23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Okay - The dye is cast; I am officially suffering from spring fever. I ordered artichoke and leeks seeds from Johnny's seeds. I will get 25 artichoke seeds, but expect I will plant only 10 plants. If I plant 20 seeds and get a 50% germination rate I will be satisfied. I am going start them under lights in my basement around January 10, 2015. I will start hardening them off around April 1 and transplant them to my raised bed in mid-April and cover as needed at night or during an unexpected cold snap. I realized that last year I did not get blooms because I transplanted them around May 3 and they did not get enough chill hours below 50 degrees. In any case Thomas Jefferson made it work at Monticello, so I should be able to make it work also.
Hey Charlie, I can't shed too much light on overwintering them, but I did get a nice harvest of several medium and small chokes this summer. And that was from only two plants. I had had so many disappointments in previous years and only one successful harvest before this summer that I only planted the last of my seeds to empty the packet. Of course that means I'll be ordering more this year, now. Anyway, you propose basically the protocol I used.
I'm going to try keeping this years plants over the winter, but beyond the freezing I tend to get voles in my garden each winter and they love the artichoke roots. So we'll see who wins the battle this year, them or me. So good luck! I have pretty much the same weather you do, it bodes well!
Agree with everyone above -- keep it!
And in the spring, if it tries to go to seed, just clip and eat the flowers and seed pods (they're delicious) and it will eventually get the idea and just make leaves instead of seeds (in my experience, anyway)
I've had kale plants produce for several years.
my kale last year stood minus 31 F under cover.
Unless it's Red Russian, in which case it might not last as long into the winter.
I just made Kale chips in the dehydrator. You can also put it in the oven, but you would need to look up the temperature. I sprayed olive oil over all the leaves - not over doing it. Then covered one batch with powdered tomato and garlic pepper the other with powdered ranch dressing. Best to go heavy on the toppings.
Very good.
I learned this from a cook at a local Mexican restaurant.......and it really works.
Remove a hair from your head and place it in your eye near the lower lid.
I have short hair but it took away the pain immediately.
You probably should wear rubber gloves unless you have gotten the hot stuff off your hands first.
Yeah it's his personal thing. Not all wood rots when it gets wet. Redwood, cedar, cypress to name just a few come to mind.
Personally I would much rather have wood in contact with my food crops than many of the composite materials with their additives leaching into the soil.
But many have posted pics here of very attractive raised beds made from cement blocks. I'd consider those before going with any of the other composites.
If all else fails, nothing says raised beds have to be framed in with anything. Very attractive and neat raised beds can be built just by creating slightly elevated soil mounds with a slightly trenched edge or using landscaping edging..
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Raised beds pics
Since you don't want the beds very high, I'd look at some of the kits that use hollow plastic boards. They are lightweight and affordable, and people love them.
Twenty years ago I made some beds with decking planks, and one of them is still with me (others left behind in a move). The planks weather a bit, but they do not rot. You can get corner connectors at Home Depot, etc.
Elisa, I found the big pumpkins overwhelming so this year I went little, with pie pumpkins, and I miss the big ones. There is a "neck pumpkin" version of Dickinson Field that is on my gotta-grow list (Sandhill Preservation Center has seeds). It goes to 40 pounds.
The vines of these big moschatas do run! One ran 15 feet to a storage shed, went up the side and crossed the roof and came down the other side. I've had crop failures when some OP moschatas bloomed alone, so I always plant a few butternuts that bloom at the same time, which prevents pollination problems.
One of those facts I always find fascinating on archaelogical digs when they find sees that are thousands of years old that still germinate. Seems like there was a particular bean found here in the southwest that way. I find it somewhat less fascinating when I am dealing with puncture vine seeds though.
It is a piece of information that I keep in mind when evaluating the age of seeds. I have tomato seeds from 10 years ago that have done just fine. If I am being honest, most of the problems with germination and vigor of my seedlings are traceable to the gardener. :(
most of the problems with germination and vigor of my seedlings are traceable to the gardener.
Excellent point! We'd all like to be able to blame failures on the seeds or the variety or the seed vendor or the soil or the weather or ...etc when in fact 90% of the time the blame for failure lies on us, the gardeners.
Farmers and gardeners have been successfully growing crops from saved seed multiple-seasons old for centuries. And if the crop quality wasn't high then all the effort and $$ that goes into all the international seed banks, seed harvesting, and seed storage is wasted effort and we are all in trouble.
Once a seed germinates its subsequent "vigor" as a seedling and then a plant is the responsibility of the gardener and the growing conditions we provide, not the age of the seed. Any and all nutrients contained in even the perfect seed coating are quickly used up by the cotyledon stage.
As I said, it is your choice and I'm sure the seed companies would like all of us to share your belief. But the truth is that the primary reason most experienced gardeners spend any money on buying new seeds each year is just to try a few new varieties or to replace hybrid seeds that we have used up over the years.
