You Grow Girl™

Ciao all-

Well, this frozen wasteland is making me more than a little bit grumpy, so I thought I'd lighten the mood by starting this thread.

I'm cheating a bit with the first list because it's Duane's peppers. I'm still waiting on a few tomato seed trades before I post my own lists, but I can live vicariously through him, now that he's got a full flat of sown seeds under lights downstairs on top of their cozy heat mat.

Duane's Peppers 2009

Albino Bullnose
Red Lamuyo
Cubanelle
Pasilla
Jalapeno TAM
Hot Paper Lantern
Orange Bullet Fatalii
Yellow Habanero
7 Pot
Chocolate Beauty
Roumanian Rainbow
Jalapeno
Jaloro
Orange Dulce
Chocolate Habanero
Golden Cayenne
Brazilian Starfish
Giant Szegedi
Uncle Charlie's Giant Red
Anaheim
Jalapeno Early
Cascabella
Trinidad
Golden Lantern Habanero
Red Cayenne
Jimmy Nardello
Yugoslavian
Anaheim TMR
Jalapeno M
Fresno
Trinidad Scorpion
Mustard Habanero
Turkish Cayenne
Marconi Purple
Corno di Toro Rosso
Ancho
Jalapeno Purple
Bulgarian Carrot
Serrano
Orange Habanero
Pepperoncini
Orange Sun
Aconagua
Holy Mole
Fish
Fatalii
White Habanero
Greek Pepperoncini

He'll be adding some of these from trades when he gets them:

Lemon Drop
Pasilla Bajio
Serrano Purple
King of the North
Naga Morich, Dorset Naga, or Naga Jalokia
Sweet Pickle
Annie Ornamental

Sorellina--thank you for starting this thread! i've been grumpy with the weather too...
Duane's pepper list is amazing! i am not a fan of hot peppers, but even i can appreciate the variety!
i tried to submit my first seed order from pinetree gardens on friday but something went wrong.. i'm waiting for them to call me to see if it went through or if i need to submit it again... my plan for this year:
tomatoes: stupice, opalka, purple russian, cream sausage, german orange strawberry,
cherry tomatoes: microtom, tiny tim, snow white cherry, sun gold
ground cherry: aunt molly's
eggplant: fairy tale, rosa bianca
basil: sweet genovese, mrs. burns lemon
brocolli: early dividend
beans: blue lake bush, royal burgundy bush, envy soybeans, vt cranberry
beets: detroit, cylindra, chiogga
chamommile: bodegold
corn: ruby queen
cucumber: lemon, boston pickling, salad bush, homemade pickles, little tike
herbs: sage, rosemary, oregano, lavender, lemon thyme, garlic chives, pineapple sage (chives hopefully overwintered outside; other herbs from cuttings i brought in for the winter)
lettuce: buttercrunch, winter density
melon: minnesota midget, jenny lind
peas: progress no. 9, sugar snap
peppers: sweet red cherry, pickle peppers, purple beauty, marconi, fooled you
pumpkin: big max, jack o latern, jack be little
radish: easter egg
spinach: malabar, melody
swiss chard: bright lights
summer squash: gold rush
watermelon--crimson sweet, jubilee, sugar baby
zucchini--burpees hybrid

the majority of my gardening is in containers: everything except the onions, broccoli, melon, watermelon, pumpkin and corn; those go in my tiny in the ground garden in the backyard. the pumpkins did ok last year, but the watermelons never produced... i think it was a combination of bugs and bad soil (lots of clay). i amended last fall with the used soil from the containers and some horse manure, i'll add more compost this spring, and i really hope they do better.

its snowing right now, and we have almost 3 more months of winter left, 4 until anything can go outside... but its only a little over a month until i can start the onions and brocolli! i hate to wish the days away, but i can't wait until spring!

hapy gardening,
haley

Ciao Haley-

That's a nice list there. You're way ahead of me with all that other stuff. Usually I start with the nightshades (peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, tomatillos) and then progress to the basils, then the flowers, then the cucurbits (cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, melons). After that, I start to think about the stuff that gets directly seeded, usually by then I'm hardening off the stuff I start inside. I'm getting more involved with perennials and each year I learn a bit more, so I may dig up all of my ugly orange daylilies (I can't stand the colour orange) and put some burgundy and white ones in. Daylilies are a good perennial to learn on..they're very forgiving. I've dug them up, divided them, dumped the divisions into a bucket for 3 weeks, planted the gross slimy dried up tubers, and they grow. I just wish they weren't orange.

