What Are You Planting Today, This Week, This Month?

[ducks4you]

Well...12 of my WM sweet potato vines are doing great!!! I abused the other 12 and I'm pretty sure that they are gone. Oh, well...I think I will harvest the potatoes today and replant some of those in their place.

 

[digitS']

Feeling like the Gardening Season will never come?

Here you go: try gardening in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Seed-Planting-Chart/pdf

Now, if you are in Fairbanks, you better get ready! If you aren't in Alaska, or even if you are just not in the "North Star Borough," you better get ready ..!

Sowed onion seed yesterday in, what is a very chilly greenhouse this morning. If that seed wants to be frozen before sprouting, I think, mission accomplished!

Steve

 

[aftermidnight]

Up here if planting onion seed I do it on Boxing Day (day after Christmas). When the seedling start getting leggy I snip them in half with the scissor and keep doing it until planted out. Back in the day the old gardener across the street from us started his in the warming oven atop the wood stove, always on Boxing Day.

Annette

 

[rainey]

It has been a busy (and expensive!) couple weeks in SoCal. Let's see if I can remember all we've done -- that's me and my 7yo grandson/assistant:

Planted
• 3 tomatoes -- Black from Tula, Black Cherry and San Marzano
• 1 zucchini
• 2 six packs of Oregon Giant peas
• 2 six packs of some sort of snap peas
• 2 six packs of pole beans; can't remember the variety but they're supposed to come in green and yellow; interested in seeing that
• god-only-knows how much garlic and shallots
• six pack of Italian parsley
• 4" pot of basil
• 5 varieties of peppers -- jalapeño, red bell, yellow bell, Anaheim, Pasilla
• seeded one small bed with an assortment of loose leaf lettuces
• 5 4" pots violets plus half a flat of miniature ground cover violets; the other half has to wait until I put in some step stones that haven't arrived yet
• 2 small ferns
• 2 hanging baskets of petunia
• 1 hanging basket of begonia
• 4 4" foxgloves to fill in empty spots where some didn't make it through the Winter
• manicured and re-planted a fairy garden in a broken pot
• about a dozen amaryllis bulbs in 3 locations
• 3 6" pots of hellebores
• 3 bareroot peonies
• 2 flats of crane's bill ground cover on a newly installed berm
• 6 dahlia tubers

Moved
• a compost pile
• 2 hollyhocks
• lost track of how many nasturtiums

• dug in new flower bed and installed the border
• major pruning of the rose bed; new weed block and lamb's ear ground cover to come
• weeding, weeding, weeding and then some weeding
• trained sweet pea vines up a chain link fence
• pruned a pear tree and staked a couple branches downward
• added new pine shaving mulch to strawberry bed
• chipped up a lot of brush I cleaned out of the yard
• rescued one volunteer cherry tomato stuck in between a clump of irises and a rose bush; could be a Galena or maybe it's a Sungold; there's one small tomato on it but I'm not sure it's ripe yet

That, my friends, is a lot of Advil and soaking in the Jacuzzi just so I could get up and do it again! I figure I have 2-3 weeks more of work before I can consider the backyard ready for full on Spring.

There's more planting of hosta roots and day lily corms. Got to make a bed for a new hedge and then make a brick path over the berm. I'm enlarging a fern area by putting in a dry cinder block wall to retain a planting mound. But after that it's going to be fun to watch how it all develops.

 

[Collector]

@rainey
Well someone has sure been busy, must be nice lol. You may be stiff and sore but you should also feel pretty satisfied, that a lot of work. Sungold tomato one of my favorites.

 

[ninnymary]

Welcome rainey! You must be down by San Diego to already be planting so much stuff especially tomatos. How big is your garden? It sure seems like you have accomplished a lot.

Mary

 

[rainey]

Not San Diego. Los Angeles up by the Ventura County line.

I am gardening something about 20 yards by 30 yards. The yard's bigger (about 1/2 an acre) but I don't do much with the front and thank god the pool and pool deck don't require weeding or planting. My small bit of backyard green is all I can handle!

Yup! Tomatoes are in and holding up great despite some 50˚or so nights. Time was I was putting tomatoes in in March and being accused of rushing things (I usually was and had to replace some of them while others just languished until the temperatures came up). But that plant I had to untangle from the rose and Irises and then cage made it through the Winter. So did a bell and a jalapeño pepper. An eggplant also did but it was so raggedy looking I took it out anyway and I'll be replacing it sometime soon. The 3 new tomato plants that went in the first part of the month are looking vigorous and showing growth.

I made an offhand remark about how clear it is that we are no longer experiencing any Winter cold and seeing earlier and earlier Spring and got a Sunday School lesson from people who don't see it. But we certainly are and I'm concerned that the fruit trees won't get enough cold to set fruit.

PS A friend in Oakland says she's planning to put her tomatoes in in 3 weeks when her supplier brings plants to the Farmers' Market.

________

(Please! No more Sunday School or accusations of being arrogant for me. You ((that's the editorial "you", of course, not ninnymary)) may be perfectly correct and I respect your right to believe whatever you want but it's wasted on me. So I'll refrain from saying I think it's all superstition if you "save" someone else. Sound good? )

 

[ninnymary]

I usually plant tomatoes the last week in March. Is your friend's tomatoe supplier Peggy by any chance? Although I don't think she has them that early. Just wondering if it's a small world.

The Sunday school accusation went over my head. But that's ok, you don't have to explain it.

Mary

 

[digitS']

You are getting "sunday school lessons" on TEG?

That's not so nice! Administration has good people if you would like to talk to someone @rainey.

Peppers. Have you grown them as perennials, before? They are generally so stunted in my garden it's hard to imagine them as shrubs. Putting them in containers seem to help for some cool climate gardeners but it should be handy in a mild climate if there is an advantage to treating peppers as perennials.

Steve

 

[rainey]

The Sunday School thing is no biggie. It's someone else's opinion and they are fully entitled to it. I just don't want to hear it every time I refer to climate change.

Peppers. I grow them in the ground but never had them come back so strong before. I have jalepeños ready for picking and bell peppers that are as big as golf balls. Over time I'll be able to say if they're able to grow to full size and compare to the new plants I just put in.

I also have a walnut tree that never lost its leaves this Winter. The old ones are still green though somewhat dried out and they're only falling as they're pushed off by the new ones emerging.