Garden 2022

[Mr. Mike]

I just finished up my seeds order. I buy some seedlings local, but a lot of what I plant is from seeds.

I ordered a couple of types of tomatoes I can't find locally, squash, potatoes, beans, sweet potatoes, carrots, chard, okra, cucumbers, lettuce and cauliflower. I'll buy seedlings of tomatoes and sweet and hot peppers.

Anyone else ordered yet?

[Norseman]

Been putting the list together. Soon time.

[climberevan]

The Gurney catalog is open on the table in front of me right now. They have a few proprietary hybrids that are interesting, but the prices are nuts. $20 for a packet for some if them! Even with the half off coupon, is still at least 3X what I'd pay locally. Is it worth the difference?

Funny, tomatoes and peppers are the main things I plant from seed, and have had good luck with both. Also eggplants. Last season we started a bunch more seeds directly in the ground, and they caught up with the seedlings and passed some of them anyway, so we'll prob buy even fewer $6 plants this year.

[abraham]

Nope, good reminder though since this year I actually can plant stuff. My fava beans seem to have survived the recent cold we had here

[Terrapin Ben]

Any tips for starting from seed? We tried last year with minimal success. I have two grow lamps, heating pads for the seed trays, and an adjustable aluminum wire shelving that I used to try to get the starts going. We started everything in our garage in Western MT. Some trays got too dry, some were too wet. Some starts would sprout but then die. Any tips or advice would be very appreciated!

[climberevan]

Any tips for starting from seed? We tried last year with minimal success. I have two grow lamps, heating pads for the seed trays, and an adjustable aluminum wire shelving that I used to try to get the starts going. We started everything in our garage in Western MT. Some trays got too dry, some were too wet. Some starts would sprout but then die. Any tips or advice would be very appreciated!

It's all about absolutely nailing the temp, light, and water. There is pretty much no room for error.

My setup: wire shelves with trays of 4" pots and 2x 4' led/florescent lights for each shelf. The lights get adjusted as the plants grow so that they are absolutely bathed in it but not so close as to overheat the babies. The lights are on for 12h/day.

The whole arrangement is inside of a plastic tent, which helps maintain humidity. Instead of heat pads, I heat the entire tent with a space heater controlled by a PID and relay. This keeps the temp within 2 degrees of 80F. (Some trial & error required initially.) Watering must also be on point. (I may automate it this year.)

Last year was the first time I really threw enough resources at it to have success. Prior years' half assed efforts resulted in failures like yours. It's def not for the faint of heart.

[Terrapin Ben]

^^^ that is pretty next level! Is that reflectix attached the r-tech panels? really appreciate the photos and detailed response.

[climberevan]

^^^ that is pretty next level! Is that reflectix attached the r-tech panels? really appreciate the photos and detailed response.

It's just 1/2" foam panels taped together into a box with a plastic front panel/door.

I'm going to use the same system this year but will prob increase the size by 50% and may automate the watering so we can go away for more than 4 days.

[Mr. Mike]

Nope, good reminder though since this year I actually can plant stuff. My fava beans seem to have survived the recent cold we had here

I covered my favas with plastic over metal hoops. I haven't checked, but I'm doubtful mine made it. We hit the mid-teens here with several inches of snow. The similar setup over my swiss chard worked fine, however. I've already harvested some since that snow a few days ago.

Planning to start some salanova lettuce seeds inside this weekend. Should be able to transplant those by early March.

[pepperdawg]

The Gurney catalog is open on the table in front of me right now.

Same here - Gurney and Johnnies out of Maine. Starting to plan and plot....

[Norseman]

[Terrapin Ben]

Romanesco broccoli! Always cool to see the fibonacci sequence so clearly manifested in nature. Neighbor grew some last year. Apparently it stores very well.

[Boissal]

Cool veggies, even cooler bird!!

[Thaleia]

Romanesco broccoli is my holy grail of gardening. Been trying it for three or four seasons and it always fails me.

[Boissal]

Romanesco broccoli is my holy grail of gardening. Been trying it for three or four seasons and it always fails me.

Cooler-weather veggies are hard. I also fail repeatedly with the romanescos...

[gravitylover]

I think that the year I did well with brassicas was a fluke. It didn't happen before that and it hasn't happened since. I'm gonna give it another go this year though and go much bigger. I'm also going to plant a shit-ton of it 8 to 10 feet out from the food producing beds to hopefully draw the cabbage worms away, I might even put a mesh cover over them to help. I love eating that stuff fresh right off the plants so I'll make an extra effort for it this year.

[Norseman]

Nice thing about the winter brassicas here is the lack of bugs. Super clean and crisp right off the stalk.

Couple lil slugs but they're cold and slow and don't bother the tall stuff.

[Norseman]

Tomatoes and a few peppers graduated to larger pots.

These perfectly stepwise eggplant sisters were looking photogenic tonight, maybe tryna dress up for their own transplantation next week.

[John_B]

It's our first year having a grow light for our starts. I'm a little worried my tomatoes are going to be 2 feet tall by the time it's appropriate to transplant them. Our last frost day is typically the end of May so I'm thinking I should be able to get them in by the end of April using Walls of Water again.

[climberevan]

Looks good. We just started peppers (a bit late). Our last frost is like 1 June, and we won't stay tomatoes for a bit, so I'd say you're early with those. You're going to have to put them in 6" pots when they get bigger unless you get lucky and can put them outside early. Just keep the light on them and keep them watered do they don't get leggy.

IMO the wall of water thing doesn't actually help. Yes, you can get them outside earlier, but the night temps are still low. Tomatoes and others just don't thrive when it gets below 50 degrees, and they can be stunted even if they aren't actually killed. I think it's better to wait until it's actually warm rather than pushing it with the warm weather crops.

[John_B]

Thanks for the advice Evan. I'll adjust accordingly next year. It's hard to temper the early spring enthusiasm.

[Rideski]

I hear you about the $6 starter plants, but you have some coin and time invested above. If you're doing it for entertainment that's cool but if only a monetary question where's the line in the sand?

[John_B]

I hear you about the $6 starter plants, but you have some coin and time invested above. If you're doing it for entertainment that's cool but if only a monetary question where's the line in the sand?

Oh it's a mix of entertainment and stubbornness about doing things ourselves rather than paying. But as long as my time is not valued I think we are coming out way ahead compared to buying starts. Our grow light is a 20 dollar LED 5000K shop light and we were given all of our pots and some of the Walls of Water. Now that we are set up with drip irrigation our year to year costs are seeds, potting soil and some sheep manure that we buy from a friend.

Plus our great looking garden distracts from the weedy shithole that is the rest of my yard.

[allmountainsnowskating]

This season, I'm trying to grow a bunch of fancy pumpkins from seed.

There's a neat pumpkin patch in town that sells fancy pumpkins for like $1 or $2 a piece, so last year we thought it'd be fun to get a bunch of them.

As we ate all the pumpkins, I saved all the hundreds of seeds and peppered em 4 to a hole all over the front and back yard.

We go all out decorating for all the holidays, so really it's more of a long game of decorating for Halloween.

The look I'm going for is "OMG that house is totally overgrown with weird pumpkins!"

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk

[abraham]

You should try this kind, it's my favorite for eating. Looks like you can get seeds here: https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vege...ioggia-pumpkin