I grow lemon verbena every year from seedlings I buy locally, but I’m stumped as to why none of the many seed catalogues I receive offer it in seed form.
Oh. Apparently it’s v difficult / takes a ridiculous long time to grow from seed .
Every year I scour the local nurseries to get seedlings and I stress out when I can’t find them. I guess that will continue this year
If you get desperate.
Stumbled on this researching for a story about bunching onions.
From Cornell "Browse Varieties-Your search for ‘onion’ returned the following 185 results"
Starting tomatoes this weekend, starting with Dwarf Tomato Project.
Trying not to grow “too many”, and so far my list has 11 varieties based on past success, days to maturity, size, color, foliage, oh and flavor!
Brandy Fred; 75 dtm, rugose, potato leaf, purple, 10-16 oz
Malee Rose; 80 dtm, reg leaf, pink, 5-14 oz
Awesome, 80, RL, yellow, 6-8 oz
Perfect Harmony, 85, rugose PL, orange, to 20 oz
Wild Fred 85, purple up to 7 oz
Gloria’s Treat, 75, rugose PL, yellow, 6-12 oz
Crimson Sockeye 90, rugose RL, pink, 4-19 oz
Uluru Ochre, 64, rugose RL, orange w/green, 6-12 oz
Purple Heart, 70, purple, 6-16 oz
Fred’s Tie Dye 75, RRL, purple w/green, 5-6 oz
Confetti, 80 RRL, yellow w/pink, 8-12 iz
Anyone else planning their tomato garden?
Around here, President’s Day is the traditional day to plant peas. I missed it only by a few days, and planted around 50’ of shelling peas this afternoon. I finished up just as the next “atmospheric river” moved in (translation: week-long torrential rainfall).
Next dry bit we get, I’ll stick in a few sugar-snaps, as I like to have them around for stir-fries in the spring.
Our rhubarb is showing signs of life - yay!
Sounds like it will be amazing! How long can you harvest peas there?
I start in November or December and am starting to see the promise of a few flowers on mine. Very short season for them here.
Hoping one of these cuttings I gleaned walking the neighborhood might work. Mostly plums I think, but maybe almonds too.
They seem to be flowering at the same time.
With any luck, I’ll be harvesting in June. This allows for a second planting in July for fall harvest, should one so desire.
how are you planting anything in the ground right now?
Tastes good and tarragony!
From a link above
" There is also a story that Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon for her reckless use of Tarragon."!
Ooops - late reply. Shelling peas went in as above. Snow peas to follow. Will be trying to get the first wave of carrots into the ground before the end of the month (weather permitting). Mind you, this is all PNW related.
Heading into the busiest month of the year for this gardening household. Lots of grousing and grumbling (neither of us are getting any younger), but we try to stay focused on the pay-off.
Today:
- seeded more leafy greens in the greenhouse
- planted snow peas outdoors
- planted the seed potatoes outdoors
- planted the replacement huckleberry plants we bought last fall
Tomorrow we start oiling the fruit trees.
Thank you for sharing when you can! I am still studying your posts from last year.
Are yoy doing garlic and/or bunching onions this year?
Oops ; Those were leeks.
Here are my first bunching onions! Guardsman and Tokyo Long.
Collards ready for their close up !
Yes, both scallions and leeks.
In fact, extra leeks. I learned last year that if I saute and then freeze them in small portions, I love having this ingredient available to me in the kitchen. We blew through our entire supply months ago. So, this year, we doubled down.
On the same subject, I also chopped and froze extra scallions in olive oil (ice cube tray method), another winner in the kitchen.
OH I thought you were in Michigan for some reason.
At my local garden center and I see they have little starts of bunching onions and some of candy onions. I’ve never grown any onions, but would like to. Any opinions on which to pick?
I find onions tricky because they often bulb at a certain day length, and prefer cooler weather than my summers, but I think most bunching onions are more forgiving.
Thanks. I might give 'em a try.
The second summer of the pandemic, I bought plain wood planks and cement-block type anchors to slide the planks into, and built myself a very flimsy, small garden bed.
The wood’s starting to fall apart now, so I’m torn about next steps. Simply reinforcing the current structure is obv an option (new planks, this time cedar, for instance) but I have a secondary concern: last year my tomatoes didn’t yield as much as previous years, and I hypothesize that this is because of being planted in basically the same spot for a couple successive years.
My longevity on this property is unknown, so I tend to skew toward less-permanent solutions for now.
I could buy a modular raised steel bed or two, and put them inside the existing “garden.” This would decrease the number of things I could plant, but I don’t grow all that much anyway (every year I try some new veg or class of veg, and most years the experiments are failures.)
Another consideration is that the indeterminate tomatoes I exclusively grow require significant support, so that means solutions like growing them in small containers/grow bags won’t work (I tried it, it almost killed me.)
I picked up a cedar elevated garden bed yesterday at Lowe’s (very surprising - these sell out v v quickly, so I snagged their last one fast) that I initially thought I might convert to a potting bench. Having realized this is probably impractical, I might use this bed for things like lettuce and radishes. I have grown lettuce in the ground and in containers, and the container lettuce grows slightly less vigorously, but doesn’t get eaten by garden pests.