Shule's 2024 grow log

[Shule]

Well, I've been having a harder time getting my seeds started this year, for some reason. I've been feeling too tired to do it, and stuff. So, I've decided to try a different approach, this year. It's kind of late to start seeds the way I usually do it anyway.

So, I plan to direct-seed all my tomatoes, this year (sans volunteers). I figure they'll probably sprout when they're ready to grow, as long as I loosen the soil and keep it moist. Incidentally, there are no freezes on the radar for at least the next month. So, it seems like a great time to direct seed.

I plan to plant mustards while I'm at it.

I may try direct-seeding peppers, too.

Anyway, I figure it'll be nice to skip having to start the seeds in containers, transplant them, and then keep track of what I put where. I can record what seeds I put where more easily if I direct-seed, since I can put the seeds down and write them down before I bury them.

Lest some of the tomatoes don't sprout, I'm considering putting multiple varieties in the same spot (in some spots, anyway), and selecting for whatever sprouts/thrives the best.

For this project, the varieties I have the most seeds for are Cilantrovaya-B and Brandywine Pink. They're both great varieties (but I plan to plant numerous others, too).

To prevent Galapagos Island volunteers from getting mixed up with anything I direct-seed, I plan to plant potato-leaf varieties where that might be an issue (since Galapagos Island is RL).

I hope to plant winter watermelons later when it gets warmer. I kind of want to grow them in containers.

[pepperhead212]

A lady I see on another forum direct seeds all of her tomatoes (I think in WI, similar zone to yours), but under a milk jug for a mini greenhouse, with the bottom cut off. I think she starts them much earlier, though you should still have luck with some of them. Even under the jugs, she hasn't had much luck with peppers, some of the only things she starts inside - they just need much warmer soil to germinate.

Good luck, however you try them, and whatever seeds you try!

[Shule]

Okay, I planted and watered the peppers: two rows of them. I overseeded 14 holes. We'll see if they grow, and when; as long as they sprout by the middle of May, and don't get stunted, they should be good to get a decent harvest. Except for one planting spot, they're all a mixture of seeds from a particularly large yellow bell pepper, miscellaneous big yellow bell peppers, and Blot peppers. In the second row (the southern of the two), four spots from west to east, I planted seeds of both Jimmy Nardello Italian and Orange Mini Bell. All the big yellow bell peppers are from seeds I saved last year (so, they're probably Canary Bell, but possibly Golden California Wonder, or possibly a cross between either of those and/or Blot). The Blot pepper seeds are from saved seeds (so, likely cross-pollinated with Canary Bell).

I prepared ground to plant some tomatoes next week. Brandywine-types seem to have great cold-tolerance for germination; so, I'll probably plant the Brandywine types first.

Ooh. One nice thing about this is I shouldn't have to worry about damping off disease and indoor mites.

If the peppers don't sprout, I can plant watermelons, corn, beans or something there instead, since by the time I'll need them to have sprouted, that's near the time when I should plant watermelons.

I did prefertilize the soil for all the ground I've prepared so far, but not with as much as I added last year.

[Shule]

On Tuesday, I overseeded 5 holes with Brandywine Pink, and 4 with Cilantrovaya-B (and watered them, of course).

[MissS]

@Shule, many years ago more than half of my tomatoes were direct seeded into the garden. They did great and caught up with their indoor raised siblings quite fast. Production was only about a week later.

Your post here makes me wonder why I quit doing this because it worked so well for me. I guess that once I got on the internet that I had to do it the same way as everyone else.

I don't know anything about the peppers but you will be quite pleased with your tomatoes.

[Shule]

Some tomatoes are sprouting. I'm not sure which ones aren't volunteers, yet (but when I can see the leaf type, that will make it more apparent).

Today, I went outside and looked at the planting holes where I had planted the peppers. They're in an area with black plastic covering it. Anyway, I saw a small part of a cat hanging out from underneath one of the holes. There was a cat underneath the black plastic, just warming itself or something. I nudged the cat with my foot to see if it was alive, and it came out, and ran to the other side of the yard. I started laughing. By the cat's expression, it seemed to think it was funny, too.

[Shule]

I gave my neighbor kitty-corner from me some Cilantrovaya-B seeds, since she wanted a yellow or orange cherry tomato. I shortened the name to Caya, since Cilantrovaya-B takes a lot of space to write down. I'm excited to see what she thinks.

So, if the seeds make the rounds, this is what the parent plant was like (in 2023):

- Early
- Potato leaf
- Large round cherry
- Yellow fruit (not orange)
- It has a sweet substance on its outer skin (it's a unique trait that I like a lot); I don't know what makes the skin sweet, but you can taste it by licking the fruit without puncturing it
- Sweet fruit (but it wasn't just sweet; it had other flavor and was quite good)
- Indeterminate, but the plant was fairly compact (the grandparent plant was fairly large, though)
- Fruits all season
- Prolific
- It doesn't have any relation to cilantro, except for the name and how one of it's ancestors had a cilantro aftertaste in one to a few of its first fruits (that's another reason I shortened the name; Cilantro's pretty controversial).
- A number of people who tasted it were very impressed with the flavor.