We did go to Lowes the other day and I just looked at the seed racks. As the winter wears on..and on..and on...I do that a lot as an activity to keep me from going insane. And I pace back and forth waiting for my postal person to give me crap to recycle or seeds or catalogues.

Seed starting-wise I planted some onions last week indoors and they are just starting to peek out today! Here is what I plan to plant, but the list seems to get longer the closer we get to spring! :

Peas - Little Marvel, Tom Thumb, Super Snappy
Carrots - Long Imperator
Lettuce - assorted - this year I want to grow alot!
Onions - Sweet Spanish Yellow Utah Jumbo, maybe Evergreen Bunching
Broccoli - Green Goliath (the last time I tried this, I didn't get any actual broccoli and caterpillars decimated it's leaves, so I'm going to try it again)
Swiss Chard - Ruby, Fordhook Giant
Peppers - Carnival Mix, Fish
Cucumbers - Marketmore, Jolly Greed Hybrid, Picklebush (first year pickling!)
Eggplants - depending on what survives... - Cloud Nine, Antigua (last time I tried them I got nothing, so this is my second go-around)
Corn - some popcorn variety
Tomatoes - Brandywine(maybe, last year I didn't get much from them), Pantano Romanesco, Black Krim, Mortage Lifter, a cherry variety that randomly grew in the garden
Pumpkins/Squash - (these are all maybes) Jack-be-little, Pipian from Tuxpan, Musquee De Provence
Peanuts - Spanish
Herbs - Borage, Dill, Parsley, Thyme, Soapwort, maybe etc

Also I want to grow strawberries this year, last year I meant to get some but I could just never get to the store! So that's my list, it looks long (to me at least), but it's really not much..I usually never get that much produce, but I'm gonna try to try harder this year! Hopefully I will be successful!

I have a crapload to grow... I really hope I grow it all this year!

Tomatoes: Fuzzy Peach, Brandywine, San Marzano, Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry, Black Krim, Mortgage Lifter, Riesentraube, maybe Bull's Heart, Berkeley Tie Dye, Silvery Fir Tree, Purple Cherokee, Green Zebra, Japanese Black Trifele, crazy one from a trade (sungoldxjuliet)xblack cherry, mystery cherry tomato, yellow pear, Eva Purple Ball, Aunt Ginny's Purple
Peppers: Fish, Puya, Habenery, Jalapeno, Jalapeno M, Anaheim, Cayenne, Hungarian Wax
Cucumber: Marketmore, Straight 8, Homemade Pickles, National Pickling
Peas: Little Marvel, Alaska, Oregon Sugar Snap
Beans: Cherokee Wax, Purple Queen, Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder, Purple podded, purple 1/2 runner
Luffah gourd
Lettuce/greens: Tom Thumb, Parris Island, Grand Rapids, Black seeded Simpson, Rhubarb Chard, Fordhook Giant Chard, Asian Red Mustard, Mizuna, Bok Choy, mesclun mix (it has a bunch of stuff!)
Carrot: Chantenay, Nutri-red
Melons: Hale's Best Cantelope, Vine Peach, Moon and Stars Watermelon, Sugar Baby Watermelon
Corn: Black Aztec, Native American
Brassicas: Collards, Calabrese Green Sprouting, Broccoli Raab
Alliums: Leek, Chinese Leek, Garlic Chives, Sweet Spanish Yellow Utah Jumbo, Evergreen Bunching
Eggplant: Black Beauty
Spanish Peanuts
Herbs: Horehound, Korean Licorice Mint, Lemon balm, spearmint, French thyme, moss curled parsley, italian parsley, sage, catnip, borage, a bunch of others

plus whatever I forgot I traded for!
>^.^<

I just planted mine. I have a grow table set up in my front room.

2 Burpee Big Boy tomatoes
2 Roma tomatoes
2 Vivian Romaine lettuce
2 Caesar's Favorite lettuce
2 spinach
2 swiss chard
an entire tray of spearmint

Various medicinal, magickal, and culinary herbs

4 red, 4 green, and 4 jalepeno peppers

5 idaho potatoes set to sprout

2 big indoor windowboxes of genovese basil (2 more once it warms up)

I divided my chives. They've gone in one year from 1 peat pellet to five bulbs to a dozen or more bulbs. Yay, chives!

