April in the Garden

April is the month when the garden starts to take shape. Peas, greens and onions can be started earlier, and tomatoes can be started indoors, but the garden beds start to take shape in April. If the weather breaks in late March, or if you are a purebred Oregonian and thus immune to rain, its a good time to prepare garden beds.

Vegetables to start outdoors in April:
Beets and Swiss Chard
Radishes
Carrots
Potatoes
Cabbage
Broccoli
Cauliflower

April is also the time to start peppers and eggplants indoors, and it isn't too late to start tomatoes yet indoors.

Towards the end of April, I'm always anxious to get summer squash going (even though I know we will be sick of it come September), and usually plant at least hill one under a clear milk jug. To be kind, the results of this early planting have been mixed, and a hill planted two weeks later usually has squash at about the same time. But it always feels good to try.

Gardening in a swamp?

Talking to my neighbor about the small 'drainage problem' we are learning about in our first winder on our property this week, I found out our house is built on an old swamp. No wonder the garden is still soggy wet, even after a little bit of decent weather. The water isn't standing in the garden, but it is not 'merely wet' either.

I'm normally against building high raised beds (they are expensive and difficult to work), however I may have to break down and bring in soil and build beds in order to have the garden dry out before June!

The peas are not coming up very well, and digging up a few seeds, they are basically just rotting in the cold, wet soil before they can sprout. Time to a last effort to plant peas inside to get them started and then transplant them out, and in the future, note to self to chit all early seeds to give them a head start.

Find a CSA Near You

You don't have time to grow a big garden, but you want to eat fresh, local produce in season? It is the time of year to join a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture.

If you are in the Portland, OR area, visit the Portland Area CSA Coalition to find a CSA near you. Many CSA's also deliver at local farmer's markets, a convenient option that lets you finish up additional shopping at the same time.

Seeding tomatoes

Started the main batch of tomatoes today under lights. Adding Sun Gold (my favorite cherry tomato) and Momatoro (a new experiment) to the earlier varieties. Also started Tomatillos along with the tomatoes. This will be third year that I have tried growing tomatillos. They make some of the best summer salsas, but getting them to ripen has always been a challenge. Hopefully we will have better luck this year.

Also started Parsley and scallions inside, since things are still so soggy outside. Hope to quickly transition those to outside once they start to establish.

Grow your own garden!

There are many reasons to grow some of your own food.

• It is fun. The miracle of seeing carrots sprout from a tiny seed and grow into a plant, or radishes go from seed to table in only a month, it fun to watch. Be careful, walking through your garden can become addicting!
• It is healthy. Home grown food doesn't travel thousands of miles to your table, it is picked when fully ripe, and you know it was grown organically and without pesticides, assuming that is the way you choose to grow your garden.
• It is kind on the environment. Less transportation, packaging, chemicals and fertilizers where used to grow your own vegetables or fruit.

I want to grow some of my own food for all of these reasons and more. But you don't have to believe in maintaining seed diversity or the dangers of entrusting our food sources to a handful of monolithic profit seeking companies to make growing a garden worthwhile. If you are interested in these topics, start with the book reviews posted here from time to time. Books can open your eyes to the practices in our food system today. But be careful, you may decide to grow ALL of your food after reading some of them.

Tomato Seed Update

The seedlings for the early tomato experiment are doing well still under lights. Two of each type (Siletz and Oregon Spring). Tomatoes are not supposed to be cold hardy, but those commercial seed catalogs claim otherwise, so I'm trying an early batch of each type of tomato. Other tomatoes should be started under lights this week.

Oregon Spring seedlings. I am guessing the one on the right may be an unwanted cross, but as the only seedling in the pot, we will try to grow it out and see what happens. Because the seed was older, marked for 2007, I did not expect this kind of vigor, and germination was only about 50%.




Siletz seedlings. Seed was brand new (to me) this year, vigor was much more consistent than the older Oregon Spring seed. Germination was strong, with at least 90% of seeds germinating successfully.

Planting Peas - Round Two

Finished planting a second batch of snap and snow peas today, in a flower bed my wife will want back for flowers. Hopefully I can get some peas though before they are all ripped out.

Book Review: The Urban Homestead

I read "The urban homestead: your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city" over the last few days. It is a quick read, most of the information is high-level and points you to other sources, but for someone more interested than me in the topics at least, it provides a nice high-level introduction to a number of different activities that can increase self sufficiency or at least reduce reliance on fancy consumer products.

