Garden Ideas

A Gift from the Garden

A young friend of mine is starting his first garden this year.  I grew some plants to help him get started but also wanted to share some seeds with him.

Instead of just handing him a jumble of envelopes with seeds, I wanted to help him start his garden planning on a positive note.  I made a Seed Book for him to build on for the future.

I used a 3 ring notebook that had a clear pocket on the front and back.  I gathered some old seed catalogs that had some good graphics and did a cut and paste collage for the front cover. 

Inside, I used baseball/game card sleeves and No. 1 2 1/4" by 3 1/2" Kraft coin envelopes to organize the seeds I was sharing with him.  In the future, he will be able to add to his collection and keep the different types of plants organized.  I use a similar notebook for my own seed collection and it is a great space saver.

This would be a wonderful way to start for a child's garden or maybe even a school garden project. 

I figure I'm on to something here since I recently discovered one of my tomato breeder friends uses the same set up for cataloging his tomato seed varieties.

2017 Garden Season

I got a little side-tracked last year with work and expanding the garden and somehow did not get back to this site.

We'll try a reboot this year. 

Honestly, last season could have been better.  I think I reached the saturation point on experimenting and pushing the envelope regarding how much space a plant needs in a container garden environment. 

Growing all of the tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets was not a great choice.  I learned that some varieties of tomatoes have no problem with a bucket.  Other varieties prefer to spread their roots out more.  I also learned that planting in buckets offers the temptation to nudge the plants a little closer together--that was disastrous!  I had problems with pests, leaf disease and low productivity.  Back to the drawing board on that.

The takeaway on the tomato bucket issues were to use them for smaller profile tomatoes like my San Marzano and Striped Romans but to go back to the 2' by 3' tubs for the larger plants like Cherokee Purple, Chile Verde.  I'm also breaking down and planting Abe Lincoln, and two other beefsteak varieties in ground this year.  I will also plant the experimental crosses I'm growing in buckets(more on that later).  I learned that the breeders plant crosses in space saving buckets since they are only growing for a few good fruits to collect seeds.  Makes sense.

A few other changes in the garden include the addition of 4 new raised beds at ground level and two new greenhouses.  We also are in the process of giving a facelift to the two no-till beds that were originally just piles of organic materials.  Now they will have raised bed walls to contain the soil and mulch.

It's going to be a great year!