The Great Winter Sowing Project, 2010 edition

Last year for the first time, I tried winter sowing. It was a huge success, so this year, I'm expanding my efforts to include herbs and veggies. Today, I planted tomatoes, 20-something varieties of heirlooms!

One group almost ready to go to the garden cart. They've been planted, but not taped up.

The garden cart loaded with tomato jugs.

The winter sowing area of the yard. There are some annuals, perennials, and herbs in addition to the maters in those jugs.

I would've planted more, but I ran out of prepared jugs. I have 2 more 33 gal. bags full of milk, vinegar, and distilled water jugs, just have to get the DH to cut the drain holes, vent/water holes and then cut them for planting. I still have bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, and lots of perennials to plant!

Potato Update

We have survived more freezing temps and SNOW, a foot of the white stuff, and it's time to get busy planting the taters. However, the Handy Husband promised to make me a couple more potato planters. It's only happening in my imagination..... Soooooo, the taters are hanging out on top of my hutch in the kitchen. I moved them to cardboard egg cartons so they could get more air circulation. I took them down today to check on them and this is what they looked like.

The Purple Vikings (right) and Red Norlands (on the left)

The Banana Fingerlings (in the background) and the Kennebecs (foreground)

Green growth is good!

Twins on the Purple Vikings

I hope to get them cut in the next day or so and in their containers by the weekend. I must motivate the husband first, though.

Potato Update and Onions

The potatoes are flourishing in their new settings. I check them occasionally to make sure they're not getting soggy or rotting. So far, so good!

Red Norland

Kennebecs and Purple Vikings

Banana Fingerlings

My "walrus" banana fingerling

But, apparently, the best place for potatoes to start budding out is in the basket where I keep the potatoes from the grocery store!



Another new veggie in the garden this year is onions. We tried, very unsuccessfully last year to grow them. We planted them wayyyyyyyy too late and they gave up the ghost before we really even got started. Here are the onions waiting to go out. I have 2 bunches of red burgundy and 3 bunches of 1015Ys, "the" sweet Texas onion. Their packed in some dirt and I water them about every other day. Didn't want to leave them without water as they'd die. Still a few weeks away from planting time, so I gotta keep them babies alive!



In other news, the seeds are sorted and my catalog of what we're growing is made. I'm still looking for a few things, like a different okra variety and possibly another variety of pole beans. Other than that, I think we're set! To see my spreadsheet, you can visit it on Google docs. Stephanie's Spring 2010 Plant List Once you get there, just click on the blue links at the bottom to go to either herbs, flowers, or veggies.

Potatoes

Gardening season is getting ready to fire up around here. I'm so excited! One of the first things we'll plant are potatoes. This will be my first year growing potatoes, so I didn't order too many (1/2 lb. of 4 varieties). I'm also fairly clueless about potatoes, other than how to eat them, so this will definitely be a learning experience for me.

Around New Year's I ordered my potatoes from Ronniger Potato Farm. My planting date is Valentine's Day, so I requested my taters to be shipped the week of January 17th (this week). My potatoes arrived the first week of January during the Deep Freeze! They came wrapped in mesh bags clearly labeled with the variety. I ordered Red Norland, Kennebec, Purple Viking, and Banana fingerlings.


According to the Gardening Gurus over at Dave's Garden, you're supposed to take the seed potatoes out of the bags and let them start growing. (I grow my store-bought potatoes VERY well, so I'm an expert at this part! LOL) I put them in some kind of container and labeled each container with the variety so when I go to plant them, I'll know what I'm putting where.

Initially, I put them in the enclosed sun room where they'd get lots of warm air and sunshine. I have since found out that I should put them in a place that gets indirect light and not too warm temps as the warmer temps will cause them to rot faster. I don't think you can plant rotten potatoes. You can however, put them in the compost pile. Been there, done that!

Here was my setup yesterday out in the sunroom:



And today, on the kitchen counters. Please excuse the mess.




As you can see from the pics, some are already starting to sprout. That's great news!

When I plant them in a few weeks, I'll be planting some of them in this container. DH originally designed and built it to be a compost bin, but that's never happened, so I'm going to put it to good use. It's made from some kind palettes that they used to get where he worked. It has plenty of drain holes and ventilation. I think it's going to be perfect!


He just told me today that he's got more of these blue things in his old van, so he's going to build more containers for me! I didn't know he'd been holding out on me. :)

The Lettuce Bed, Cole Crop, & Garlic

Sometime in the fall, I planted several different types of lettuce seeds, a couple of cabbage seeds, and some spinach seeds. I had gotten 2 varieties of lettuce at a plant swap and the rest I ordered from either Cherry Gal or Victory Seed Company . They survived being transplanted and they've survived freezing temps and snow. It's done very well for us and now we're thinking of letting one plant of each variety go to seed. It's wonderful to have fresh lettuce during the winter months. As a matter of fact, I need to harvest some for tonight's dinner.

Endive (foreground) & Parris Island Cos

Buttercrunch

Red Rapids

Grandpa Admire's

Bronze Lettuce

Black Seeded Simpson

Craquerelle DuMidi

Kentucky Limestone

Lollo Rosso

Tango

January King Cabbage

Monnopa Spinach

Garlic

The Final Haul

We woke to SNOW this morning in my little part of North Texas. What a huge surprise!! It didn't stay for long, thank goodness. The snow was pretty much melted by noon and the streets and rooftops dried up by nightfall.




It didn't get down to freezing so all the veggies still out on the plants were okay, but when we watched the late news this evening, the forecast was "at or below freezing temps" for tonight, so DH and I donned our winter coats, picking baskets, hand held pruners, flashlights, and headed out the door. In the dark. To harvest the rest of the maters and peppers. This is what we came back with.



Most of the maters we picked aren't ripe. There's a couple of yellow tomatoes in the pile, some Green Zebras, and some regular red tomatoes, either Ponderosa or something else. We'll have maters on every windowsill in our house!

So long, garden of 2009! Hello garden of 2010 starting January 1st!

Liftoff in the Garlic Bed!

At the beginning of October, I went to the North Central Texas Fall Round-Up of folks from the Dave's Garden community. It was a cool, rainy day and not nearly the turnout as we've had at previous getogethers. One of the sweet ladies, who's a Master Gardener and extremely knowledgeable in Texas Native plants gave everyone a snack size bag of garlic pods to plant. I was so excited because I wanted to grow garlic this year, but our financial situation has kept us from being able to purchase any garlic to plant. The bag contained 2 large bulbs that will be ready to harvest next year and tons of little "bulblets" that will not be ready for 2 years.

A couple of weeks ago, I planted the garlic. We (DH did most of the hard labor) dug up the small bed in the backyard that had previously grown green beans, watermelon, pumpkins, and a rogue tomato plant. We added some compost from our compost pile, some llama manure (also secured at the round-up), and some mushroom compost to the soil that was already in the bed. Then we planted!



You can see the size difference between the 2 pod sizes in the pic above. The ones at the top of the two rows are the ones that will be ready to harvest next June or July. The smaller ones, with a tougher covering, will take longer to pop out and longer to reach maturity.

So I planted these on a Sunday. The next week, we had cooler temps and 8" of rain! Then the following week, we got more rain. I was beginning to panic, thinking the little bulbs had either rotted or were planted too deeply. Then, during my walk about the gardens this morning, I discovered LIFE in the garlic beds!!



There are 2 little bulbs poking their heads off. These are the ones that were bigger and will be ready next year. Yesterday, I planted the remaining 12 small bulblets in a different bed just in case these didn't make it. Now, I just have to find a spot for the 4 o'clocks I got!