Seedlings and transplants

I've started more transplants from seed this year than ever before. This will be my biggest garden and I plan on filling it up completely, so I have had transplants all over the place!

5/1: Brassicas and lots of tomatoes hardening off outside and in my little cold frame. The brassicas were transplanted a week later.

5/15: Tomatoes were transplanted after about 2 weeks outside. I had to wait until the ground was ready for rototilling. These are by far the best looking transplants I've grown! This year I wanted to grow my early tomatoes and peppers/eggplant under low tunnels. I bought a "Quick Hoops" tube bender (from Johnny's) to make heavy duty 1/2" EMT hoops to cover with greenhouse plastic.

On a cloudy day where we don't even get to 60 degrees (we've had a lot of those lately) it will be a balmy 85 in the tunnel. On sunny days, I lift up one entire side of the plastic for ventilation and it stays around 90 inside. So far the tomatoes are loving it.

5/25: Pepper seedlings will go under a low tunnel as well. I'll cover the soil with black plastic before transplanting in order to trap even more heat. In our mild summers, keeping the soil warm is the most important controllable condition in order to keep hot weather peppers and eggplant growing well.

Eggplant, above, and melons and cukes. This is my first try with melons. Really, they won't grow well up here without a lot of special attention. They'll need black plastic mulch and a low tunnel, plus a good summer, in order to produce much. However, I've heard from many sources that a freshly picked, homegrown melon is just about the sweetest, best tasting this that can come out of the garden, so I have to give it a shot. These will be ready to transplant out (weather permitting) in a week or two.

Late Winter Garden

We've had the warmest winter in a long time. Northwest Washington broke all kinds of records his year - highest average temperature in Jan for about the last 100 yrs, we're 2.5" short on rainfall for the last 3 months, and the number of days above 50 degrees for this time of year has never been greater - basically the weather has been awesome! Plants and trees around here have responded accordingly - spring bulbs are blooming a month early and fruit trees are weeks ahead of schedule. The vegetable garden has woken up as well.

Overwintered lettuce in the cold frame has starting growing again after going dormant during the coldest months. On sunny days, I have to remember to slide off the glass top to keep the lettuce from cooking, only to cover it at night to protect from near freezing temperatures.

Overwintered purple sprouting Broccoli has begun to push small heads - we'll be eating fresh broccoli soon! In the background a couple rows to the left, October planted garlic is already 8 inches tall.

The crimson clover cover crop has started to take off as well. In about 2 weeks I'll be cutting it down and turning it under to decompose for a few weeks before transplants start to go in.

The only thing I have to be careful of is getting ahead of myself. When it's 60 degrees out in February, it's really tempting to start planting seeds and turning over the soil, but the thing to remember about Washington weather is that a clear sunny day can easily turn into a few inches of snow overnight...

More goodies

Cherries are ripening fast now - so far we have picked 6 lbs off the backyard tree. More brassicas too.

Emily with fresh cherries (made a nice pie), broccoli, and kohlrabi.

This is 3 broccoli heads, cut up and ready to be frozen. First blanched for 3 minutes, then chilled in ice water, patted dry....

...and bagged and vacuum-sealed in a freezer bag. We're going to try canning this year for other vegetables, but I will be freezing whenever possible as it just seems a lot easier.

Brassicas

Excellent spring weather helped the (late planted) brassicas mature quickly - they're rolling in now. Ideally, I would have had the first small plantings of quick maturing varieties in by mid-march, followed a month later by the main crop plantings. The idea is to avoid being overwhelmed by an abundance of, say, kohlrabi (which one can only eat so much of) all at once, and instead to spread out the harvest over a month or more. Succession planting and smart varietal selection: something to focus on next year.

Derby day cabbage, a short season 58 day variety, ready for picking after 63 days. I also planted a long season fall cabbage.

The earliest of the Fall broccoli blend, a mix of 4 varieties, is ready. Looks like about half of the dozen or so plants I have are early, with the other half about a week away.

Supersmeltz kohlrabi. The biggest are softball size, with others as small as golfballs. It's an upgrade from broccoli stems.

First veggies ready

The only complaint I have about the new property is that we didn't get it earlier in the season! Normally I would have the earliest lettuces, spinach, and radishes in by the beginning of March, ready by May. This fall I'll be making a bunch of glass topped cold frames, which means I can put out hardy transplants even earlier and even hold them over our mild winters. Year round food!

Snow and snap peas are ready, the lettuce is now big enough to cut, and the spinach thinnings are delicious. The red kale is ready as well. It is so nice to pick fresh food right out the back door.

Spinach sown just 20 days ago is huge. This is my first successful attempt at spinach.

Red russian kale is supposed to have inferior flavor when it matures in summer compared to maturing into fall. Tastes good to me though.

It is really amazing how fast things grow after they get established. This broccoli was half this size one week ago. Looks like this year will have many "my best yet" results for a lot of vegetables (not too hard to beat my previous attempts).

More transplants

I dug two more raised beds this week and got the brassica seedlings in. I bought some steer manure/compost mix and an all-purpose organic fertilizer and have been incorporating both into the top 6 inches of each bed as I go. Really need some organic matter in this soil.