My garlic tray bulbed, so I got a handful of garlic cloves and replanted some of them.

1 windowbox of yellow beans. They seem to really like this one window we have, and who am I to argue?

A pot of lentils. I'm curious to see if my lentils from the pantry will sprout.


There will be more in a couple of weeks or so.

So I haven't started my main bulk of seeds yet, but I did set up a small experiment outside to try out this winter sowing thing, which seems to be all the craze this year. So I'll give it a try, albeit a very limited one.

Outdoors I started:
Bee Balm (original gift from Meighan from like.... two years ago I think?)
Lettuce 'Australian Yellowleaf'
Lettuce 'Black-Seeded Simpson'

I didn't want to go too crazy and try a bunch of tomatoes and what have you that I didn't think would survive the repeated frosts and thaws we'll be getting for the next two months.

Here is my wintersowing experiment:


Anybody who hasn't heard of wintersowing, there's a website here on how to do it (bear with the kind of long and rambling explanation):
http://www.wintersown.org/wseo1/How_to_Winter_Sow.html

And you can look up seeds that work with your zone here:
http://www.wintersown.org/wseo1/Seed_Lists.html

In about 2 weeks I'll be starting my main seeds indoors. I promised myself I would NOT start before Feb. 14th - that's the date that's always worked for me, and I'm going to stick to it, no matter how badly I want to start playing with my seeds sooner.

WHEEEEEE!!! My German Chamomile and lettuce is already sprouting!!!!

OK...here's my list. I haven't started anything yet..but should get on it sometime soon.

Red Russian Kale
Gortahork Cabbage
Zapotec Pleated Tomato (from Kelly - thank you!)
Lettuce leaf Basil
Sugar Ann, Sugar Snap Peas
Gotte Jaune D'Or lettuce
Val D'Orges lettuce


And...whatever else I can squeeze in to my tiny plot.

You're welcome Janet! You're going to absolutely love that tomato - I'm growing two this year, and I'm going to grow (what I now call) it's brother the 'Tlacolula Ribbed'. I'll send you some of those seeds after I start saving in summer as well.

Thanks Kelly - I would love to try 'Tlacolula Ribbed' next year if you end up saving seed! Sounds like you have quite a crop of Tomatoes going in this year.

PM

Hi Everyone

After reading all your posts I got busy last night and put my order in for way too many seeds (I don't care & I won't feel guilty) ...

Kelly ... the winter sowing site was an interesting read ... and your blog's fun - I just missed the speech by 5 minutes too and had to wait to watch the stumble through ... our political voices are very much in harmony

... and thanks Sorellina for the list of what you plant first (this helps me to think about how I can get more properly organized) last year, my 1st year, I planted everything the same day, then got some more seeds and planted them and got a few mixed up - then proceeded to get more mixed up as tags fell out with watering them, etc heheh - by they time they got into the garden more tags were gone & I was basically glad things lived through the chaos ...

I am going to try peppers and go heavy on the tomatoes and basil again this year ... a few cucs & onions (maybe potatoes) again

I want to try the 3 sisters (corn, squash & beans) ... a few melons, lettuces, kale & chard

and last but not least herbs

I also bought some flowers (morning glories & poppies) and I want to get a peony (or 2...or 3)...

Oh, I will definitely save seed, don't you worry about that! So some will be coming to you at some point this year .



Winter sowing is definitely an interesting idea, I couldn't see why it wouldn't work if correct plant species were chosen, so we'll see if that assumption is correct . Thanks for the comments on my blog! It's always nice to find somebody as spiteful of Harper as me .

Here's what I've started indoors under lights. We can't plant for another 3 months or so.

Basil
Lavender
Chamomile
Peppermint
Spearmint
2 types maters
bush cukes
spinach
lettuce
garlic
mesclun
forget me nots (for my littlest boy <3)
jalapenos
parsley
stevia
feverfew
cumin
echinacea
sage

I think that's it

For my outdoor garden in a few months, I've ordered and/or rec'd (as well as replants of the above):

Zucchini
Bouquet Dill
Sweet Pepper Rainbow Mix
Pak Choy
Tendergreen Burpless Cucumber
Elderberry
Muskmelon
sugar pie punkin
sugar baby watermelon
cilantro
borage


Maters:
Black Krim
yellow pear
amish paste
beefsteak
Black Cherry
Jelly Beans
Orange Banana
Rhoades Heirloom
Tumbling Tom
White Currant
Thessaloniki

Oh, you guys are making me so impatient!!!

