Seven weeks old (seeded on January 25), and growing. Transplanted once already and soon again!
Those are my super early batch (The main batch was started on Feb22). They are a reliable tasty and prolific cherry tomato for me (Wetsel Red Cherry) and – cross our collective fingers – harvest should start in June. That’s the only reason really to start things so early: to really extend the harvest season.
It does roll good off the tongue, doesn’t it? or is it just me?… “a gross of tomatoes”…
Except of course, they are not yet tomato plants, just 144 seeded cells with the promise of 144 seedlings. Seeded on Februray 22 (although the labels read 2/21 because I meant to do it on the 21st but did not get to them until the 22nd, and then was too lazy to change the labels). Hard to look at that one flat and think that’s a potential of 144 tomato plants. Hard not to go and seed an other gross… it seems such a long time away until we can pick tomatoes. Especially when the wind is howling outside.
Seasonal madness has started. Seed starting madness that is. There is still snow on the ground – although slowly melting, but this is the time of the year to start seeds for earlier crops.
In late January (1/25), I started a few Red Cherry tomatoes, as well as 2 flats of peppers. Four weeks later, Wetsel Red Cherry (2009) has had excellent germination. With true leaves showing, most of the seedlings have been transplanted and moved to the greenhouse 10 days ago. I purposefully did not transplant a few seedlings because I need them to demonstrate transplanting techniques in my upcoming Seed Starting Workshop on Saturday Feb 27. Cherry tomatoes are the easiest thing to eat, freeze and dry. They are simply wonderful in winter green salads. Can’t have too many of them. Every year I start a few plants extra early so we can start eating garden-grown tomatoes in June.
Not surprisingly, the fresher pepper seeds are doing a lot better than the old ones:
Pepper Seedlings Under Light
The spicy hot peppers have had good germination. They are about to be moved to the greenhouse for transplanting in individual cells: Read more
We may have two feet of snow on the ground, but the early tomato seedlings have germinated.
I do like to pick my first tomatoes in June, so I plant a few seedling in late January. They germinate in early February, and I keep up-potting them into bigger pots until it is time to plant them out. I will put a couple in a cold frame come April, and I may this year – space allowing – plant some in the hoophouse.
What are those super early babies? Wetsel Red Cherry. I love cherry tomatoes for salad, fresh salsa (especially mixed with other veggies or fruit like this Grilled Peach Salsa) and for drying. Dry cherry tomatoes are simply wonderful tossed in a green winter salad – a burst of sweet-acid tomato taste. Of course, it’s also easy to freeze bagfuls of fresh cherry tomatoes.
Cherry tomato start to produce earlier than the big ones, and by starting them in January, and keeping them happy (that’s the key), I will have tomato in June. My earliest is June 14, and that was prior to the hoophouse. Can I beat that?
So can’t say I am “dreaming” of tomatoes – after all I am consuming plenty in the form of soup, sauce, paste, confit etc from last summer canning. But I am certainly planning my tomato crop. This year I am getting more of the non-red tomatoes, and I am planting more of the canning tomatoes too. That is, those tomatoes that were bred for little pulp so that they would not give off too much liquid. They are also called paste tomatoes, processing tomatoes or sometime Italian tomatoes.
Last year I had three different paste cultivars: Amish Paste (at noon in the picture – new to me then), Roma (at 4:00) & San Marzano Sel el Redorte (at 8:00). Amish Paste is very meaty and some were longer than my hand (it was a dry summer and I don’t water that much so the specimens below were not that large). Great for sauce and paste. Roma, which I decided to try again – was fine for crushed tomatoes. San Marzano was good also for sauce and paste, to can whole and to make tomato confit - and Tomato Tatin.
Those, as well as the slicing tomatoes and more cherry, I will be starting from late February through mid-March. Trying to time the determinate paste tomato harvest for September, you know… so the ambient temperature is a little more conducive to canning.
What are your tomato plans this year? Any you can’t do without? and why?
PS: the first pepper seedlings have been emerging over the last few days. Hot pepperts up first, followed by Round of Hungary. Still waiting for the bell and Italian…
Among the pleasure of the early spring garden is the hunt for the wanted volunteers: dill pokes its elongated slim first leaves among the sowed arugula while cilantro is coming up now in the pea bed – both bright green, brightly flavored, their unmistakable pungency released when you crush or brush them. Both are volunteers that I strongly encourage by scattering the ripe seeds in the fall: I find the plants are much stronger when they come up when they want and not when I want.