Kale, kohlrabi, two kinds of cabbage, and broccoli mix, ready to go in.


I'm using wider spacing this year than I have before. I've always been limited by space, so I've used "intensive planting" to fit as much in as possible. Intensive planting can work well, but more plants per square foot means more frequent watering, heavier fertilizing, and smaller plants due to crowding and competition. Now that I have plenty of room, I'm giving each plant plenty of real estate.

Up-potting

Up-potting is moving seedlings from a communal, crowded pot to their own private cell, where they get a little more foot room to grow on without competition for light, water, or nutrients.

Start with a pot of seedlings with at least 2 true leaves. Red russian kale in this case.

Roots have made it throughout the entire pot. The soil should be slightly moist and hold together when the pot is slipped off.


Starting at the bottom of the soil cube and working around the perimeter, gently break apart the root ball. Try to break as few roots as possible, you want to make this process as stress-free as possible for the seedlings.


You can see the potential root growth for one little plant after about a month.


Each separated seedling gets potted into its' own cell.

I up-potted all the brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, and kale). One or two weeks under the lights will help them to recovers and begin growing quickly again, then it's out to the cold-frame to harden off for a week before being transplanted outside.

First seeds

Got a start this weekend. Cooler spring weather vegetables can start to be planted out mid-april, so 4 weeks prior is a good time to get seeds going.

Started:
2 - 4" pots Mega Snap Pea
2 - 4" pots Oregon Sugar Pod snow pea
2 - 4" pots Fall Blend Broccoli
2 - 4" pots Danish Ballhead (120 days) cabbage
1 - 4" pot Derby Day (58 days) cabbage
1 - 4" pot Butterhead lettuce
1 - 4" pot The Redder the Better lettuce mix
2 - 4" pots Walla Walla sweet onion
4 - 2" pots Chives

It's a pain to drag out all the pots, flats, covers, seed mat, timers, and lights...but that "greenhouse smell", the scent of humid air and moist soil, that escapes when you peek under the plastic dome, makes it worth it after a long winter.

Fall transplants

Got pretty much everything in the ground now. Realistically, I'm a few weeks too late. It's possible that a frost or even a freeze can roll in by the middle of September, or it may be sunny and frost free till mid October. So I'm hoping for a mild fall and planting like crazy. The last lettuce will go in this weekend.

Cabbage in front and Broccoli in the back. This bed was in such bad shape I have not used it this year till now.

Kohlrabi. I sowed crimson clover in this bed as well to see how well kohlrabi can be interplanted.

Monumental Chinese cabbage goes in a bed with other winter tough veggies, leeks and carrots.

I've sown crimson clover as a cover crop and green manure in all bare areas at the garden plots. As soon as the tomatoes and peppers are done (as well as any other lingering crops), they'll be pulled and crimson clover will go in there as well. I'm hoping to have a dense cover over everything as soon as the winter rains start coming in.

Went down to the garden a few days ago and surprised some wildlife in one of the plots at the community garden.

They ate about 8 feet of a row of runner beans, stripping off all the leaves. I'm glad I've got a 6 foot fence!

My fall brassicas are coming along nicely. Instead of thinning 3 or 4 plants down to 1 per cell, as I did in spring with my early brassicas, I ended up pricking out these seedlings and potting them up to individual 2" pots or into a cell tray with 2" cells. I'm planting more of each vegetable than I did this spring.

That's cabbage in the front 2 rows and broccoli in the back 2 rows. These were sown about 25 days ago and should be transplanted some time next week.


Chinese cabbage in front and kohlrabi in back sown 2 weeks ago. Hopefully these will be out in the garden in 2 weeks. That's about 2 weeks later than they should have been out, but I'm hoping for a long, cool fall with no early frosts.

I sowed a few more fall veggies a couple days ago:
- one 4-pack Italian Silver Chard
- one 4-pack Red Russian Kale
Both frost hardy varieties that should stand through the winter.

Fall crops

This is my first attempt at fall crops. From what I've read, the northwest has the perfect fall and early winter weather to accommodate a second round of most spring crops. Planting in mid-late summer, however, requires a little more thought than spring plantings. If, like me, your garden is not in your backyard and you don't want to go there every day, keeping seed moist and getting it to germinate outside is difficult. I moved my seed heating mat and covered flats out on the back porch and will be starting fall seedlings outside, then transplanting. As the days get shorter and the sun's path starts to move closer to the horizon, its' intensity diminishes and the amount of growing energy available to plants is less. This must be accounted for when planning seed starting or you could get caught by frost with immature crops. The first frost date is used to calculate when vegetables need to be finished by, unless they are frost tolerant or cold hardy veggies, or if they will grown under cover when weather gets cold. There's lots more to think about as well.

This weekend I started some seed for fall crops:

four 4" pots Cascadia Snap Pea
one 4 pack Fall Blend Broccoli
one 4 pack Early Cabbage
two 1 qt. Cucumber Bush Slicer
one 1 qt. heirloom Delicata Squash

I'll be starting lots more seed and trying to sow some outside for fall and winter harvest in the next few weeks.