The first seeds of the season are now sitting in MetroMix 360, resting comfortably on a south-facing window in my office. I guess that makes it official - game on! This afternoon, I set up a table in my driveway, filled 40 cells in a 50 cell plug flat try with dry mix, and planted an array of beets, collards, kale, chard, mustard and lettuce. After I sprinkled a bit of mix over the top to cover the seeds, misted with water and draped some Saran wrap over the top, up it went to my office for what should be a pretty quick germination. This weekend I hope to do the same with peppers and eggplant. Tomatoes will follow in mid February, along with some flowers and herbs. Once the season starts, there is never a dull moment!
On Saturday I shivered my way through the first garden talk/workshop of the year, at West Point on the Eno. Imagine...talking about tomatoes on what felt like the coldest morning of the winter! I appreciated the attention of a similarly shivering audience (even more so...at least I got to stand up and walk around!). We discussed an awful lot about tomatoes - colors, flavors, sizes, shapes, many stories - and I hope it inspired people to grow something out of the ordinary. I also shared my method of seed starting, and encourage attendees with lingering (or new) questions to shoot me an email.
If I collect a quantity of questions (especially if I ended up overwhelming or confusing people a bit), I will do a future blog post collecting them all together. I look forward to my next talk at that venue, on Sunday April 14; at that session we will talk about tomato growing - support, trouble shooting, care and maintenance, into a bit on harvesting and seed saving. I should have plenty of interesting seedlings with me.
Over the past two weeks I also managed to get the 2013 Northern Hemisphere phase of our Dwarf Tomato project up and running, and distributed loads of seeds all over the country...and a few places elsewhere. So, my tasks at hand are now continuing on with the text part of my tomato book, my own garden planning, seedling sales planning and a few magazine articles and workshops. Not much happening at all, hey.....
On Saturday I shivered my way through the first garden talk/workshop of the year, at West Point on the Eno. Imagine...talking about tomatoes on what felt like the coldest morning of the winter! I appreciated the attention of a similarly shivering audience (even more so...at least I got to stand up and walk around!). We discussed an awful lot about tomatoes - colors, flavors, sizes, shapes, many stories - and I hope it inspired people to grow something out of the ordinary. I also shared my method of seed starting, and encourage attendees with lingering (or new) questions to shoot me an email.
If I collect a quantity of questions (especially if I ended up overwhelming or confusing people a bit), I will do a future blog post collecting them all together. I look forward to my next talk at that venue, on Sunday April 14; at that session we will talk about tomato growing - support, trouble shooting, care and maintenance, into a bit on harvesting and seed saving. I should have plenty of interesting seedlings with me.
Over the past two weeks I also managed to get the 2013 Northern Hemisphere phase of our Dwarf Tomato project up and running, and distributed loads of seeds all over the country...and a few places elsewhere. So, my tasks at hand are now continuing on with the text part of my tomato book, my own garden planning, seedling sales planning and a few magazine articles and workshops. Not much happening at all, hey.....
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