Early Retirement Extreme Forums

So far, looking at stats in the catalogs, New Girl (small tomatoes, bigger than cherry) and Big Beef (large) seem to be my best choices.

Matt's Wild Cherry (not a hybrid!) and Monetsino, Cabernet, & Sweet Hearts are likely cherry/grape selections.

The gardeners from Bangladesh in my neighborhood grow their vine crops on large-grid wire horizontal support platforms just about a foot off the ground. Doesn't save any space, but likely helps with rot.

I totally forgot to oder peas and green beans... and some watermelon for fun. $30 sent to Victory Seeds (a local Oregon outfit specializing in non-hybrid seeds), who I haven't tried before. Ordered 5 varieties of green beans to see which does well and 3 varieties of peapods we favor.

10a and the sun is finally hitting the garden and house windows, so it's off to work on the anti-rabbit-fencing!

jennypenny wrote:re: tomatoes
We do really well with Brandywine, Rutgers, and Beefsteak here.

Their growing season is too long for northern Oregon. Southern Oregon is okay. Confirmed in "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades".

@JP: HUNDREDS of strawberry plants? I'm excited to see how you end up growing them. I just ordered a mere 25 strawberry plants, supposedly runnerless. Since our yard is small, I'm going to experiment with growing them in hanging baskets.

Y'all got me motivated. After a bit of troubleshooting, here's my new setup and first batch of seedlings (tomatoes, celery, red peppers, eggplant, lettuce, broccoli raab, watermelon). Long story but it's stationed in our dining room. DH wasn't pleased at first, but he later conceded that it makes sense for our food to make a full circle.

llorona wrote:DH wasn't pleased at first, but he later conceded that it makes sense for our food to make a full circle.

LOL, hope the plumbing is still intact!

LOL, hope the plumbing is still intact!

Haha! Guess we forgot about THAT aspect of the circle.

jennypenny wrote:

George the original one wrote:>I ordered too many strawberrie
In my defense, they are the most reliable berries we grow and I don't have to fight off the birds for my fair share. If I can grow them in towers or gutters, I won't have to fight with the rabbits for them either.

If you have squirrels you might be fighting them for berries grown in gutters or on trellises.

llorona wrote:
Y'all got me motivated. After a bit of troubleshooting, here's my new setup and first batch of seedlings (tomatoes, celery, red peppers, eggplant, lettuce, broccoli raab, watermelon). Long story but it's stationed in our dining room. DH wasn't pleased at first, but he later conceded that it makes sense for our food to make a full circle.

You can move your lights down even closer to the pots/plants - 3 cms (an inch or so) is sufficient. Since light is often the biggest problem when growing indoors it makes sense to get as much light out of your set up as possible.

@EMJ - Thanks! Appreciate the tip - it's our first time with grow lights. (Damn - these things are bright!) We tried lowering the lights but some of the seedlings-to-be were left in the dark. We'll try shifting things around later.

The weather today was so wonderful that I couldn't miss out on an hour in the garden. First walked around and plucked small rocks weathered out of the soil and then planted a row of sugar snap peas. Probably a bit early, but I'm not sure what works yet here at the retirement home and I've got enough seed for another three rows.

I don't think it's too early. The field man here at work says there isn't supposed to be any more hard freezes this spring, and if the ground wasn't so muddy I think they would be planting peas. They will be soon.

It's so muddy the nursery where I'm buying my cedar trees can't get their trees dug yet. Good planting weather for me means bad harvesting weather for them. What's wrong with this picture?

I'm dreaming of gardening. 6pm has some cute rain/garden boots on sale. I like the Tretorn high shaft yellow ones and the red Chookas with the dual straps. I'll probably go with the Tretorns because they have a drawstring at the top. The bees will love them.

Now that we've had a good snow, once it melts I'm going to start greens under the row covers outside.

Spring is approaching fast, I have promised myself that I will ramp up the veg growing efforts this year. There's so much to think about, I really wish I had gotten around to reading my new growing books and planning sooner. Ah well!

I'll be double digging this weekend with any luck in preparation for adding compost and seed sowing in spring, which reminds me, I need to take stock of seeds I already have and order more in. I also need to source some compost, while I have diligently composted all my bio waste since last spring, I have produced only about 10-15L of compost once it has decomposed, still not too bad going from 2 mouths.

Most of the peas and sugar snap peas that I planted a couple months ago were decimated by snails and slugs, but a couple of seedlings survived and thrived. Here is today's "haul:"


These are the Yukon gold potato tubers that were planted a while back. They didn't do anything for the longest time, then a couple weeks ago the plants starting sprouting like crazy. Although I may have planted them too close together, they don't seem to mind. It will be interesting to see what happens it's time to dig up the potatoes.

I see you've mounded once, but you should mound again. Far too much greenery above ground to get a good crop of yukons!

@GTOO: Thanks! I have mounded a couple times already - this shows how much they're sprouted in the past three days - but I will do again.

Yukons are a determinate variety, so they set all their future tubers at roughly the same time. To increase that set, you have to stay on top of the mounding early on. Just bury them now and then they'll have plenty of sprout locations.

Indeterminate varieties will continue to set tubers, so their mounding needs to be more continuous.

@GTOO: Appreciate the info. I had no idea Yukons would get this high! I just mounded them again. Will let you know how it turns out.

Next year I'll probably try growing them in the ground (where there's more dirt to maneuver) or in a wire cage.

BTW, I saw that you're planting sugar snap peas. The ones that I harvested yesterday were absolutely delicious -- and the plants are very pretty to look at. If you have a good harvest, you'll enjoy them immensely.

A couple of sugar snap peas have popped aboveground after the past few days of warm weather; that's taken about 2 weeks instead of 10 days, so generally not warm enough yet. Today is 50F & misty, grey & dark grey skies, everything is soaked, but the rain gauge that can measure 0.01" of rainfall says nothing has come down, LOL.

Unexpectedly, I've been out digging holes because UPS says my apple and filbert trees are arriving today. I'm not the only one digging holes as the warm spell also caused the moles, voles, & mice to stir around. Not sure which one has a tunnel run under the strawberries, but they don't mound up, so I doubt that belongs to a mole. There's an exit hole at each end of the row... fortunately whatever critter it is doesn't like strawberries. Knocked over one molehill and there was a big black beetle at the top of the tunnel.