Sometimes Things Don’t Go The Way You Thought They Would — The 2016 Plant List

by A.J. Coltrane

On May 7 we showed up early for the May Tilth Edible Plant Sale. Unfortunately they actually held the sale on April 30(!)

Every year the sale had been on the first Saturday in May. Not this year.

Improvisation time. We had twelve EarthBoxes to fill, and time to go to two nurseries–

The Tomatoes:

The Big Idea	What Happened
Black Krim	Black Krim
Sun Gold	Sun Gold
Oregon Spring	Oregon Spring
Taxi	Taxi
Roma	Roma
Yellow Pear	Yellow Pear
Paul Robeson	Paul Robeson
Cherokee Purple	Cherokee Purple
	Tigerella
	Valencia

Not bad. We had hoped for a small, short-season melon called “Minnesota Midget”. Neither of the nurseries we hit had a melon like that, so we chose to cut bait and grow an “extra” box of tomatoes instead. It all breaks out to two Cherry Tomatoes (Sun Gold and Yellow Pear), three “Purple” Tomatoes (Paul Robeson, Black Krim, and Cherokee Purple), two “early” tomatoes (Oregon Spring and yellow Taxis), one Sauce tomato (Roma), the striped Tigerella, and a pink/red Valencia.

Ten tomatoes = five boxes. That left seven boxes to go.

The Peppers:

#	The Big Idea	What Happened
1	Anaheim College 64	Anaheim
2	Early Jalapeno	Jalapeno
3	Hungarian Hot Wax	Anaheim
4	Numex Highlander	Anaheim
5	King of the North	Orange Bell
6	King of the North	Red Bell
7	King of the North	Melrose
8	King of the North	Red Beauty
9	King of the North	Baron
10	King of the North	Ace
11	Iko Iko	Orange Sun
12	Iko Iko	Serrano
13	Carmen	Carmen
14	Carmen	Carmen
15	Carmen	Serrano
16	Carmen	Serrano
17	Gypsy	Gypsy
18	Jimmy Nardello	Gypsy

Well, sorta. I was happy that we got Serrano, and the King of the North was replaced with other assorted bell peppers… I’m fine with the way the peppers shook out. Three boxes of peppers makes for a total of eight boxes filled.

The Cucumbers:

#	The Big Idea	What Happened
1	Marketmore 64	Marketmore
2	Marketmore 64	Marketmore
3	Marketmore 64	Marketmore
4	Marketmore 64	Marketmore

Which Marketmore did we get specifically? Who knows. Hopefully “in the ballpark” is close enough. I feel ok with it, and we’re down to three boxes to go.

The Tomatillos:

This year Tilth didn’t offer either of the types that we’ve grown in the past — “Mexican Strain” or “De Mipa”. We selected “Verde” as the replacement. It turned out that the first nursery that we hit had “Verde”, so…

#	The Big Idea	What Happened
1	“Verde”	“Verde”
2	“Verde”	“Verde”

Ding! We’re down to two boxes to go.

One box with basil plants will be a gimme. We’ll buy starts in the next 10-14 days. We’re going to try basil from seed this year too. We’re covered regardless. One box to go, and it’s intended to have Tromboncino Zucchini…..

And today a nice woman at the nursery helped me find one of the two Tromboncino plants for the last box. It was labeled with the alternate “Rampincante” name. With any luck they’ll have the last plant back in stock on Tuesday.

The Winter Garden In April

by A.J. Coltrane

The backyard garden hasn’t yet fully transitioned to “summer”. Maybe next week. The whiskey barrels have some energetic flower starts — Territorial Seed’s Bee Mix, Bug Mix, and Nasturtiums (Jewel Mix).

As of March 2nd, these containers only had gravel in the bottom. They’re in the coldest, shadiest part of the yard that will eventually see good sun as the season progresses:

(Front to back — a container of Bee Mix, a container of Bug Mix, a container of 1/2 Bee Mix and 1/2 Bug Mix, a container of Nasturtiums. We’re now planted Marigolds – “Brocade Mix” in the spots that haven’t germinated.)

Next, a close-up picture of the Nasturtiums. We planted about nine seeds. Seven of those germinated. It looks like seven plants is going to be plenty:

The raspberry plant (with a blooming rhododendron behind it):

The raspberry plant needs some pruning. I’m holding off until I’m dead certain nothing is going to grow out of the older stems.

As far as everything else: The mache and chard bolted at the first sign of warm weather. I’m hoping we can harvest mache seed at some point — they’re blooming now. The carrots continue to size up, and it looks like we should be able to harvest those in the next 30 days.

The garlic will need to be harvested in the next 30 days to make room for the summer vegetables as well:

The actual work on the backyard garden starts soon.

The Winter Garden In March

by A.J. Coltrane

The winter (backyard) garden… I’m going to call it a success. Not a smashing success though. There’s definitely a theme to what worked and what didn’t.