And if you think dill and cilantro look similar now, you are right, and they should: they both belong to the carrot (Umbelliferae) family. And if there is a question of what they are, touching them and then smelling my fingers would, without a doubt, tell me. Or I can wait and, then, the true leaves would announce their name as true dill leaves and cilantro leaves look not at all the same… except for dill-leafed cilantro that looks like dill and tastes like cilantro (yep there is such a beast ! – you know there must be an exception that confirms the rule…)
Do you encourage volunteers in your kitchen garden?
Note: the photos were taken mid-march, 10 days ago. True leaves are now showing.
It’s time to start hardening off the babies. At least, for those of us in the Northern Piedmont (and in the mid-Atlantic area). Yep, time to start hardening off the hardy annual vegetables that were lovingly started indoors. That include you people who took one of my “Starting The Veggy Garden from Seeds” workshops a few weeks ago.
Everything but parsley – maybe lavender and pepper (they all can take several looong weeks to germinate) – should be up now.
Continue to give basil, tomatoes, pepper, marigolds and any other warm lovers like eggplants plenty of light and warmth. Take them outside on sunny days only when the temperature is above 50F/10C (mmm… maybe even 60F/16C for eggplants). Place them in a sheltered spot, just an hour or two the first time, then more and more progressively over the course of a few days until they can be left out the entire day when it’s mild. It’s not time to plant them out yet – by a long shot – but fresh air and sunshine will do them good. Read more
Something softly went through the hollow last night, dropping huge handfuls of wet snow all over. The snow on the ground was gone by mid-morning, but wads of sticky whiteness remained in shrubs and dry grasses – looking like cotton candy.
Meanwhile, inside under the shop lights, seeds planted earlier this month have germinated, true leaves starting to show.Soon to be moved to the greenhouse, thinned and even up-potted.
and then… peep peep… arrived today, brought by a big stork…peep peep
ARGGGH!!!
Swiss Chard. Round 1: Mice.
AARRGGH!!!!
E-VE-RY-SIN-GLE-ONES!!!!
Lucullus, Perpetual, Poiree a Carde Blanche de Lyon, Fordhook, Carde Blanche! AARRRRGGH!!!
Yes? Yes! YES! It’s that time of the year. Nooo… not the time of cherries (although that will come too), but even better: the time to start seeds for the spring & summer kitchen garden.
I am giddy, giddy, giddy. First of all, the days are visibly getting longer. Finally! almost 8 hours of direct sun at Laughing Duck Gardens. For other gardeners in the area – the ones that live on flatland – the days are longer with 10 ½ hours between sunrise and sunset, but the mountains surrounding us don’t let us see the sun until later in the morning and we loose it earlier in evening. And, when it sinks down behind Jenkins Mountain around 5:00 in the afternoon, the air chills and the hollow immediately feels somber. So any additional minute is a blessing, and since we bask in almost 40 minutes more of sunlight than a month ago, we have 40 blessings. Secondly, by the end of the month, we will have picked another 1 hour of daylight (60 blessings). Yeah! And then! then, yesterday I started my seeds.
Growing what?
You know… “chayote” (sometimes spelled “chayotte”), also known as chouchou, chocko, christophine, mirliton, vegetable pear. You don’t know? Time for today’s lesson, then: Sechium edule, a member of the cucurbitacea family (or if you prefer a cousin of squashes and cucumber), originates from Mexico and Central America and was already cultivated there when the Spaniards arrived. The word chayote comes to us from a Spanish word derived from the word “hitzayotli” in the Nahuatl language where it designates both the plant and the fruit.
The plant is viviparous, as was discussed in the post on starting chayote, meaning you need a fruit to start the plant: the smooth large whitish seed (perfectly edible and considered a delicacy by the chayote connoisseur) must germinate inside the fruit.
Chayote is perennial in its native climate and in the tropical and subtropical areas of the world where it was exported and made itself at home (like here)- which is why you find it on the menus of cuisines as diverse as Vietnamese, Australian, Reunionese, Louisianan, Nigerian etc. In the mid-Atlantic area, it will be killed by a hard frost, although it will stand to a light one: in my garden it is killed by the same type of frost that kills my dahlia tops (another garden denizen that hails from Central America). If a plant were several years old it would have had a chance to form tuber-like roots, and like dahlias, would send new shoots up when more clement weather arrives. In the Northern Piedmont, though – as in the entire mid-Atlantic area – the winters are too harsh and the plant must be considered an annual. Read more
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