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. 

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.

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.