The winter garden is down to leeks (bolting, drat them) garlic, onions (also putting up scapes, some of them), flowering beets from the fall, and isolation pots of carrots, beets, popbeans, and cilantro. The carrots and beets are sizing up, and so is the garlic, which is starting to turn brown at the tips.
I pulled the dead peas, harvesting a decent amount of seed, and cleared them out along with all the earwig nests. There is now a four- to six-foot dead zone on three sides of the garden, and I need to complete it on the fourth; it's tremendously effective, though, as the nematodes cleared the Horde out of the main part of the garden and now all I'm doing is keeping new invaders out. I run across a couple a night, a huge improvement over the thousands that used to carpet the ground.
Tomatoes are planted in the main block, corn is in, peanuts are planted, and I need to plant sunflowers, hollyhocks and nasturtiums. The potatoes are putting up flower buds and recovering from a dwindling population of slugs and earwigs in the straw mulch. One tomato got eaten and will be replaced with a spare (one of the two Vorlons), three others got munched and look like they might recover. Sungold has put out flowers, and one of the Kellogg's has put out empty buds as its usual warmup.
Plants currently out there are:
In pots: Carrots (Danvers Half Long)
Beets (Early Wonder)
Popbeans (four colors)
Cilantro/coriander
In the ground:
Garlic (nine kinds)
Onions (Walla Walla, Red Burgundy, and small Australian Brown)
Sweet corn (Golden Bantam Improved)
Tomatoes (list below)
Potatoes (Russet Norkotah and Austrian Crescent)
Scarlet Runner Beans
Waiting for planting out: sweet basil, scarlet runners to fill in, replacement tomato plants and extras for the unfinished bed, summer squash, melons, watermelons, okra, sweet potato slips, rhubarb getting ready for 1-gallon pots
Waiting for a sprout: cilantro, peanuts
I'm running late, due to a set of misfortunes that I can all twist to land squarely on my demonic English class (now dropped). I'm also hesitant to plant out because of fear that the Horde will rise up like a tidal wave and munch it all. The more I plant, the easier it gets, but I'm still doing it piecemeal.
Eventually, I should have it all in. The plan so far:
Sunflowers: two ornamental (Red Sun and Ring of Fire) and two edible (Giganteus and Sunseed)
Potatoes, fingerlings (Austrian Crescent now, Rose Finn Apple later), plus Russet Norland as a baker
Peppers: Anaheim, Islander F1 purple bell, Quadratti d'Asti Giallo, Thai Red Bird, and De Arbol dry chile
Beans: yardlong, scarlet runner, and nine dry beans -- Christmas Lima, Cornfield, Cherokee Cornfield, McCaslan, Rattlesnake, Hidatsu Shield Figure, and True Red Cranberry are in Three Sisters to see how they do, while bush Calypso has a separate plot. Popbeans are in an isolation bucket and may get planted at the edge of the Calypsos as well.
Melons: Israeli Ha'Ogen, a Charentais, Boule d'Or, Cherokee Moon and Stars watermelon, and Orangeglo watermelon. Crimson Sweet will have to wait.
Herbs: salad-leaf, Thai, and regular basil, leafy dill, parsley, cilantro if I'm lucky enough.
Cucumbers: Cool Breeze hybrid without a doubt.
Winter squash, grown in a Three Sisters planting: Eight. Buttercup, Carnival Acorn, Jack Be Little, Kabocha, Queensland Blue, Rouge Vif d'Etampes (Cinderella pumpkin), Waltham Butternut, and a gourd from Sand Hill Preservation I couldn't resist.
Summer squash: trying something different. Zucchetta Rampicante (though whether it's Zuchetta or Tromboncino is unclear), Costata, Horn of Plenty, and White Egyptian zucchini. The zucchetta gets a trellis, all others get three-ring cages.
Corn: sweet is Golden Bantam Improved, one of the open-pollinated versions of the corn we loved last season. Three Sisters has two popcorns: Cherokee and Red Strawberry. I have a couple of others for future years.
Okra, for the first time: Clemson Spineless and Burgundy, four plants. Wish me luck and fast reflexes.
Onions, whichever ones decide to bulb instead of bolt. This seems to be a bit far south for long-day onions, so we may have to stick to short-day and potato onions.
Nasturtiums, because we love them.
Hollyhocks (why not): Sand Hill has a mix this year I'm looking forward to seeing.
Sweet potatoes, to climb up the pea trellis now that the peas are gone; they're just the standard dark-fleshed store type, probably Garnet.
Peanuts, as an experiment.
Tomatoes:
I've already started on next year's tomato list, as a true tomatophile has to... *grin* I already have a huge assortment of seed, and it should make for an interesting collection.
============================================================================ 18-feb-2004The winter garden is winding down, all except for the peas and alliums. Slugs were an unexpected threat this year, attacking everything in sight; I got some Sluggo but haven't applied it, and may not bother. One of my fellow Master Gardeners muttered something about a controlled trial they did on Sluggo's effectiveness, and the upshot was that although they'll eat it when there's nothing else available, it's not their preferred food. My enthusiasm for bait has waned as a result.