I'd love to be starting my hot peppers right now, but I'm moving in 12 days, so starting seeds now isn't a good idea! I'll be at it by Feb 14th for sure tho. My usual seed-starting schedule is Valentine's day = hot peppers, My birthday (March 14th) = rest of the nightshades (peppers, tomatoes, sometimes eggplant). This year I'll be a little late on the rest of the nightshades because I'm going on vacation, but they'll be done March 21st.

As for what I'm planting, right now my garden plan reads as, "tomatoes go here. peppers go here. Get raspberries from Sorellina"... and that's about it! I haven't had a moment to go through my seeds and figure out what specific varieties to grow.
I do know a few things I can share right now though:

1. I'll be putting in about 12-16 tomatoes, and about half of them will be pastes, with half of those being yellow paste (I've discovered a love of yellow pasta sauce!). My brother will also be planting about a dozen tomatoes and we'll be sharing the harvest, so I'll probably be starting those for him too. For sure one of the featured plants will be Sorellina's Uncle Charlie's tomato. It's one of my all-time favourites.

2. For peppers, I'll be putting in about 5 hot and 5 sweet. The 5 hot will be determined by my husband - he picks them, I grow them, he eats them (match made in heaven!). For sweet, I'm trying out the mini-sweet varieties from Seed Savers.

3. ONLY TWO ZUCCHINI. This will likely morph into 4 plants by the time I'm actually planting them, but two plants will give me more than enough for two people.

4. I'm trying cabbage and broccoli for the first time this year. Red cabbage and Romanesco broccoli.

5. I'm avoiding onions and potatoes. I just find they're so cheap at the grocery store that I'm better off buying them there and saving the garden space for things like tomatoes that are more expensive to buy from the store.

6. Now that I'm going to be in my own house, I'll be trying out some new things that take time to get established: strawberries (I've grown them before, but now I can actually establish a proper crop), blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb, horseradish.

7. Soup beans. I grew some neat varieties last year, but I didn't have enough room to get a sizable crop. I'll be trying again this year with Calypso, Red Cranberry, and Hutterite Soup Bean.

That's all I've got for now. I'll post a specific list once I have a better idea of the varieties I'm growing.

Keep up the garden planning chat! It's helping me think that I'm warmer than I actually am!

Take care,

~ Mel ~

Ciao Mel-

You'll be a bit behind for any of the super hots your man wants, but you'll actually be early on the tomatoes if you start them in March. Just some food for thought because by 24 May, your tomatoes may have gotten seriously huge. I'm going to start my eggplants in mid-Feb I think..I have to look back at my data to see what I did last year and what I did in 2006. Last year, I did not get a good eggplant harvest, but it was a pretty poor growing year for heat-loving vegetables overall.

Your soup beans were FABULOUS. I've got 2 litre gasket jars full of them in the freezer. I keep them there because I've had issues with very tiny weevils brought in with the pods and then they bore tiny holes in the beans. It's very upsetting. Freezing kills the little creeps and I hear that the beans remain viable if I want to use them as seed beans this year. I'll keep you posted on that.

So you're growing invasives eh? I can hook you up with strawberries and rhubarb for sure as well as the raspberries. I have no idea what's going on with my horseradish. I never got around to harvesting it last year so it's still doing whatever underneath the soil.

What yellow paste are you growing?

I grow onions in between my eggplants and they do fabulously well there. They don't compromise anyone else's space. Sure, I have to exert a bit of effort to find them at the height of the season when the nasturtiums and basil go crazy in front of the eggplants, but the onions I get are like spring onions. They don't get super huge, but they're SWEET and tender, excellent for salads or very fresh soups.

I hope you have better success with brassicas than I do. Romanesco broccoli would be so fun if it actually worked.

ok, back to work on seed trading...

Hi Jules,

I may make a special trip to the new house on Feb 2nd to get peppers planted. The problem is that I don't want to move the little guys right now, while the Arctic is so strongly asserting its dominance on Toronto, so I have to wait until I can put them in my new basement. We get possession Friday, and paint Saturday/Sunday, so Monday is the earliest I can manage.

