surprise!

We've had a lot of heavy rain this week.  While it's been nice to not have to water the garden and tomato grove twice daily, the storm brought with it cooler temperatures.  Today was quite cold for June (mid-50s) and tonight's low is predicted to be in the upper 40s.  So I've brought inside my five 2nd generation pimientos de padrón and the six habanero plants.  They'd probably handle the cooler temperatures fine, but the plants are relatively young, and I see no need to stress them unnecessarily if I can prevent it.

In preparing the ground for the summer garden, I've been mixing into the soil several shovels of compost per row.  As I've been tending to the young sprouts and transplants I've come to realize that the compost I added contained some apparently still viable seeds.  Surprise!  Sprouting up alongside the black beauty zucchini and growing in amongst the rows of italian white eggplant I have found nine tomato plants and three mystery squash.

Surprise tomato plants:

Surprise squash:

So I've put these surprise plants in their own cups and I'm planning on container-gardening them for now.  I'm really excited to see what they all turn into.  With the tomatoes, it's most likely that they are the larger "beefsteak" type.  The surprise squash I can only narrow down to butternut, acorn, or pumpkin.  They all look the same though, and distinguishable from the zucchini.

I haven't added any new kitchen scraps to that compost pile in several months, and so I'm really amazed that the seeds survived the compost breakdown process.  Maybe that says something about my compost pile...

garden update: zucchini and green bean germinated, sugar snow pea flowered and harvested

I returned from my trip to find almost a completely different garden from the one I left thanks to the watchful care of my guest gardener.  Seven zucchini had germinated and already sprouted their primary leaves.



As instructed, a few days ago I thinned them to two seedlings on each mound.  All six of the plants were very healthy, so I´ve given the two I removed to a friend (and guest gardener/photographer).

Several green beans had also germinated, although they´re struggling somewhat to put out their primary leaves.



I think that they´re being eaten nightly by slugs.  I´ve had this problem with green beans before.

The Snowy White eggplant also sprouted (thorny!) buds in my absence:



The buds are quite large now, but haven´t yet begun to open.

Both varieties of sugar pea are doing really well.  The sugar snap pea plants are now approaching 5´ tall, and the sugar pod snow pea bloomed and grew pods in the week I was gone.



I can´t believe how fast the pea pods grow.  I´ve harvested them three times in the past two days already.

Sugar pod snow pea:

The garden space itself is now almost complete.

I put in the last row of eggplant this past weekend.  These eight black eggplant are a little behind all the rest, but they seem to be doing well in the ground. 

I´m planning on sequentially planting green beans this year, so I´ll probably dig up and plant the next row of beans this weekend. The beans should be the final planting of this year´s summer garden.

I just ordered some more seeds from Seeds of Change.  I´m planning on trying out a few new types of bush bean to see if I can find something that the slugs don´t like quite as much.  Arriving soon should be Bountiful Stringless Snap Bush Bean and Robert's Royalty Bush Bean (which is on backorder, unfortunately).  I also ordered more fino verde basil and some holy basil for a friend.  For the fall garden, I ordered a new type of radish (French Breakfast) and spinach (Renegade F-1) to try, in addition to some Taisai Chinese cabbage, which is supposed to be like bok choy.  I always like trying to grow something new.  I´m hoping to extend the growing season of my leafy greens well into autumn, and possibly even have a winter harvest.

summer garden officially started

Saturday was beautiful here.  It was the first nice day I had free to work on tilling up the backyard and do some serious planting. I expanded my existing 4' x 19' garden space to include three more 19' rows (two eggplant and one green bean):

and a tomato grove:



In addition to the row of Garden green beans seeds, I also planted Black Beauty zucchini seeds in two 3' mounds:

 
As per the directions, I planted four seeds on each mound and will thin to the strongest two once they've germinated, which should be in 5-10 days.  The green beans are supposed to germinate in 6-8 days.  I'm leaving town for almost a week, and I'm excited to see what will have germinated by the time I get back! 

