I feel quite honored to have been asked by Niki Jabbour (author of two great gardening books - Groundbreaking Food Gardens, and The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener and the host of the weekly gardening radio show that I've been fortunate enough to participate in a few times each gardening season) to contribute to a wonderful gardening blog, Savvy Gardening.  The article can be found here.  Thanks, Niki, and have a superb 2014 garden!

Today was a good transplanting day (and I also got to listen to the first Boston Red Sox game, streamed in the garage on my laptop, as background enjoyment!). I am pretty much through at least a few transplants of most everything we will have as seedlings this year. Anything that germinated poorly or struggled as young seedlings was reseeded yesterday.

There are trays of tiny seedlings in my driveway!

What an odd year so far (I think I've alluded to that in pretty much all blog posts recently). I just came in from a 4 hour transplant fest in the garage; it is very "springy" out there - a bit muggy, kind of warm, a gentle rain falling. When I poke my head out to look around there are blooming cherry trees, Spirea and Forsythia...just beautiful. 

Transplanting tiny seedlings (and they are particularly tiny this year, due to the lack of warmth) is really therapeutic. In just a few days, I have all eggplant, hot and sweet peppers, the Cossack Pineapple ground cherries, and tomatoes from Anna Russian up to Green Giant (plus two flats of Sungold) now separated into 3 inch pots, all sitting on the floor of my garage. Not only do they need a rest after the shock of pulling them from their brethren, but we are due for heavy rain today, and mid 30s tomorrow night. My plans are to start moving flats into the driveway on Monday, which will free up more space for more seedlings.

One confounding issue for me this year that is new (each season there seems to be something new - this year there are two "something new" issues) is the impact of moving flats into the sun too soon, on a day that was too windy - I've lost some plants to stems that shrivel up at the top part of the stem near the cotyledon leaves.  I already know that some replanting is necessary, and that will take place tomorrow. This way I will fill in those that didn't germinate well or fell victim to poor spring conditions - not all that many, but some.  The other "new" issue was loss of some chard and lettuce to bird activity IN my garage - either chickadees or wrens are - or were -- building nests in there, and it seemed they favored some of my tender seedling tips either for food or nest material. 

If the weather warms, it will probably take a good 3 weeks to size up my transplanted seedling to planting size (or a size appropriate for them to leave home)....stay tuned.  Pics to follow as well - right now I am going to get off of my feet!

I've added some pics below - progress on transplanting, my garage of tiny seedlings, and some spring color from our yard!

I've got a few boxes of pots, web trays, labels...and 10 bags of MetroMix 360 in my truck.  Once it warms a bit, the kayaks will leave the garage, replaced by my seedling transplanting set up, including the contents of my truck.

Today it begins....last night hopefully saw the last frost of the season. If we get the needed warm weather over the next 3-4 weeks, veggie seedlings will be ready to leave home in 3-4 weeks. I will blog often in the coming weeks, as it is time to garden!  Rows need to be dug, seedlings need to be transplanted or sewn....this is it, folks!  Are you ready?

Just a short blurb for this chilly Monday morning...

The good news is that I have a few flats of transplanted beets, greens and lettuce on my garage floor.  

The less-than-good news - I've yet to start working with eggplant, tomatoes or peppers. Looking at the weather forecast, Thursday seems to be a most important day....there are no nights below freezing beyond that day. So....my current plans are to begin transplanting later today or tomorrow; I need to make room for flats, need to purchase supplies - working in a cold garage isn't much fun (for me or the plants).  If all goes well, some progress will be made and flats will be getting some well-deserved (and needed) sunshine by the weekend.

Of course, this also means that plants won't be ready to leave home until late April, so this unusually cold spring will translate into some needed patience!  

Don't worry....we will get there eventually!  One observation of how unusual the weather is - our Bradford Pear is fully blossoming - and in advance of our flowering cherry.  I don't think we've ever experienced that....the spring flowering plants are as confused as I am!

The sound you hear are the colliding stems of hundreds of shivering seedlings in my garage under the shop lights. I did a bit of looking back at my garden records to see when I started transplanting seedlings.  This is what I found;

2013 - greens and beets - transplanted March 10, into the garden April 9.  Eggplant and peppers - transplanted starting March 25.  Tomatoes - transplanted starting March 29.

2012 - greens and beets transplanted starting march 9.  Eggplant and peppers - transplanted starting March 15; Tomatoes - started transplanting March 19

2011 - started transplanting tomatoes at the end of March

I could list lots more dates, but this provides both a comforting and a worrying picture.  I've not transplanted a single seedling yet because it has simply been too cold, and too wet.  It is too cold to let the seedlings sun themselves, and the garage has been too cold to advance the seedlings very much. I am already a few weeks behind on beets and greens, which concerns me because it will mean a shorter lettuce season; once the inevitable furnace-like late spring days hit, lettuce bolts and goes vertical (and bitter).

Looking ahead at the weather forecasts, it seems like alternating periods of delightful warmth and depressing, lingering cool and wet before things settle out to favorable conditions for young seedlings. I figure that if I can start transplanting tomatoes and peppers within the next few weeks, they will be ready to leave home by mid to late April as long as the weather cooperates.

