Starting Tomatoes Indoors

It has been the typical on again, off again Spring weather.  One day it is warm and sunny and the next day it is freezing!  It is so tempting to get the seeds planted.  Depending on what source a local gardener consults, the last killing frost of the year in this location happens (on average), on or around May 15th.  It is the words "average" and "on or around" that allows for freezes to happen later than May 15th.  Let's face it, we are talking about predicting the weather.  Not exactly an exact science.  An old saying dictates that there is nothing more changeable than the weather.  However, I once read a newspaper article written by Margaret Lauterbach, a local Master Gardener, in which she said that peas could be planted shortly after St Patricks Day.  

It was raining on St Patricks Day so I couldn't get out and plant in muddy conditions.  I opted to start my tomato seedlings!  

This year, I chose to buy a seed starting flat.  The flat included a bottom tray to facilitate watering, tiny cells made out of  peat, and a "greenhouse" cover.  I also bought some seed starter mix from the local garden center.     

Here's the seed starting flat:  the bottom tray with the little peat cells resting inside, and the greenhouse cover.

I poured in the seed starting mix, and smoothed it into the peat cells with my hand.  

I made labels by cutting strips from an old plastic milk jug and used a waterproof pen to write the name of the variety and the date planted.

I planted three tiny seeds in each cell, and covered them lightly with the seed starting mix.

Three tomato seeds in their cell, waiting to be covered with soil.

As I planted each row, I labeled it with the label that I had made.

Then I poured water into the bottom of the tray, to a depth of about 1 inch.  The soil quickly soaked up the water, wicking it upward into the top layer of the soil.  

Then I put the greenhouse cover on top and set it on my warm seed starting mat.  

I have always used a household heating pad, the kind purchased at a drug store, to provide extra warmth for my seedlings.  It has worked fine for me in the past, but this year I splurged, and bought myself one of the electric seedling heat mats.


 Now all I have to do is wait for the seeds to germinate and come up out of the soil!

A Few Warm Days Trigger Gardening Urge

Nothing like a few warm and sunny days for triggering a gardening urge.  However, it is only the first of February.  That means it is still winter.  It will probably be another month and a half until I can even plant peas! However, now is a good time to think about the vegetables I want to plant this year.

I was shopping this week and noticed that all the home improvement stores, hardware stores and grocery stores are putting out racks of garden seeds.  I was drawn to them like a moth to a flame!  A person can spend a lot of time standing in front of those seeds, trying to decide what to grow. 

Sometimes I find it difficult to find the exact kind of tomato or green bean seed in the seed rack.  It doesn't appear as if the seed rack contains a variety I had heard about from a friend, or from a program on TV or the internet.  For this reason, I have found that I like perusing the seed catalogs, either online or in hard copy, in the comfort of my own home.  All the information that one can find on the front and back of each seed packet is written in the seed catalog.

Every seed company is different.  Some offer all organic seeds, others offer all the new hybrid seeds, or lots of heirloom varieties or varieties developed in foreign countries.  I generally explore five or six different seed catalogs or seed company websites.  The old style (paper and ink) seed catalog, which is mailed to a physical address, is still a favorite way of shopping for seeds.  It's easy to jot notes in the margins of the pages so that I can return to the page later. 

Most, if not all, seed companies also have online catalogs now.  It is very easy and convenient to order seeds online.  Their seeds are competitively priced. Many seed companies author online newsletters or blogs, and offer coupons and discount codes once you are subscribed.  

Of course, I want to grow everything!  I make a wish list of all the different varieties I want to grow.  Then, I have to look at my garden diagram and figure out exactly how many plants will fit.  Finally, I have to go through the list and winnow it down to the ones I will actually have room for!  

For my garden diagram, I have used the online garden planner available through a link on Territorial Seed Company's website.   The garden planner has video tutorials that helped me understand all the features.  I used the draw feature to show the basic dimensions of my garden beds, and then used the click and drop feature to "plant" my garden.  The garden planner is very cool, in that it told me that the garden space I have allowed for peppers has enough space for 14 Ancho pepper plants, three tomatillo plants, five tomato plants, 73 radish plants, etc., etc.  It is a useful tool.  It is also a fun way to plan a garden.  The garden planner is free for 30 days.  

The last step was to order the seeds.  I did that online.  Mission accomplished.  I am looking forward to planting!

It Is Not Too Late to Plan...

Up until now, I had been proceeding with an informal plan "in my head".   I decided that I  would like to make a basic, Beginning Yard Map of my backyard so that I could plan with a little bit of forethought.    I measured the perimeter and graphed it out.  This is what my back yard looks like without the garden beds that I created. 

It isn't totally accurate, but it is close.  Each square = 3 square ft.  

Beginning Yard Map

I also wondered about what sort of utilities might be buried under the surface of my yard.  I did not want to accidentally damage some utilities while digging.  I should have done this before I ever began to dig, but as soon as I thought of it I decided I better get it done before I got too involved in my plan!  