Personally, like others who have posted, over the past 50 years of gardening I have used 5-10 year old seeds for many crops including tomatoes, melons, cole crops, peppers, corn, and leafy greens with no issues with crop vigor. Some are stored in the freezer but most are just stored in an old fridge in the basement.
Dave
I haven't had very good luck with overwintering peas personally Chaman.
I can plant pre-sprouted seeds in the spring and they outgrow the over wintered.
But peas are hard to grow here anyway. When it gets warm enough for them to grow it gets too hot, too quick.
I threaten to give up every year, but then I try again. If the weather cooperates so that I get plenty I'm so happy!
But that only happens about every 4 or 5 years!
gunny sack bean threshing -- I've used the "find a small child to jump on the sack" method, which is really fun and has the same result as wacking it with a stick.
Of course, when the kids grow up you have to wait for the next generation to become of jumping age.
wintergaarden- Could you explain your carrot method a little more as I'm a bit confused. Did you start them inside then transplant outside into the bag or did you start them in the bag and transplant them into the ground? If it was the former, what did you initially start them in and how tall were they when you transplanted them?
Rodney
Hi Rodney, I started the carrots indoors in a long skinny plastic tray leftover from my fig newtons. I only have 2 in my family so if you need more carrots you might use 2-4 fig newton trays or a larger take out tray. I just wet the soil, sprinkled seeds all over the top about 1/4 inch apart, put a tiny dusting of sifted soil on top of those and kept them moist w a spray bottle til they came up. I put them about 1/2 to 1 inch (CLOSE!) under my home depot plain ol flourescent shoplight til they grew 1 tiny true leaf.
At that point I transplanted the young seedlings out into an ikea bag filled with very loose a little sandy soil with a few knife holes poked into the bottom. (i recommend loose bagged potting soil w a little sand mixed in, not heavy clay soil from outside) It's better NOT to fertilize carrots, it just makes them grow more leaves and not get sweet.
I followed Jon Hughes' instructions on his youtube video: Transplanting Carrots 3-3-2010 except mine plantings weren't nearly as neat as his. My carrots came out perfecto! straight as an arrow and sooo yummy. Mine were the skinny long carrots (finished size about 1/2 inch thick by 8 inches long.) I didn't do any thinning at all.
john hughes' youtube tranplanting carrots method here good luck, lemme know if you have any more questions.
p.s. i plan on starting my parsnips indoors on a paper towel inside a zip bag that's wrung-out-damp. Then once the first root comes out, sprinkling them outside in my 18" x 1 x 6ft open bottom trough filled with loose friable potting soil (i use cedar grove veggie mix it's half topsoil half compost.)
Last year I started parsnip outdoors and got NOTHING, zip, zero, ziltch, so I started starting seeds indoors so as to not waste my life lol
This post was edited by wintergaarden on Sun, Nov 9, 14 at 21:41
Very young winter squash (still light green) can be peeled & eaten much like summer squash, with varying degrees of acceptability... some good, some not so much. Those that have begun to change color can be ripened indoors, but may be more watery & less flavorful that those ripened on the vine.
Squashes which are near full size but not yet changing color are a crap shoot... in my experience, they will generally be inferior quality no matter how they are handled. I would still eat them for sustenance - and eat them first - but not if squashes of better quality were available.
I agree with Digdirt, leave the squashes on the vine as long as possible, even after the first light frost. Most of the leaves may be singed, but ripening will continue as long as the vine itself is still alive. I have observed that the vine may pull nutrients from some of the less mature squashes at this time. If further frosts are expected (low 30's) after the foliage has been nipped, the now unprotected squashes might sustain cold injury, so use best judgement, and cover or harvest if necessary. The squashes should always be harvested when a hard freeze (below freezing) is forecast.
Most winter squashes will begin to sweeten in storage, as starches are converted to sugars. This process starts as soon as the squashes are cut from the vine. Along with the sweetening, the squash may become more watery over time, and fibers in the flesh may become more pronounced. Seeds within the squash also continue to fatten up in storage, so if you are saving seeds, or intend to eat them, then do so 3-4 weeks after harvest.
Personally, I like winter squashes best in the first week or two after harvest, when they are firmer & their starch content is higher. Toward the end of winter, the squash may still technically be "edible", but I often find them to be unpalatable to my taste.
bdot I'm in Sonoma Co, about 2 hrs west of you.
I planted on April 15th as I always do and had fine weather for growing after that.
The only thing that was not optimal was that I was in Hawaii the last week of May and the first week of June (well it was optimal for ME!) and my non-gardener daughter might have been impatient with the watering, but everything looked healthy when I got home.
Who knows???? Nancy
My cherry tomatoes grew wild this year and put on a lot of berries. But all the large ones are disappointing. Not sure why, but I did not fertilize them, and they are in the same bed the 3rd year.
Next year, I'm going to move them to a different bed. And to fertilize them more. I'll also try different varieties. I want more meaty, not watery.