It feels great to have so many of the plants I've been growing in the greenhouses outside and in the ground.  Right now I have 23 eggplant (not counting doubles) in the ground, and eight more black eggplant that I'm still hardening.  In tomatoes, I have eight second generation tomato plants (all indeterminates) and nine third generation (all determinate but one):

These plants, combined with the 50+ first generation tomato plants currently producing and ripening fruit should make for a very continuous and bountiful tomato harvest this summer. 

When I get back in town, I'll dig up another row and plant the last eight eggplant.  I'm planning on sequentially planting my green beans this year to extend the harvest, so in two weeks I'll start another row of green bean seeds.  Two weeks and two more rows and my summer garden will be officially planted.

Snowy White eggplant in the ground with thorns!

This morning I put a row of snowy white eggplant into the ground out in the garden.



They are by far the largest and leafiest of the three eggplant varieties I´m growing.  I´d spent the past few days hardening them to the direct sun, wind and chillier nights outdoors, and they seemed to be adapting fine.  I was somewhat startled when I took them out of the greenhouse to notice that they have pretty well-developed thorns both on the stems: 

and down the veins of the leaves:

I've since noticed that all three of the eggplant varieties I'm growing have these thorns. I had no idea that eggplant could be so aggressive.

pimientos de padrón harvest!

Monday night I harvested the three pimientos de padrón that were ~2" long.



Then I prepared them in olive oil with sea salt, as per the Spanish tapas style:



They were so delicious! The texture was fantastically soft and supple, unlike the pepper varieties available locally.  They were even pretty spicy considering they were still green and only 2" long.  They tasted just like they were in Spain.  After all the peppers that we've tried to imitate them, it was so nice to taste pimientos de Padrón again.  There´s really no substitute.  I can´t wait for the next harvest, hopefully we´ll have enough ripe at once for a full platter!

tomatoes ripening at last and pimiento de padrón harvest pending!

The upstairs tomatoes have finally started to ripen!  The Chadwick and Fox cherry tomatoes seem the farthest along, although an Oregon Spring Bush tomato has started to turn now, too. I´m really excited that soon I will have a constant supply of fresh, ripe, homegrown tomatoes!



In downstairs greenhouse news, the pimientos de padrón have gotten enormous!



I´ve really been impressed with how quickly they´ve grown.  These three are now right around 2" long.  The Renee´s Garden website (where I got the seeds) says that pimientos de padrón should be harvested when they are no more than 2" long; "At this small size, they are fragrant and flavorful; larger fruits get very spicy."  While I´m definitely a fan of spicy peppers, I think for this first harvest, I´ll follow the recommendation.  It´d be nice to wait until I had enough for a full tapa, but I think I´ll go ahead and pick these three this week.

Both greenhouses have now required multiple light fixture raisings to accomodate the growing tomato plants.  The upstairs greenhouse still houses primarily indeterminate tomatoes which are supposed to grow to be quite large.  The Maglia Rosa cherry, already measuring over 6´, are currently the tallest.  While their size is impressive, I hope they slow down soon.

One nice thing about this more recent light raising is that it required the removal of the greenhouse plastic sheeting. As a result, the tomatoes are getting direct sunlight several hours a day through the east/west windows. The plants look really pretty in the morning and evening sun, and I´m sure that the lower leaves are appreciative of the light.

I waited too long to raise the light fixture on the downstairs greenhouse, mainly because I really didn´t think that these determinate tomatoes were going to keep growing like this. They grew up into the light until they decapitated themselves with the (minimal) heat.

The light is in a really temporary and nonideal position right now.  It´s not really even providing direct light to half of the greenhouse, but at least it is again several inches above the plant tops.

Hopefully, I didn´t affect their overall plant health too much.  I´m planning on moving them all outside in a few weeks anyway.  We´re technically past our annual average last frost date, but especially given the recent cold spell and the frost warning we´re under for the next few days, I´ve decided to wait until June to move everything outdoors and do my first planting for the summer garden.  If I follow my current plan, it´ll be more than twice as big as last year!

sugar snap pea and champion radish progress y pimientos de padrón!