And so..stay tuned for future progress reports. I won't know for sure which varieties will be available as seedlings until I start to work with the plants, so the draft life on the From The Vine page is just that - draft....

Stay warm and dry, all!  Spring and nice weather is, after all, inevitable.  For whatever reason, it just seems to be requiring a bit more patience this year.

I recently wrote about the challenging gardening season of 2013, and highlighted (low-lighted?) how we were specifically impacted by those challenges. Being an optimist, here is how this season is going to go better for our crops.

More from less!  Rather than pack 500 containers into our driveway and plant out our entire side garden, less plants with greater space will hopefully allow for better air circulation and sun exposure, reducing spread of foliage diseases. I will also have more time to trouble shoot and care for individual plants due to being less overwhelmed.

If it doesn't do well in a particular spot, don't grow it there! No more tomatoes will be planted in the big side garden, and the size will be significantly reduced, eliminating the heavily shaded back portion. The big (less big, now) garden will be mainly for spring greens and beets, and some beans, squash and cukes. Of course, the front row of Sungolds are a must, but they did well last year, and it is the part with the best sun (and cherry tomatoes are a bit less demanding).

Extend the bleaching to anything that comes in contact with the plant or containers. This means bleaching the driveway surface, stakes and cages. It isn't as bad as it sounds, because I will be bleaching far fewer containers. 

Try staggering plantings of tomatoes. Although it is always a challenge to bring plants along in a healthy state for later planting, I am considering planting some tomatoes at 3 week intervals, hoping that each planting will find a spell of weather most favorable; if a particular planting struggles due to a bad patch, a later (or earlier) one will hopefully be happier.

That's what I will be trying....we shall see how it all works out!

Sunday was so nice - in fact, it is hard to believe (as I hear sleet blowing against the windows and note the temperature of 21 degrees) that this picture was taken yesterday!

That flat of greens is now under shop lights in my garage. Up in the office, the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are all looking great - germination looks to be excellent this year, and quick as well. On Wednesday I will plant a few fill ins and additional project varieties for the year, as well as move a few tomato flats under the garage shop lights.  See more pics below!

When I think back to the 2013 garden, many details will come to mind, both good and bad. All seasons are different, but what I think is really important is to learn from experience. If the same things go wrong year after year, it gets pretty discouraging. So with this in mind, let's look back at 2013....

We had a cool, wet spring, which delayed everything by at least a week. There was no shortage of rain throughout the spring, with the flip-side being a lack of sun during critical times (tomato foliage stayed wet at night, wet soil was detrimental to some direct seeded crops). Though it seemed like a (typically) warm summer, we had few if any days at 100 degrees or over, and far fewer in the 90s than recent summers. More moderate temperatures should be good for fruit set of tomatoes, but the high humidity blunted the benefit somewhat.

Due to the abundance of moisture, diseases were a far more significant issue for me than critter attacks; I don't think I saw a single tomato horn worm, and no more than a few tomato fruit worms; there were few stink bugs, no white fly, no deer attacks until late in the season (when I got a bit lazy keeping the water scarecrows with fresh batteries). 

But....disease.  It just happened to be a season when I needed to fully plant out both side dirt garden and driveway garden to get pictures for the book. I learned that the side garden, which produced such great results when we first installed it in 1992, is now just awful for tomatoes. Surrounding trees are now much taller and leading to reduced direct sun exposure. And the soil seems not only nutritionally tired, but sufficiently infected with Fusarium wilt that planting it wasn't worth the effort. 

As for the driveway garden, my plants were just too close together to allow for air circulation and good drying; in a wet season, this meant a pretty heavy attack of early blight, with some septoria, ending with significant Fusarium wilt. For the quantity of tomato plants, the yield was very disappointing - though the flavors were just delicious for the most part. Hot peppers thrived, sweet peppers and eggplant did well.  The other problem - and this happens every recent season - the 5 gallon grow bags are wonderful for Dwarf tomatoes, but when grown in the center of the driveway, end up toppling over. I don't have the driveway garden rigged to provide robust vertical support for those particular plants (the eggplant and peppers, which don't grow as tall and heavy, do fine).  The bags that are placed against the edge tomato pots work, since I can tie them to a stake placed in front of the large pots.

To summarize:

Side (dirt) garden issues:

Planted too late
Too much rain - water often pooled
Garden location has degraded over the years - no longer sufficient sun, soil fertility falling, diseases increasing
Wasn't vigilant with Water Scarecrow battery refresh; hungry deer found me late in the season
Fair (lettuce, Sungold) to poor (beets, many other tomatoes) to no (squash, beans, many other tomatoes) yields

Driveway garden

Planted too closely; insufficient air circulation/sun exposure to dry foliage
Weather brought on disease
Center tomato grow bags toppled
Fair yields for most tomatoes, but those that were harvested had excellent flavor
Sweet and hot peppers and eggplant did well
Very few insect or worm pests noted
Deer found the driveway late in the season due to a few instances of dead batteries in the Water Scarecrows

In my next blog, I will talk about some ideas for the coming season, and those things that will be done differently in effort to achieve better results.