What's your planned planting date for your tomatoes?

I'm SO glad you liked the beans! My mom got a bunch too. I got maybe a half cup total, but I didn't have many plants. I am incredibly excited to try them again, especially now that I've learned how to prepare them! Good to know about the freezing - I'll have to remember that for next year!

I've got strawberries from my old garden that will be coming with me (assuming they survived their first winter). For sure I'd take you up on the others tho! I didn't realize rhubarb was invasive... I might have to reconsider!

The yellow paste we grew last year was Banana Leggs. Do you have a better suggestion?

I've tried broccoli in the past, but they tended to die when about 1" tall. I've got a friend who grows fantastic cabbage (she gave me one last year b/c she had so many she couldn't eat them fast enough), so I'm hoping she'll have some tips for me.

Take care,

~ Mel ~

Sorellina--
do you really start your eggplants in mid february? and plant them out at the end of may? i started my peppers and eggplants the last week of march last year, and while they did okay, i'm wondering if i start them earlier, perhaps i'll get a better harvest... when do you move them out of the seedling tray and what to use as interim pots until they go in the ground? i'm very curious...

also, how do you keep your garden records? i'm determined to be better at taking notes, i started early last year, then got really busy with school and somehow spaced it all summer. but this year i really want to take good notes about when i started things, when they were transplanted to larger containers, when they went outside, and when i started harvesting them. at some point, i want to measure the harvests too, to prove to myself that the money i invest each spring really is worth it (beyond the joy of doing it of course). but that may be too ambitious this year....

Melamalie--
i grew sweet red cherry peppers last year (from pinetree gardens) and loved them. they require a lot of prep time for not a huge yeild, but they were so tasty and i had tons of them. good luck!

happy gardening,
haley

I'll leave the details about seed starting to Sorellina, but in general, March is too late for peppers in our zone (we put the plants in the ground at the end of May), especially the hot ones, and especilly if you don't have a heat mat to put them on. I'll probably add a couple of eggplant to my pepper planting because I've always found them to be too small if I start them with the tomatoes.

For garden records, I'm having a hard time too. I tried a blog (link is in my signature line) and I remember to post to it every 2-3 months or so. I have a notebook, but I always forget to write in it. You should use whatever works for you for other things. For example, if you already write a journal, add a second one for your gardening stuff.
For tracking your harvest, get a simple digital kitchen scale, weigh everything that comes in, and keep the data in a notebook or spreadsheet. Then just calculate the cost of what those things would be at the grocery store or farmer's market. Also, keep your receipts for all gardening expenses. I'm planning to do that this year to see how much my hobby actually costs me, vs. what it saves me!
Something a little like this:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/11/30/the-grs-garden-project-november-update/

I've started to find that the smaller sweet peppers are a lot sweeter, so I'm curious to try them. I'll have to check out the sweet red cherry peppers too! Thanks for the suggestion.

~ Mel ~

Ciao all-

Ok, my eggplants have been all over the place and I've gotten results that reflect this. 2006 was my best eggplant growing year and the conditions really favoured them. It was fairly dry and sunny for the most part. I was chasing after people with bags of them. I started my seeds on 25 February that year and I had transplants that were over a foot tall. That's what I want, I want tall woody seedlings that will withstand the initial shock of being hardened off, the assault of the sun and wind, and finally, but not insignificantly, flea beetles.

2007, I started my seeds on 9 April because I was away in California and returned just in time for Easter. I had several which needed to be re-sown because germination was poor and the seedlings I ended up with were on the small side. I had a particularly nasty flea beetle infestation that year that wiped out almost all of them in the right bed. Really lousy results.

2008, I started them on 20 March, thinking I would have a happy medium, but it was a compromise from what I would have wanted, based on my results for 2006 because of limited space under my light stands. I didn't have space to pot them up to 16 oz cups either, so they were still on the small side from what I would have liked and my results reflected this. 2008 was a very wet year with a lot of cloud cover and I didn't get a really great harvest.

So, based on all of this, I'm going to start my eggplants around 20 February and bite the bullet and invest in more lights. I have no idea where we'll put them, but we definitely need one more light stand for our needs. My tomatoes were cramped last year as well and they got set back a bit because of small root balls.