each variety indoors, just in case. We also plan to start another group of these same seeds at the end of April so that we can compare the plantings.

3/26/2010 Update

‘Iroquois’  melons planted indoors, in the comfort and splendor of a heating mat and overhead lighting, started sprouting yesterday. Looks like we will have a few more of the indoor varieties up tomorrow. No sign of any of the outdoor seeds yet.

Growing the Perfect Pickle

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cucumbers

A & C Pickling Cucumber

An important part of the perfect pickle, the crunch, is impossible to recreate unless you have fresh pickling cucumbers on hand and pickle them at peak freshness. Or so I have been told. My family’s pickling tradition consists of my mother doing whatever was printed in The Joy of Cooking and turning out a jar or two of kosher dills if the mood struck her and the cucumber harvest was cooperative that year.

In Dirt to Dinner, we like to teach the kids as much as possible about their food, where it comes from, how to grow it, what it’s history is, and how to preserve it for later. So today we started four different varieties of pickling cucumbers in the raised beds in the back garden, where the soil is well warmed. ‘Bushy Cucumber’, from Seed Savers Exchange, a variety from southern Russia where it is recommended for your dacha garden because it grows a compact “bushy” plant. ‘Double Yield Cucumber’, a variety from 1924, that we ate fresh last year. ‘A & C Pickling Cucumber’, also from Seed Savers Exchange, a variety introduced in 1928, that says it produces very uniform fruit but shows some healthy diversity in the photo. And ‘The Pickle of Paris’ or ‘Cetriolino Piccolo di Parigi’ which I hope will produce small gherkins for pickling, but we’re not totally sure of, because all the printing on the packaging is in Italian.

Lemon Cucumbers

There were also some slicing cucumbers that we couldn’t do without. We started a few seeds for some of the good old ‘Straight Eight‘ cucumbers that have been favorites here for the last few years. We also planted heirloom ‘Lemon‘ cucumbers, donated by Botanical Interest. These plants grew very slowly last year but the fruits were delicious when they finally came. That should probably be a lesson to us not to start them so early in the year, but here we go again, planting them in March. Maybe in a few weeks I will start a few plants from these seeds inside so we can do a comparison of the harvests. We also started ‘Armenian‘ cucumbers from seed donated by Territorial Seed Company. We had a variety of Armenian cucumbers last year that did well and were delicious. In fact, these are my personal favorites for quick-pickling with salt, vinegar and herbs, or for dipping in hummus. They were grown in a very protected spot last year and did well. I’ll be looking for another sheltered corner for them for this season.

This summer we plan to try the Pick-a-Vegetable Dill Pickle recipe from the Complete Book of Home Preserving and these Garlic Dills from Food in Jars.

3/26/2010 Update

Our first direct-seeded cucumbers sprouted today, the ‘Bushy‘ variety from Seed Savers. The slicing cucumbers all started in pots are starting to poke up their heads today as well, ‘Lemon‘, ‘Armenian‘, and ‘Straight Eight‘s which were first and look strongest out of the gate.

What We’ve Got Growing for 2010

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Petit Pois Peas

The sunny weather has lots of folks asking what’s growing in the Dirt to Dinner garden. We are still enjoying the wintered-over ‘Tokyo Market‘ turnips, ‘King Midas‘ carrots, collards, ‘Rainbow‘ chard, ‘True Siberian‘ kale, rutabagas, lettuces, chicory, radicchio and parsnips.

The 2010 Pea Trial is well under way and at this point two contenders are pulling ahead, the ‘Petit Pois‘ and the ‘Gigante Svizzero‘ eaten as a shelled pea. We had one guest who swears by these peas eaten pod and all. Unfortunately, the early patch we are eating from was interplanted with the shelling pea ‘Telephono‘ so we can never be positive the shells of any pea picked there are going to be edible. The only variety we lost this year were the ‘Laxton’s Progress No. 9‘s’. We used a lot more netting and bird tape this year, and transplanted starts into several of the test beds. By the time the kids get back in April, we should have around ten varieties ready for a taste test.