So I called the Dig-Line.  It is a free service.  They came out within a day or two and located buried electricity, natural gas, telephone and cable tv lines, marking them with colored spray paint.  It turns out that the only buried lines that are in the backyard are telephone and cable tv.  

I was relieved to learn that I hadn't dug close to those lines!

I  transcribed the utility line locations onto my diagram.  They are the purple and orange dashed lines.  Then I drew in the garden beds that I had created in 2014 (indicated with a blue arrow).  

Phase One - Year One Garden

I am calling this my Phase One -Year One Garden because I am just planning and putting in the beds, or planting areas.  I have lots of ideas to expand in the coming years!

Fall Harvest, November Snowstorm and a Long Winter's Nap.

 

The garden did fairly well for the length of time that I actually had spent gardening. 

                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                 

I had a few harvests of squash and tomatoes in late September and early October.  The peppers and tomatillos I had planted did not produce anything.  I think it was because I did not get them planted until it was too late in the season. 

Pictured below:  (Clockwise, from top left) Yellow Crookneck summer squash, Buttercup winter squash, Cherokee Purple tomato, Early Girl tomato.                                                                                                                                                                     

   

            

Frosty nights were predicted, and as I hadn't picked all the produce, I took precautions by covering the tomato and squash plants every night with some old quilts.  With a quilt covering, the frost nipped the plants but did not kill them.  Warm days returned, I suspended the nightly quilt covering, and I continued to harvest a few more squash and tomatoes.  

The harvest finally ended when we had a snowstorm in mid November.  Nine inches of snow fell and that killed the garden.  I was really regretting that I hadn't simply cleaned up the garden in October! 

Luckily, the weather warmed, the snow melted away, and I was able to do the garden cleanup.  I pulled out all the dead tomato and squash plants and put them in the compost pile.   Then I dug up the soil and raked it all smooth so that it would be ready for planting in the Spring.

More snow arrived on Christmas to blanket the garden, and now it is truly tucked in for the winter!

    

Caging Tomatoes Gone Wild!

All this time I had been removing grass and digging up the soil as quickly as I could.  The movers had arrived to deliver my household goods and I had more things to do.  Since I had gotten such a late start on a garden, I never really knew if my vegetable seedlings would grow very much.   I told myself that even if they did not grow this year, all the work I was doing now would be garden work that I would not have to do next year.  However, by July 30th I realized that the little tomato plants were really growing!  I realized that if I did not support these growing tomato plants, they would soon be sprawled all over the garden area with their fruits developing exposed and resting on the surface of the soil!  Tomatoes Gone Wild!

As I had done in the past, I purchased a roll of concrete reinforcing wire and using a pair of bolt cutters and some zip-ties, I constructed sturdy cages for the tomato and tomatillo plants.  

The method that I used for making the cages can be read in a previous issue of this blog.  I cannot figure out how to make this a link to click on to the past blog post but the date and title is:

Tuesday, July 17, 2012; Tomato Cages, Trellises and Dry, Dry Weather. 
The URL address is  http://thisgirlgardens.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html

I think if you highlight the above URL and then right click on it you can select the option that will take you to this page.  You might have to scroll down to the correct date.  


In this picture, taken July 30, 2014 you can see the cages surrounding the tomato and tomatillo plants.  You can also see that I have also planted one squash plant.  It looks a bit sickly.  That poor squash plant had been subjected to existing in a peat pot for over a month.  I hope it lives!  

I Couldn't Wait to Get Started

Since the movers hadn't arrived with my household goods, I had the opportunity to do things like get the interior walls of the house painted, have the carpet cleaned and.... start a garden! I located the sunniest spot in the yard.  It gets full sun all day.  And that is where I decided to start.  I went to the local home improvement store to buy a few garden seedlings, and a couple of bags of compost and a bag of peat moss.  The selection of vegetable varieties was pretty good.  I selected a Big Boy hybrid tomato, Super Sweet 100 cherry tomato, Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato, Indigo Rose tomato, a tomatillo, Brights Lights swiss chard, Ancho peppers, Crookneck squash, Zucchini squash and Butternut squash.

It seemed pretty straightforward.  Based on previous experience, I would start by removing the grass in a 4' X 4' area and then loosen the soil by digging and turning it over.

It turns out that this was easier said than done.  It was really difficult to get the grass out!  I hit a rock and what appeared to be clay soil.  I rethought my plan and decided maybe a 2' X 2' area would be a good start.  It took me an hour and a half to do that little bit.  I called it a day!

Fresh from a good night's rest, I went out the next day and thought I would dig up the soil.  However, the previous day's experience was repeated.  It seemed that every time I tried to sink the shovel down into the soil, I hit more rocks.  There were lots of rocks.  Some of what I first thought were rocks, were actually gobs of dry hardened clay.  I could tell the difference only because when the shovel hit a rock it made a definite "clink" or grating sound.  Clods of clay, on the other hand, seemed as hard as a rock, but with effort could be crushed against the shovel blade.  I wet a handful of the soil and squeezed it.  When I opened my hand it retained the exact shape of how my hand had molded it!  It did not fall apart... not even a little bit.  The soil  definitely had lots of clay in it!

