Spring Garden Planning
It is that time again. Time to start our seedlings for this year’s vegetable garden. We are going to change some of the items that we grew last year. Some things didn’t work well.
We are going to try to grow more determinate tomatoes. The favor is not as good but we have been having problems getting our tomatoes to ripen. Determinate tomatoes are earlier so we hope to have better luck.
Here’s what is on tap:
- Carrots – These did great. We even had a few that we left and overwintered. They were still sweet and crisp
- Radishes – These are so easy. We’re also going to do some Cherry Belle this year in addition to French Breakfast.
- Lettuce – We didn’t like Mascara oak leaf. It just didn’t do well. So we are switching to another leaf – dark ruby red Merlot. We’ll grow Nevada (green) and Red Sunset again. We’re also go to try a tangy mesculin mix. Hopefully we’ll stagger the plantings so we don’t have 18 heads ripen at once.
- Pea – We’re growing the Sugar snap peas again – both pole and bush since they ripen at different times. We’re also going to try some bush sugar peas.
- Green Beans – I love these. Maxibel was a great haricot vert producer. We’re growing more. We’re not going to do the shelling beans – just takes up too much space and probably not any of the yellow. We’ll do the same two pole green beans – Blue Lake and a Romano. And experiment with a yellow leaf scarlet runner bean. If it does well, I can use it as a shelling bean.
- Zucchini – we’re trying two different ones. One that is self pollinating and another yellow one.
- Cucumber – same one last year since we had good luck – Orient Express.
- Pepper – It was a disaster last year. Not a single blossom. We might try Gypsy which is an earlier pepper but haven’t been able to find the seed.
- Tomatoes – Looks like we are going to have a lot. We’ll have some in the greenhouse but we are also planning to put a few in the front on the hot driveway. Yes, we are determined to get some ripening before the end of September. Momotaro, Siletz, Oregon Star, Sun Gold Cherry, Stupice, Fraziers Gem, Taxi yellow.
I thought we were a little behind sowing our seeds. That is one of the great things about having a blog – you can look back and see when you started your seeds. We started them almost exactly the same time in 2007. We started them the first week in March in 2008. We started the first set of peas about a week ago. By July – we will have this.
I’ve still never been able to get my cucumbers to do more than look cranky and produce a few lousy cukes. And we also love those sungold tomatoes. Have you grown potatoes? We get a great crop of sweet early potatoes, both at home and at school.
Marta’s Reply – Orient Express did well for us. It didn’t produce a whole lot but we were pretty happy with it. We grew it in a pot and staked it up because it was pretty viney. What we liked about this hybrid were the cukes were long and kinda like an English cucumber.
We haven’t tried potatoes yet. I’m going to do a blog post about a great article I read on doing potatoes.
I’m starting to plan too. It’s exciting, isn’t it? I usually just do summer crops (tomatoes etc) but this year, I plan to put some lettuce and arugula out.
It’s interesting how different your growing season is than ours. Peas would be long gone from the heat by July here! And we sometimes start getting some tomatoes in late June. Our tomato season is long, and that’s mainly what I plant.
Marta’s Reply – It is tough as far north as we live. It is mild because of being near the sound (ocean) and we’ve noticed that the sun isn’t as intense so we think it affect how robustly plants grow especially if you location isn’t hot. There are a lot of microclimates here in the PNW. But it is funny trying every year.
Oh wow – I can’t wait to get out in the garden again!