What struck me though more than anything else is the 'purity' approach to food growing. Build one to two foot tall raised beds and fill with imported soil for your gardening? That quickly becomes an inexpensive endeavor. I can't bring myself to see a drive towards increasing self-sufficiency as one that needs expensive investments. Unless your dirt is that bad, don't buy more dirt. Besides, who says what you buy will be any better than what you are covering up, other than (maybe) its clay/silt/sand composition.

Many other projects however took a much more realistic, hands-on and low cost approach and pointed to additional sources of information.

One more note: if you are a stickler for grammer or well-edited writing, don't bother with this book. There are so many typos or editorial errors that reading the book over a couple days, it was nearly distracting. Score one for efficiency I guess.

Tomato Leaf?

The first sign of a tomato leaf this week, roughly three weeks after planting. Growing temperatures have been too cold (at least they will be hardy!) but under lights have been close to 70 degrees this week, plenty warm for early tomatoes.

Peas still not showing any signs of life in the garden beds, but it has been cold and wet since they were planted. Time to reseed if they don't start spouting soon.

Green!

Finally! The first shoot of green from the tomato seedlings. It is way too early for them to do well, but it is encouraging to see. Also the first signs of spring in the landscaping. Crocuses are showing the first bit of color, daffodils leaves are up, and shrubs have the first signs of bud break. Spring! (ok, maybe not).

Its almost spring

The weekend finally felt like spring, even though I know it will be another couple months before much of the garden can really be started. This weekend, the first peas were seeded in the garden. And the light shelf in the garage was set up.

Planting details:
Sugar snap peas: Cascadia, from Territorial Seeds
Planted February 8

The spring weather is infectious though, I had to try a tomato... the description of Oregon Spring reads:

This now-famous determinate, slicing variety was developed at Oregon State University. Their research shows that Oregon Spring will produce incredibly early yields of 4 inch oval tomatoes when planted outside a month before your last frost date and given no protection except on frosty nights.

According to Ed Hume Seed's site, the average last fast date for the Portland area is April 3, the 'safe' date is April 26. At 6 to 8 weeks for seeds to get established under lights, maybe it can work? Seeds are cheap, it is worth a try.

And Stupice's description reads:

This cold-tolerant tomato ripens sweet, red, slightly oval, 2 inch fruit that make an excellent choice for first-of-the-summer salads, lunch boxes, and juicing. Stupice consistently gets high marks for taste throughout the summer.

(Both descriptions are from Territorial)

Both were seeded indoors today. Fingers are crossed. I don't expect anything from this planting, but lets give it a try.

Up next, digging up more sod to create space for the new garden.

Garden Planning

First I need a garden space. Today, I have two beds, approximately 4x8 feet, with grass growing right to the edge of them. Potential space is approximately 10x30. The balance is all sod that will need to be dig out.

To give a bit of inspiration (and thanks to a gift certificate from Christmas), seeds arrived from Territorial. In the plans for the year:

Tomatoes:
Sun Gold (grown the last two years, love them!)
Stupice (an early variety, I hope, and my first attempt)
Momotaro (later variety, but claims to be early for a main season)

Plus:
Gypsy Peppers
Eggplant
Summer Squash
Winter Squash (Delicata, another personal first)
and a few more from last year's seeds.

First though, its time to claim the space.

At least the snow is gone

It is winter, it is wet, there are even puddles where I hope to have a garden. Welcome to gardening in the maritime Northwest. This is the time of year to decide what you want to grow, determine when it needs to be planted, if it needs to be started, and make certain you know where to get seeds and plants. It is also a time to make certain you are learning from your mistakes.

Me? That is why I have decided to start this blog. The last two years, I attempted to keep a 'journal', with information on what happened in the garden each week. When I planted things, when they germinated, when they flowered, fruited, were eaten by slugs, bugs and snails, etc. But inevitably, the journal would be "put away" when I went to find it each weekend, and by the end of the summer, it must have been in a "safe place". I don't know how long it took tomatoes to start yielding last year, or the pole beans, I just know it was a long time.

So a blog. It can't be "put away" on a shelf or, hopefully, misplaced. Google, my trust is in you. It is time to start planning the garden.