Two weeks ago, I planted Sugar Snap Pea seeds from Seeds of Change.  They´ve since germinated and are doing well, in spite of the cold spell we´ve been having.

Sugar Snap Pea slideshow:



You can definitely tell that they´re related to the Snow Peas. 

My champion radishes are almost ready for harvest.  I thinned the row to 1" plant spacing two weeks ago.

Their leaves have really gotten big. I'd probably have started picking them already, but with the colder and cloudier weather we've had lately, I decided to give them a few extra days.

Champion radish:

Indoors, the pimientos de padrón flowers have been successfully pollinated!

Pimiento de padrón slideshow:



Just as with the tomatoes, the flowers first shriveled up, some falling off completely, before the peppers appeared. Of the six mature pimiento de padrón plants I have, two have flowers and peppers, and the rest have buds of varying size.  I think that the combined peppers of two plants should be more than sufficient for a pimiento de padrón tapa, so this harvest spacing should work out nicely. 

I´m really surprised how many buds each plant puts out ( > 10 ).  So far, they definitely seem more prolific than the average tomato plant, although I don´t know yet how many distinct harvests to expect over their lifetime. 

Indoor/outdoor update

So the Sugar Pod Snow Peas that I planted outside have long since germinated.  They are three weeks old today.  Here´s a slideshow of their progress so far:



They have an elaborate leaf structure that I really like.

The Bloomsdale spinach is finally starting to do something.  I planted a row and a half of it, and I don´t know if the full row failed to germinate or was just eaten by slugs, but the half row is all I have now.  They´ve just put out their primary leaves:



Indoors, the Maglia Rosa cherry tomatoes are finally bearing fruit.  The tomatoes are oblong, making them resemble Romas.

It´ll be interesting to see if their taste differs substantially, as well. 

More exciting greenhouse news: the pimientos de padrón have budded and bloomed!



I´ve been pollinating them just like the tomatoes.  I can´t wait for the peppers!  If they follow the same timeline as the tomatoes, then it´ll probably be another month at least before the fruit appears and starts to ripen, but at least I can pick them while they´re still green.

radishes germinated, eggplant transplanted, tomatoes and herbs in the sun

The Champion radishes first poked up above ground on Friday, right in their three-to-six day window.



I really like their little heart-shaped leaves.  Now they have 21-24 days until they can be harvested, and I´m supposed to plant a new crop of them every two weeks to have a constant supply.

Last Thursday was an absolutely gorgeous spring day, and so I decided to transplant the rest of the eggplant outside.  They will probably stay in these containers until they are planted in the garden.



My current totals are: 16 black, 17 snowy white, and 10 italian white.  Suffice to say, I think we´re going to have a ton of eggplant this year.

Since we´ve had a few warm sunny days in a row now, I´ve started bringing some of the staked tomato plants and herbs outside during the day.

Tomato plants along a south-facing wall:

Bucket of herbs:

These plants have been in the sun room living off whatever direct sun that comes through the south-facing windows.  I think this is probably sufficient on sunny days, but when it´s consistently cloudy, they really start to droop.  They´ve taken to the outside conditions pretty well for the most part.   Only one tomato plant has shown any signs of photo-bleaching:

So this Fox cherry is going to stay inside for today and recover.

I also planted a Crimson Sprinter tomato plant in the ground outside.

This plant has been nothing but unlucky.  During the second tomato transplant, I accidentally placed it too close to a space heater and it wilted.  I didn´t want to give up on it, but it quickly fell behind in growth compared to the other tomato plants, and then it wasn´t getting as much light in the greenhouse since it was so much shorter.  So it´s been living outside the greenhouse in the sunroom.  I went ahead and planted it in the ground even though it´s still really early because it´s short enough that I can easily cover it on cool nights.  True to form, this plant had been in the ground all of five minutes, when the wind blew really hard and snapped off the tallest stem.  I´m still not giving up on it, though.  I want to see if I can get it to produce a tomato after all it´s been through.

tomatoes!

