The season has officially begun, and as of 2/8 we have our first tomatoes that have germinated. New veggies that have been planted include just sweet peppers from Park Seed that were left over from last year, black beauty, brandywine, solar flare, and durmitor tomatoes from an array of Baker Creek and Ohio Heirloom. I think we will ultimately target less overall volume this year than last, but it will still be good to figure out the layout in the new house.
3/2 - Everything but the Durmitor (sown again) has sprouted, and has received the first round of fertilizer. Plants are looking healthy so far, and being a little further south now we'll probably look to begin the hardening off exposure earlier than the last couple years as we're already seeing days in the 60s. Planted a handful of seeds harvested from last year including the Chocolate Cherry, Sweet 100, Lemon Boy, and Beefsteak.
3/14 - Everything has germinated and is looking healthy so far, except for the Brandywine's. Both of those plants did not make it out of the greenhouse. We went from 70 degree days making me think we might get out even sooner than expected to 3 inches of snow. Probably going to wait it out a bit before transplanting.
5/4 - The first 9 tomatoes that have been sitting out in the root pouch bags for about a week have been transplanted. The remainder of what was in the greenhouse has been taken outside to harden off and we started overnight which I think makes for an easier segue since they aren't immediately being stressed by the sun. I did pick up an additional 2 basil plants to get our bruschetta ingredients going and have them potted currently. Since the lettuce did much better outside last year, I've thrown seeds into 2 of the root pouch bags to get the Little Gem and Gourmet Blend going.
6/9 - Everything in and out of the ground is still looking healthy and the sweet 100s are looking like they want to prove a point out there. The mulch has been super helpful for the trips we've been away from the garden and before we leave going forward the new habit will be to add another layer of mulch to help retain any moisture in the soil.
7/1 - We've started to get tomatoes and have pulled off about 75 sweet 100s so far as well as enjoying some little gem lettuce with BLTs and burgers. Everything else is looking good even tho we're having regular mid 90s temps and very little rain. The first couple chocolate cherries, pink Berkeleys, and solar flares are about to be ready to pull off, just not quite at this moment.
8/5 - The harvests have started to become more abundant, so far we have pulled off 845 vegetables, mostly tomatoes and a few just sweet peppers and jalapeños. The basil is coming in much more full than years prior, and we're getting close to our first round of pesto. We've mostly been using the basil for pizzas and bruschetta, but we're salivating for some home made pesto. Rather than doing the dwarf tomatoes in pots this year, the orange hats have been planted directly into the new(er) bed.
9/13 - The yellow pears have mostly died off and have been pruned back significantly to try and produce fruit in the remaining areas. The solar flares and black beauties have really taken off and we're getting more of those than any other large tomato right now. The chocolate cherries have started to boom and have been super tasty and satisfying being grown from seeds from Esteban's results last year. The dwarf tomatoes are coming in and looking healthy, and I will plan to put them in pots and try to keep them going over the winter.
10/18 - Temps are getting down into the low 30s at night so we pulled off the majority of the tomatoes and brought the jalapeño and just sweet pepper in as those are still in the root pouch bags. I've potted the dwarves and brought those in as well, we'll see how long they last inside. Kosar and Beau have done a mostly tolerable job of protecting the garden from pests this year, the only major pest has been Beau learning from Kosar and peeing on the tomatoes...