I managed to get the soil turned over and rocks removed in the 2' X 2' area in two hours.  Whew!  I called it another day!  Here are the rocks that I removed from that 2' X 2' area.

The next day I spread half a bag of compost and a few shovelfuls of peat moss evenly over the area and then dug it into the soil.  Peat moss is great for lightening heavy clay soils and compost adds organic matter and helps lighten and add fertility.  

Then I planted the 8" tall Big Boy hybrid tomato plant.  Then I watered it.  

The next day, I started all over again.  I removed the grass from another 2' X 2" area.  Then the following day I dug out the rocks, then turned the soil, then added compost and peat moss, then planted another seedling.  I continued to do this almost every day, and by the 15th of July I had four tomato plants, one tomatillo and two pepper plants in the ground.  The first tomato plant, the Big Boy, had started to really show growth.  

A Big Move - 

Circumstances change and Life happens!  Living in New England was a beautiful experience.  I treasure the remarkable friendships I made and the many memories that I have.  There is definitely something to be said for the places one considers "home".  The people, the beauty of the landscape, the weather, the way the air feels and smells in the morning as the sun is coming up.  These are characteristics and sensations that imprint upon me.

Perhaps it was the long cold winter.  Having spent winters in Grand Coulee Washington and Southwest Idaho, I thought I "knew" Winter.  However, if comparing winter hardships... coldest temperatures, depth of freeze, deepest snow, quantity of snow, continual snow, length of snowfall, latest snow, etc.... by March of this year I conceded that New England had won the match!  As I gazed out on the snowbanks that marked the edges of my driveway, I knew that my time in New England was over and the West was calling.

I booked a flight to Idaho to look for a house.  I suppose if I hadn't found one I liked, I might still be in New England!  Nevertheless, I found a house I liked and when my offer was accepted, I began to plan a move in earnest. I packed, I hired movers, I hired a realtor and I said goodbye to my little house in Vermont.  I will miss the beautiful sunsets on Lake Champlain, which I enjoyed every evening.  I will miss the beautiful Spring and Summer days, many of which I spent in my yard and garden.  I will miss the gorgeous autumn leaves, the crisp autumn air and the sightings of moose that I was treated to in the Northeast Kingdom.  I will miss my walks along the lake, listening to the lapping of the waves.  I will miss my neighbors and friends and I will even miss the incredible snowfalls. 

I loaded up my houseplants, my gecko and tarantula, and drove my sixteen-year-old Nissan Pathfinder 2,700 miles across the country to my new home in Idaho.  What a trip it was!  I left Vermont white-knuckled, driving in a torrential rain storm, managed the rush hour traffic on the south side of Chicago (all the while thinking about Leroy Brown!), and dodged tornados in Iowa!  I saw some incredible scenery: The Allegheny Mountains, the Monongahela River, The Mississippi River, the fields and prairies of Iowa and Nebraska, the open range of Wyoming, and the gorgeous mountains of Utah and Idaho.  However, the real highlights of my trip included stopping along the way to visit Cousin Bob and Mary Ellen, Kim and Jodi, and friends Linette, Roger and April. 

Once I got to my new home, I began to think about my yard and garden.  The house is in suburbia.  The yard is fairly plain.  Both the front and back yard have automatic sprinklers.  The front yard has the obligatory grass and shrub landscaping.  The back yard is all grass with a small well-built garden shed that sits in the shade on the north side of a lone maple tree.  Between the maple tree and the shed is an area that looks like it might have been a garden at one time.  However, the maple tree has grown very large and now shades that area most of the day.  A small lilac bush is growing on the other side of the maple tree next to the back fence.  The side yard areas are not watered and consist of clay and packed gravel. It is hot and dry there.  One of the side yards is large enough for parking a vehicle or an RV.  The other side yard is much smaller.  A few weeds have managed to sprout up in those areas, but nothing else.   So this is what I have to work with.  The following pictures were taken about June 20.

In this picture:  Fence and grass.  The side yard, where only a few weeds sprout up is visible to the left in this picture.  

In the picture below:  More fence and grass.  You can see the neighbors trees.  A Casuarina and a large weeping curly willow.  

In the picture below: More fence and grass, and the neighbor's weeping curly willow.

In the picture below: More grass and fence and the small lilac bush against the fence.

In the picture below:  More fence and grass.  There is the large maple tree.  The only tree in the yard.  you can see a corner of the well-built shed.  Between the shed and the maple tree is an area that looks like it might have been a garden spot at one time.  Now that the maple tree is so large, that area is in the shade most of the day.

A good picture of the garden shed!

In the picture below you can see more fence and grass, a tiny bit of the garden shed at the left, and a bit of the side of the house on the right.  The concrete in the foreground is a patio area. There is my brand new garden hose that I bought.

Stay tuned.  This is going to be fun!