I guess I must´ve been pollinating correctly.  About two weeks after the first tomato flowers opened, the flowers began to shrivel a bit, close, and then fall off.

At first I was worried that perhaps I had been pollinating too forcefully, or overwatering (which is a constant concern), but then I looked inside where the petals had been and saw a tiny green sphere!

Fox cherry tomato was the first to bud and bloom, so it was also first to be pollinated and produce adorable tiny tomatoes.  Since this first tomato, the plants have really taken off.  Here´s a slideshow of the main greenhouse which primarily houses the taller, indeterminate tomato plants:



Even the determinate tomatoes in the smaller greenhouse have begun to bloom and be pollinated.  They were a little behind the cherry tomatoes, but are quickly catching up both in terms of open and pollinated flowers.



They´re really growing so quickly.  The biggest is already larger than a quarter.  I can´t wait until they start to ripen!

first garden planting

Well, the ground has finally warmed up enough to do some early spring planting.  I´ve decided to experiment with extending the garden season beyond summer to include spring and fall, Eliot Coleman style.  Not only will this increase the amount of the year that I´m able to be gardening, but there are also lots of plants that prefer the cooler temperatures and can be grown in the garden before the summer crops can be planted or get too large.  This also increases the number of different types of vegetables I can grow.

For my first spring crop, I´ve decided to try Champion radishes, Bloomsdale spinach, and Sugar Pod snow peas.  These vegetables are all supposed to thrive in cooler temperatures and have a relatively short number of days until maturity.  Again, I ordered all the seeds from Seeds of Change.  I like they way they organize the information about the seeds there.  I feel it´s easy to compare different varieties of seeds and select those that have the best chance of growing and producing high yields in a cooler climate with a shorter typical growing season. 

The three varieties of vegetables I´ve chosen all can supposedly be planted as soon as the ground can be worked.   I first turned over the soil in the garden a few weeks ago, and then broke up the ground more finely last weekend.  Sunday afternoon, with the temperature in the mid-50s, I decided to plant my seeds.

Bloomsdale spinach:

Sugar Pod Snow Pea:

 Champion Radish:

We still have occasional night temperatures in the 20s, so I´ve decided to use a type of season extender for the plants to help them germinate and protect them from frost.  There´re just plastic bins that I was using to collect rain last summer, but I think they´ll work alright for now.

The Champion radish is supposed to be able to germinate at temperatures as low as 45F, and in just three to six days, so I´m expecting to see it sprout first.  The spinach and snow peas both can germinate at 50F, in six to twelve and three to eight days, respectively.  The temperature is supposed to get up into the 80s (!!) this Friday, which should really help speed along the germination.

eggplant germinated

Last year, my eggplant crop really seemed to just be getting started when the season was ending, so this year I wanted to make sure that I had some mature plants ready to go in the garden once the weather got sufficiently warm.  I tried to look for varieties that do well with cooler temperatures and shorter growing seasons, and decided on Italian White, Snowy White, and Black eggplant seeds, all from Seeds of Change.

My seedling heat mat was still out on loan when I first planted the seeds, and so I was trying my hot watering routine.  I successfully germinated three Italian White seeds this way before I decided to reseed and try again once my heat mat returned from guest germination.  The seeds really took off with the additional heat source.  Here´s a slideshow of their progress so far.



You can definitely tell that some of the eggplants germinated before the others, and it seems I really didn´t need to reseed at all.  I was afraid with all the water and lack of germination that the first batch of eggplant seeds had rotted.  Apparently that was not the case, and it seems as though I´m either going to have to get ruthless upon transplanting these seedlings or separate them all out into their own containers and have 50 eggplants.  I think I know which it will be. 

buds open, pollination ensues

The tomato buds have opened and I now have many many beautiful yellow flowers in my greenhouses.



Thankfully, most tomato plants have complete flowers and can self-pollinate with a little encouragement.  A few taps with a stick a couple of times a day is supposedly sufficient for self-pollinating plants.