The peas, on the other hand, are gearing up to full production, and the onions are suddenly putting on growth. Several softneck garlic varieties are already quite large, though the hardnecks are pretty anemic; we'll see whether they catch up before June. The leeks suddenly grew like teenagers, and now I have several that look to be approaching maturity. That was fast.
I have carrots and beets sown in five-gallon buckets, with rings of copper tape and tanglefoot around them. My hope is that the isolation will give them a chance to sprout and grow, and I might actually get some root crops...
Most of the tomato seeds and all my peppers are sown in a 72-cell flat; I saw a head poking up this morning and put them under lights. T-minus five weeks. I've been spending all my time forking amendments into the newly-marked beds in back, loosening them up and pounding fenceposts. A bit more garlic went in, and I'll be tossing late broccoli into the tomato beds this week to grow there until they get shaded out or baked.
At the moment we've had several heavy storms pass through, which is why I'm picking at the drip system and updating my website.
Plants currently out there are:
Sugar Snap peas
Broccoli (Dia Green hybrid)
Kohlrabi (Kolibri and Tiantsin)
Gai Lan, white flowered
Leeks (Burpee's Dawn Giant hybrid)
Carrots (Royal Chantenay and Danvers Half Long)
Beets (mostly Early Wonder, I think)
Garlic (nine kinds)
Onions (Walla Walla and Red Burgundy)
The chard was eaten by earwigs, but I'll be transplanting Bright Lights again.
Ditto the kale: Red Russian.
The parsley is still happily sitting in last summer's plot, as are the leeks from last spring.
Waiting for planting out: beets, chard, kale, broccoli, runner bean tubers, potatoes.
Waiting for a sprout: sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, rhubarb, Australian Brown onion
My first sowing date was Valentine's Day, for a transplant date of April Fool's. Not knowing how cold spring will be, that might be altered come March or so, but I suspect we won't get the really late cold snaps we got last spring. The next main sowing will be at three weeks (March 7).I'll be sowing tomatoes and peppers; no eggplant this year, as I'm tired of the little pest magnets. Twenty-one varieties of tomato with thirty plants to transplant... Plus a seed growout of as many Red Brandywine plants as I can fit in the sidestrip up front. Should be fun.
I've sown rhubarb as well, in the hopes it'll grow here. We have a few nooks it might like, and if we rearrange the scenery I can dig it up readily enough. We just can't get anything but a few rubbery stalks at the store in recent years, and I love strawberry-rhubarb pie.
Varieties are now set, other than the typical last-minute tweaks that always happen.
Tomatoes: I already have all the varieties figured out
Sunflowers: two ornamental (Red Sun and Ring of Fire) and two edible (Giganteus and )
Potatoes, fingerlings that will succession-plant (Rose Finn Apple and Austrian Crescent), plus Russet Norland as a baker
Peppers: Anaheim, Islander F1 purple bell, Quadratti d'Asti Giallo, Thai Red Bird, and De Arbol dry chile
Beans: yardlong, scarlet runner, and nine dry beans -- Christmas Lima, Cornfield, Cherokee Cornfield, McCaslan, Rattlesnake, Hidatsu Shield Figure, and True Red Cranberry are in Three Sisters to see how they do, while bush Calypso and a rare popbean have a separate plot.
Melons: Israeli Ha'Ogen, a Charentais, Boule d'Or, Cherokee Moon and Stars watermelon, and Orangeglo watermelon. Crimson Sweet will have to wait.
Herbs: salad-leaf, Thai, and regular basil, leafy dill, parsley, cilantro if I'm lucky enough.
Cucumbers: Cool Breeze hybrid without a doubt.
Winter squash, grown in a Three Sisters planting: Eight. Buttercup, Carnival Acorn, Jack Be Little, Kabocha, Queensland Blue, Rouge Vif d'Etampes (Cinderella pumpkin), Waltham Butternut, and a seed gourd from Sand Hill Preservation I couldn't resist.
Summer squash: trying something different. Zucchetta Rampicante (though whether it's Zuchetta or Tromboncino is unclear), Costata, Horn of Plenty, and White Egyptian zucchini.
Corn: sweet will be Golden Cross Bantam. Three Sisters has two popcorns: Cherokee and Red Strawberry. I have a couple of others for future years.
Okra, for the first time: Clemson Spineless.
Onions, because I suspect we can do both short- and long-day onions here, so I'll put long-days in to mature in July for winter storage. I have some Walla Walla already in the ground, but Australian Brown is supposedly a great keeper.
Nasturtiums, because we love them.
Hollyhocks (why not): Sand Hill has a mix this year I'm looking forward to seeing.
Sweet potatoes, to climb up the Sugar Snap trellis once the peas pass away; they're just the standard dark-fleshed store type, probably Garnet.
Peanuts, as an experiment.
So far I have nobly resisted creating a list of tomatoes for 2005, at least before this year's are in the ground. It's anyone's guess whether I'll be able to wait that long.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------