Garden Update, January 27

Is everyone gardening yet? I want to give you an update on the ‘garden’ I planted December 29th. 

The perennial tomatoes I tried to grow, that have suffered through aphids and spider mites, have died. I am not surprised. I will be starting new tomato seedlings in a few weeks along with some peppers.

The sweet potatoes are growing, but are still infested with spider mites, so I am going to throw them out. One of the reasons for this decision is because when I was checking our stored sweet potatoes, I found a few that were sprouting. This gives me another source of sweet potato slips for planting, so I am not going to keep doing chemical treatments to try to get rid of the bugs.

Many of our regular potatoes we dug last summer are also sprouting. I am going to put them in the garage, where it is cooler, and cover them with newspaper and see if I can slow down the sprouts. Then I will try planting these around March 1st for our first crop of potatoes for the summer.

The Walla Walla onions are doing pretty good in the window. It was time to give them a haircut. After onion seedlings get to be about three inches tall, I trim them back to about an inch and a half. This promotes growth of the onion bulb along with the greens. 

The cabbage is doing well and is ready to be thinned out. I used to try pulling up the smaller, weaker seedlings, but invariably either pulled up or broke off some of the plants I was trying to save. So now, I cut the extras down with scissors. It works much better.

I also used the same technique to thin out the spinach and broccoli. 

There was only one kale plant that came up and it is very small. That tells me that kale seeds do not remain viable as long as cabbage, broccoli and spinach. But, that is okay I guess, because the three mystery plants that came up in the onion tub turned out to be kale. Isn’t it funny how some things work?

In the next few weeks I will be starting quite a few more seedlings. I’ll keep you updated on what and when. By March 1st I will start putting things out in the garden if everything goes according to plan. You know, sometimes plans work and sometimes they don’t. It’s always important to have a back up plan, just in case. Do you have one?


Until next time – Fern