Pollinating:

The Greenhouse Gardener's Companion says that the morning is, for some reason, the best time to pollinate, but I've found that the flowers aren't always fully open yet early in the morning, and have had better luck with afternoon and evening pollination.

It's so exciting to tap on the bright yellow flowers and see the pollen drift out!  I don't know how long it takes for the flowers to be pollinated and the fruit to emerge, or if I'm even doing it right.  I guess I'll find out if the flowers close up and fall off without producing tomatoes.  As more and more flowers open, I'm becoming increasingly appreciative of the constant work of the bees in my summer garden.

bouquet dill sprouted and more habanero pepper seedlings

About a month ago, I purchased and planted Ferry-Morse Bouquet dill seeds after I had planted the last of the Dukat dill seed packet from Seeds of Change.  I thought that it'd be interesting to compare the two varieties both as plants, and as a culinary herb.

Here's a slideshow of their sprouting progress so far:



Also, four more habanero seeds have germinated!



That brings the habanero seedling count to six so far, and I still have three slots that have not germinated anything.

I was so impressed and pleased with the germination success of the habanero seeds, that I decided to press my luck and try to germinate seeds from a Thai green chile pepper that dried out in the refrigerator in the same bag as the habaneros.  I harvested around 18 seeds from one pepper and planted two per slot in a germinating tray.  I was out of germinating soil, so I just used potting soil, which is denser.  Hopefully, at least a few of them will germinate and I can have a real spicy pepper assortment.

tomato plants are budding!

I finally have some flower buds on my tomato plants. Since the plants are all about three months old, I was really starting to worry that I was going to have to induce blooming myself.



I´m not surprised to see the Oregon Spring Bush and Santiam tomato plants budding since they are supposedly the fastest to mature at around 55-65 days.  I am surprised though, at the Fox cherry buds, since they supposed take 90 days to mature.  Regardless, I´m very pleased that the tomato plants are healthy and happy enough to be budding.  I wonder how long between first buds until ripe fruit?

herb update

About a month ago, I ordered some more herb seeds, this time from Renee's Garden.  The Greek oregano, French thyme, and French rosemary I planted have now all germinated, and the little seedlings are doing wonderfully.

Click on the slideshow to view it larger in Picasa:


The sweet basil replant and the fino verde basil are also looking very healthy.

Sweet basil:

 

Fino verde basil:

 

The main difference (so far) between the sweet and fino verde basil is in the shape and curvature of the leaves.  The sweet basil leaves are much more rounded and arc upward, while the fino verde basil leaves are pointed and lie flat. 

Here're both side-by-side for easy comparison:

In terms of flavor, the fino verde basil is supposedly stronger and spicier than sweet basil, and Seeds of Change says that the leaves retain their flavor even after flowering.

The shelf cilantro is doing well.  I've moved it to a west-facing windowsill, and while it's hard to beat the growth rate in a greenhouse, all of the seedlings now have primary leaves.

We're starting to get into sunnier and warmer weather here, which is creating nicer growing conditions for the plants by the window and adding intense broad spectrum supplementary light to the greenhouses.  It would be nice to live somewhere that had sunnier winters so that the fluorescent lights would be supplemental to the daylight instead of the other way around.

Pimientos de padrón transplanted

I finally transplanted my six pimiento de padrón plants.



I´m very pleased with their progress.  All of the plants have nice shiny leaves and lots of new leaf sprouts.  A couple of the plants have some yellowing leaves that could possibly be indicative of photobleaching.  Since I know that these pepper plants require an intense light source, I´m thinking that the yellowing is more likely a sign that they needed to have been re-transplanted before now.  Hopefully in their new containers with fresh soil, they will quickly recover.  

Habanero pepper seeds successfully harvested/germinated

My habanero pepper seeds have finally germinated!



I came by these seeds in a slightly unusual fashion.  As a spicy food enthusiast, I love habanero peppers, and try to always have at least two or three on hand for spicing up nachos, pierogies, mashed potatoes, etc.  A bag of these peppers got tucked away in the back of the refrigerator, and instead of getting moldy, they dried out in a really pretty way.  Their orange color had darkened and they looked almost crystallized.