Thirteen different varieites of tomatoes are growing under glass or lights; ‘Chinese Cherry’, ‘Big Beef’, ‘Aunt Ruby’s German Green’, ‘Blondkopfchen’, Grandma Jill’s ‘Ugly‘ ‘Homely Homer‘, ‘Roma Paste’, ‘Moonglow’, ‘Speckled Roman’, ‘Amish Paste’, ‘Costaluto Genovese’, ‘Cherokee Purple’, ‘Big Rainbow Striped’and ‘Tennessee Britches’. And the much beloved ‘Principe Borghese’, all six of them, are brazenly growing, without covers, right through the 42 degree nights. And while I wouldn’t recommend you try this at home, they look sturdy and healthy. I wouldn’t do this myself if we hadn’t had at least one Principe Borghese flowering by March 20th last year.

Eight different varieties of tomatillos are cuddled up on heat mats with the peppers; ‘Aunt Molly’s’, ‘Verde’, ‘Cossack Pineapple’, ‘Tomatillo Verde’, ‘Toma Verde’, ‘Purple Tomatillo’, ‘Purple De Milpa’, ‘Giant Cape Gooseberry’.

Now that the weather is so tempting, I can’t wait for the kids and Mackenzie to get back to growing in the garden!

Pea Trials 2010

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Remind me next year that the ‘Oregon Sugar Pod‘ peas are going to need better supports than the split bamboo poles I stuck in around them before overwintering. They have grown at least a foot up and over the side of the raised bed and another two feet back down to the ground. (They are growing in the old potato bed, so it’s deep.) The packet says to expect 28″ vines but I’m getting a tape measure out for these guys. They have done well, and are a sweet treat when you’re working out in the garden, but they are getting a little moldy on the shady side after all the rain we’ve been having. We lost some pods to frost but the vines held on and continued to grow and produce flowers and new pods. I will definitely grow them through the winter again.

The other side of the same bed has ‘Cascadia‘ snap peas, which haven’t been nearly as productive. Welcome, certainly, but hard to find even though the vines look good and there seems to be no shortage of flowers. The pods are harder to spot, and some of them have been lost to a sort of rot that seems to start at the flower end in all this wet weather. I am keeping them picked and hoping they will make us more peas when the weather clears. I have another patch of them starting across the garden.

That patch of ‘Cascadias‘ is growing along with the last of my ‘Sugar Daddy‘ seeds. I have two plantings of ‘Sugar Daddy‘ growing in the center of this year’s potato bed, the ones I started in the ground and the ones I started in the house the same day and then transplanted. Unless transplant shock is a bigger setback than I anticipate, I’ll be starting my pea seeds indoors from now on. You should see what we have to go through defending pea seeds and shoots in the garden! I have nets and cages, row cover and bird tape, cat-attractors and anti-squirrel devices. The Pisello Nano, “dwarf peas,” ‘Piccolo Provenzale‘ I planted today are under glass to help them get established without being molested.

I also started a patch of ‘Amish Snap‘ peas from Seed Savers Exchange. These vines are predicted to grow 5-6’ tall and I put in the supports to hold them. I also have Pisello Rampicante (which I think means “Climbing peas”) ‘Telephono‘ peas starting under one of the teepees we used last year for beans. The kids planted seeds and then we were hit with crazy winter storms, so I filled in with transplants I had seeded indoors again. And there are seeds left in the packet which I may start tomorrow. They are growing alongside another Italian climbing pea variety called ‘Gigante Svizzero‘ or Swiss Giant even though the packet says this is an old French variety. It takes an international cast of thousands to grow peas around here. ;-) These are new for us, but they look like something in between a snow pea and a snap pea. I’m curious to see how they do.

And, of course, there are the ‘Freezonian‘ peas as well. I am trying to start a good-sized patch of them in the back garden this year. They will get a little shade there as things warm up, which might help them hang on longer if it’s warm.

That gives us ten varieties to try:

Snow Peas – ‘Oregon Sugar Pods’ and ‘Gigante Svizzero‘
Snap Peas – ‘Cascadia,’ ‘Sugar Daddy‘ and ‘Amish Snap‘
Shelling Peas, dwarf – ‘Petit Pois,’ ‘Laxton Progress No. 9,’ ‘Freezonian‘ and ‘Piccolo Provenzale‘
Shelling Peas, pole – ‘Telephono‘

Oh! And I am still hoping to get organic ‘Green Arrow‘ seeds from Seed Savers. They just looked so perfect in the picture. *Sigh* I know it takes a ton of vines and the right conditions for a home vegetable gardener to enjoy a big ol’ bowl of fresh peas swimming in butter, but I can still hope, can’t I?