6 Months Later...

Lots of Tomato Potential

Thankfully we've been having some warmer weather the past week, which is great because the ground started to dry up (but that was undone in the downpour we had last night/today!) and the grass is coming up.
But when the sun comes out, the greenhouse thermometer shoots up to 90 degrees in just a couple minutes. And if I don't run out there right away, things start to dry out, real fast. Especially if I didn't plan for a sunny day and left the heat mats plugged in. On Vashon you can never predict spring weather - it will be sunny and warm one second and then hailing/raining/windy and miserable the next. With no thermostat or automatic fan/windows, it's up to me to keep the seedlings comfortable. I've had a couple close calls, but luckily only a few celosias and lettuce bit the dust. At 7 am every day, I turn on the grow lights, take off the plastic covers and water if needed, then decide while I'm milking if I should prepare for a cloudy or sunny day (by watering more heavily and turning off the heat). I'm usually out there by noon to water, then again at 4 pm if it was a sunny day. At 7 pm I replace the plastic covers on the little seedlings and turn on the heat mats, and then my dad turns out the grow lights at 10 pm when he feeds the animals. It seems like a lot of work, but I really enjoy checking on the little green things!
The tomato plants are growing very fast in the warmth, so I transplanted the first flat on Saturday. These first ones were from the Baker Creek seeds; the Pinetree order came a couple weeks later so those plants are a bit smaller.
Here's a list of my Baker Creek tomatoes:

Cherokee Purple
Japanese Black Trifele
Woodle Orange
Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge
Rose
Gajo de Melon
Amish Paste
Costoluto Genovese
Cour di Bue
German Red Strawberry
Ananas Noir
Pink Grapefruit

I was a bit shocked to count all the transplanted tomatoes, because I have 93 of them! And that's not counting the other 45 from the Pinetree seeds! Between the neighbors' garden and mine, we should be able to plant about 70. So the other half will be sold in May. ($4 each, reserve them now!)

Elsewhere in the greenhouse:

Dill The younger tomatoes, along with anise hyssop (lower right), statice (lower middle), and four o'clocks (the big leaves), along with Swiss chard and onions on the right. Padron Peppers Baker Creek tomatoes, pre-transplant Peas Lots of peas! Salad Burnet Cosmos Broccoli Rabe Lacinato Kale Zinnias Chervil

In the Greenhouse

Here it is. Eight by twelve feet of seedling heaven. Outside it's been cold and windy and rainy, yet the greenhouse stays a toasty 65 - 80 degrees (and dips into the 40's at night). You can see why I would spend a lot of time in here - and I do! Even if it's just to read, a little greenhouse therapy makes any day brighter and warmer.



You can see my Sponge Bob watering can - normal watering cans have too big of holes for delicate seeds and sprouts, so I bought a child's version. It's perfect.
I have a grow light above the bottom shelf - tomato seedlings need a lot of light - and two heat mats, fitting a total of six trays. I keep all newly planted flats on the heat with a plastic cover until everything has sprouted. Then the plastic comes off for a few days, and then I move the tray off the heat to gradually "toughen" the plants.



I was very happy when we had a new door put on the other day. The old one was broken and disintegrating, from the big wind storm of 2007. Fortunately it held up just fine in yesterday's wind storm!



I was surprised to see radishes coming up outside. I planted them two weeks ago, and figured they had drowned a while ago. Yet today there is a whole row of them!



Inside, I have onions...


lots of brassicas (broccoli, broccoli rabe, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, cabbage, and kale)...




almost one hundred tomato starts (of 18 varieties)...


and the first okra popped up today...


Also sprouted are almost all the flowers (cosmos, zinnias, statice, petunias, impatiens, four o'clocks, nicotiana, rudbekia, snapdragons, love in a mist, and more I can't think of now), radicchio, greens, and the first peppers and eggplants.



It's going to be a looong wait before the first tomato ripens, but at least I can enjoy the presence of green growing things while the rest of our property gives way to rain water and hordes of ducks.

Tomatoes are up!

When I actually have tomato tomatoes, I'll have a lot more exclamation points...

The first tomato seeds sprouted a couple days ago, just 4 days after I planted them. I planted 8 seeds of each variety (of the seeds I had already; my Pinetree order just came yesterday(!)). The seeds are nice and cozy in the greenhouse with a heat mat and a cover, and a space heater for tonight since it is dipping into the 20's.


The greenhouse, pre-tomato seeds.

Garden in Progress

Here is the main garden on our property. It lies on the south side of the barn, next to the greenhouse. It's the perfect spot for warm-weather crops such as tomatoes and peppers, because the wall reflects a lot of heat back into the soil, and the structures help to lessen the wind. Most days this spot is at least 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the property - maybe even 20 on a really hot day. It's not huge, but I can cram a lot in here!

I spent at least 12 hours forking up the sod (this garden just sat for the past two years, growing grass and weeds), and picked out all the horsetail roots and quackgrass runners by hand. Hopefully that will make weeding easier in the long run. The quackgrass is relentless - it can send runners 4 feet through the soil and pop up a new grass plant every couple inches. Even a tiny piece of root becomes a new plant.

Then, to be absolutely certain no weed will thrive, I covered the whole area in wet newspaper. This is the foundation of a 'lasagna' garden. The theory of this gardening method is that by laying down newspaper or cardboard, then alternating layers of compost, leaves, straw, grass clippings, etc, the weeds underneath will be smothered and the worms will start to work through all the sod. After a season, everything will have broken down into really rich soil, and both the newspaper and sod will be gone. But I wanted to be on the safe side with that quackgrass and pulled it all out. And I smothered everything, just to be sure!


Here is the garden, covered in newspaper, with a little compost just to hold the paper down overnight. I'm using partially composted horse manure.


And then a layer of rotting straw. Yum!


Then a good thick layer of the compost. The area where the manure pile was needs to be finished.

Next I'll cover it up with black plastic until it's time to plant (March/April for broccoli, lettuce, beets, etc, and May/June for tomatoes, peppers, squash and cukes).

I let the cows do all the work in the other area (you can almost see it behind and to the right of the barn). We fed their hay in one spot all winter, so they've tilled it, pooped in it and churned it up with a bit of old hay for good measure. Come May I'll rope it off and plant squash, pumpkins, and melons there. And maybe some potatoes.

Longwood Gardens

It's time for some flower photos.

These were taken last year in early May at one of my favorite places in the world - Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. Lucky for me, our family used to live just a couple miles away.

And I get to go visit in April!



It's painful how beautiful Longwood Gardens is. And the scent of the thousands of flowers when you step into The Conservatory, the perfection of the lawn, everything. My lifelong wish is to sleep on that lawn. Speaking of dreams, the previous #1 on my to-do list at Longwood was to eat a kumquat. Don't tell anyone... but I have succeeded.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of coming to Longwood and entering The Conservatory. My sister, Kristen, and I would inevitably make our way to the kumquat trees in the big terra cotta pots, and gaze up in awe at the little tiny oranges that weren't. We wondered what they tasted like, if they could possibly be edible.



Little did I know I would come back 15 years later and slurp one of those elusive miniature oranges - without being caught!! Delicious, though a bit too sour. (By the way, I picked it up off the ground.)

The flowers and plants here are just gorgeous.













I'll let you know if I ever manage to touch that lawn...