Habanero peppers are one of the hottest in the world, and I was pleased that the refrigerator-dried peppers had retained their spiciness.  As I chopped them up for cooking, I noticed that the seeds were completely dry and seemingly intact.  I don´t know much about harvesting seeds, but I know you have to dry them out first, and so these seemed like potential candidates for growing my own habanero pepper plants.

I looked up the planting and germinating instructions for habanero peppers at Renee´s Garden, and planted all the seeds I could harvest from the last dried-out pepper.  I´ve loaned out my seedling heat mat, and so I was concerned that the seeds might not germinate without that extra heat.  As the days and then weeks passed, I began to water the seeds with increasingly warmer tap water to try to really heat up the soil and encourage germination.  Finally, after almost a month, I have two habanero pepper seedlings and indications of at least one other germinating seed.

Like most peppers, it seems that habaneros really like hot weather.  Renee´s Garden recommends "sowing the seeds indoors in February or March, and then transplanting them outside when nighttime temperatures are consistently 50-55 F."  As with the pimientos de padrón, though, I can´t imagine that in this climate I´ll be planting these peppers in the garden before late June, if at all.  It seems at least possible to container garden habanero pepper plants and have them flower and fruit as a perennial.  This seems especially ideal since supposedly the hotter the growing temperatures, the spicier the peppers become, and it would be much easier to consistently supply the plants with hot and bright growing conditions indoors.  Year-round, home grown habanero peppers sounds fantastic.

more transplanting and a(nother) new greenhouse

After only two weeks, the tomato and pepper plants are already growing out of their peat pots:

The second batch of Maglia Rosa cherry and Dukat dill had also outgrown their containers:

So I decided to do some more transplanting.  Since the tomatoes had outgrown their new pots so quickly, I  chose a much larger upgrade, and bought 50 round, plastic "Classic 200" containers.  They are tapered, measuring ~5.75" deep and in diameter.  So far I've only transplanted 10 of the tomato plants, and of those, most are Santiam and Red House Free Standing.

In order to be able to transplant the tomatoes, I needed to have a space for the plants in their larger containers.  I bought from Lowe's a "Garden Treasures" greenhouse for $40.  It's 64" x 35.5" x 19" and has a really nice heavy-duty clear plastic cover with two zippers running up the front to make for convenient access to the plants. 

 

I've installed this new greenhouse in the south-facing sun room on the first floor.  This room is heated through vents in the floor, and I've positioned the greenhouse so that it is on top of half of one of the vents.  This seems to be providing sufficient heat and airflow to the structure.  

It still isn't consistently sunny here, so I've installed a 2' single T5 bulb fixture as supplementary lighting.  So far, I've transplanted and moved one each of Crimson Sprinter and Oregon Spring Bush tomato, and four each Santiam and Red House Free Standing tomato.  The Santiam and RHFS are both determinates that are supposed to reach maximum heights of ~30", so I'm not too worried about them outgrowing the structure any time soon.  I moved the Crimson Sprinter and OSB as more of an experiment to see how they'd do in a cooler and darker environment as compared to the growing shelf of the main greenhouse structure.  Even if this noticeably slows down the growth of these tomato plants, it will only help to space out the eventual tomato harvest.  

The newly-transplanted Maglia Rosa cherry tomatoes have joined the larger transplanted tomatoes in the new greenhouse.

  

I think they look dwarfed there by the other tomato plants, and even the basil.  Again, it will be interesting to compare their growth in this environment with the other Maglia Rosa plants growing in the warmer and brighter greenhouse.

All of the Garden sage, (second batch) Dukat dill, and Slow Bolt cilantro have now been transplanted into more permanent containers and placed by a window.

Close-ups, Dukat dill:

Garden sage and Purple Opal basil:

 

Purple Opal basil hanging by a west-facing window in the sun room:

 

I need more containers before I can transplant the rest of the Purple Opal basil.  Then I can use all of the shelf space in the new greenhouse for transplanted tomatoes.