The garlic is doing well. It still has another couple of months to size up before it needs to make way for the summer vegetables:

Mache (left) and Dragon Radishes (right). Bunch Onions were interplanted in most of the containers because slugs are supposed to dislike alliums:

Mache again. It grew bigger with less competition:

The carrots are still small (and they may be too crowded):

The last four EarthBoxes to be planted. An assortment of Mache, Chard, Arugula, and Spinach. Squirrels were digging in them so bird netting was draped over everything… I see Mache and a little Chard:

I think if I’m really going to “winter garden” I need to start seeds no later than sometime in August. (Which is the same thing I said in the November post.) As it is, the backyard gets zero sun all winter. Not much growth happened until the last couple of weeks.

In summary: The Mache did well. All of the alliums did well. The carrots and radishes did ok. Maybe other stuff with do better with a bigger head start..

The newly acquired “whiskey barrels” are pictured below. Purchased at a big box store, they were somewhat smaller than our existing barrels. I’ve gotten as far as drilling drainage holes and filling the bottom with gravel. They will house “Bee & Beneficial Bug” flowers this summer. And Nasturtiums:

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For reference, here’s the backyard on November 8.

Too Many Seeds, Probably

by A.J. Coltrane

As usual, I may have gotten a little too enthusiastic about shopping for seeds. The new batch from Territorial Seed:

Basil-Sweet	2016
Bee Feed Flower Mix	2016
Bright Lights Swiss Chard	2016
Conservor Shallots	2016
Coriander-Confetti	2016
Dill-Dukat	2016
Flower Mix-Beneficial Bug	2016
French Breakfast Radish	2016
Garden Cress	2016
Giant Musselburgh Leek	2016
Giants Of Colmar Carrots	2016
Miners Lettuce	2016
Nasturtium-Jewel Mix	2016
New Zealand Spinach	2016
Red Baron Onion	2016
Roodnerf Brussels Sprouts	2016
Roquette Salad Arugula	2016

It’s a mix of things that have worked well in the past and some new things I’m eager to try out-

Basil plants seem to reach a point in age where the leaves just don’t taste as good. I’d like to try “succession planting” basil this year to see if we can harvest nothing but optimum leaves.
We purchased four more, somewhat smaller “whiskey barrels” over the weekend. This summer they’re going to house a combination of Bright Lights Chard, Bee Feed Flower Mix, Beneficial Bug Mix, Nasturtiums (which are edible as well as attractive), and a hodge-podge of whatever else might fit.
The Garden Cress, Arugula, Miner’s Lettuce, Confetti Coriander (cilantro, this variety is supposed to be slow to bolt), Dill-Dukat (ditto), and New Zealand Spinach (which likes hot weather) will go into the salad table with the existing Miner’s Lettuce. The Garden Cress and New Zealand Spinach are new. I have high hopes for the New Zealand Spinach in particular. We’ll see how the Garden Cress does, it may want more consistent water than will be provided.

Of course, we still have little bits of packages to use up. I have them rubber banded together in groups, this first group is “Salad Table” (the “year” is the year the seed was packed for.)

Dill–Dukat	2014
Coriander-Confetti	2014
Romaine Jericho	2014
Romaine Little Gem	2014
Romaine Winter Density	2014
Roquette Salad Arugula	2014
Spinach-Savoy	2014

And a “Spring 2016?” group of packages:

Radicchio	2014
Parsley	2014
French Breakfast Radish	2014
Cherry Bell Radish	2014
Flower-Brocade Mix	2014

“Fall 2015”:

Romaine Winter Density	2015
Super Sugar Snap Peas	2015
Roquette Salad Arugula	2015
Coriander – Santo	2015
Dill – Fernleaf	2015

Finally, “Winter Backyard 2015”:

Five Color Chard	2016
Mache	2015
Dragon Radish	2014
Mache	2014
Conservor Shallots	2015
Red Baron Onion	2015
Conservor Shallots	2014
Napa Hybrid Carrot	2014

The “Winter Backyard 2015” group is currently growing in the whiskey barrels and EarthBoxes, as well as around 50ish heads of garlic. The mild spring means that the growth rate of the overwintering survivors is really starting pick up.

The transition from winter things to summer things may be “interesting”.

Seed Germination Temperatures and Times. Days to Maturity. And Plant Minimum Temperatures. NW Edition.

by A.J. Coltrane

A couple of spreadsheets with seed germination times and temperatures, days to maturity, and the minimum temperature that the adult plants will tolerate.

The spreadsheets only contain the plants that:

1. Do well in the Pacific Northwest. That’s where we are.

2. Do well in containers. That’s how we’re gardening.

and

3. Represent plants we’ll potentially eat.

I’ll likely add more plants at a later date, either because I overlooked the plant on the first pass, or because somebody else asks for the info. As it was, I made more manageable spreadsheets (and saved work) by not including most of the root vegetables, as well as the veggies that we’re unlikely to consume.

Much of the information is from the Territorial Seed website. The balance was drawn from various online, reasonably reputable sources (other seed houses, edu sites, etc.)

The first spreadsheet is sorted alphabetically:

Continue reading “Seed Germination Temperatures and Times. Days to Maturity. And Plant Minimum Temperatures. NW Edition.” →