[Shule]

It's raining, and I saw two toads out in the garden, this evening.

[Shule]

Two direct-seeded pepper seedlings have sprouted, so far. So, it looks like it can work. Hopefully the others all sprout.

Some of the tomatoes have sprouted (and I can tell that at least one of them is potato leaf—so, it's probably one I planted).

[JayneR13]

Interesting that you more Southern zone 5 folk have success growing tomatoes from direct seed. I'm further north, just a few miles from Lambeau Field, and there's no way tomatoes would produce if I tried them from seed. My growing season is usually Memorial Day through mid-October reliably. I've seen presentations on winter sowing and have been intrigued, but I'm sure the soil has to be warm enough for the seeds to sprout. Around here, that's mid-May if we're lucky. I haven't been able to plant mid-April potatoes for a few years.

[MissS]

Interesting that you more Southern zone 5 folk have success growing tomatoes from direct seed. I'm further north, just a few miles from Lambeau Field, and there's no way tomatoes would produce if I tried them from seed. My growing season is usually Memorial Day through mid-October reliably. I've seen presentations on winter sowing and have been intrigued, but I'm sure the soil has to be warm enough for the seeds to sprout. Around here, that's mid-May if we're lucky. I haven't been able to plant mid-April potatoes for a few years.

You can do it there and you would be surprised. This year I have had a few seedlings pop up in May. I don't plant out until June. You should see the beautiful plants that these volunteers are. Nice compact, tight plants with wonderfully thick stems. I wish I knew which varieties they are. Because I don't, they will get pulled.

[Shule]

@JayneR13
My frost-free growing season is usually about five months. The hardest thing isn't how much time there is in the season, though (five months is plenty of time if your plants are growing at a decent rate), but one of the things is how ideal your garden soil is for seed-starting, and how often it's cold, dry, or windy (which can be an issue for young seedlings). That sort of thing can change from year to year.

[JayneR13]

Indeed it can! My soil isn’t the best right now because I bought some compost a few years back that turned out to be unfinished. Not only did I have weed seeds galore, the nutrient level dropped precipitously the third year. So I’ve been amending big time with yard waste and yes, some fertilizer I’ve had lying around. I also put what was left of my mushroom growing mix in my beds. This included soy hulls, which the birds have loved! Things are getting better, slowly.

[Shule]

Okay, none of the peppers sprouted. The ones I thought sprouted might have been weeds, too (at least one of them was; the other one died; so, I don't know if it was a pepper).

Fortunately, lots of volunteer tomatoes sprouted which have taken the place of the peppers, and I transplanted volunteers around, too (at least some of these, if not all, are probably Galapagos Island cherry tomatoes, but some of them look somewhat different from the others; so, I'm hoping it crossed with something and I get another color of fruit or something, with bigger fruit). I'm caging several of them, since the plants get huge (they're some of my biggest tomato plants I've grown; they weren't the first few times I grew them, though, without black plastic); I've never caged Galapagos Island before; so, we'll see what happens.

I seeded some Celebrity F2s late. I hope they survive and grow. We already had weather up to 101° F. So, hopefully they don't get stunted. Some of them died. The ones in the spot where I had Orange Jazz one year are doing the best of the Celebrity F2s.

The Caya tomatoes, and the Pink Brandywines are doing well. The last Caya tomato to be thinned seems especially vigorous. One of the Pink Brandywines is in the same spot as its parent.

At least one of the Caya tomatoes and a number of the volunteers have set fruits. So have some of the wonderberries.

I probably have about 25 holes with volunteer wonderberries in them (they volunteer nicely). That's a lot of wonderberries. I hope the birds eat their fill. When I cleaned up the garden, I probably found 1.5 to 3 gallons worth of wonderberry seeds lying around in the dust (a high percentage of the garden dust was wonderberry seeds). I was impressed at that (I think I had to throw them away; so, the dump might get berries, now). Maybe now that we pruned our blackcurrants down to the ground the birds will eat wonderberries.

We still have a bag of frozen wonderberries from last year that I've been using on pizza and stuff. They make a good pizza topping.

There's only one tomato (a volunteer) on the side of the garden that is filled with wonderberries (granted, I have several wonderberries on the other side with the tomatoes, too—in the shaded portions). I'm guessing the tomato something like Cal Ace. I should fertilize it; it looks a little dry and lonely since I thinned the wonderberries and weeds out of its spot. There are no Galapagos Islands on that side of the garden.

We have chamomile all over the place. It's probably preventing other weeds from growing, though.

It looks like after another day of ~100 degree weather, we're forecasted to get temperatures in the 80s for a while, which should be great for seeding watermelon (June 25th is super late to start them, but it may be worth a try, with an early variety like Verona or Blacktail Mountain).

[Shule]

At least two of the Brandywine Pink tomatoes are setting fruit. Same for one of the volunteers that verifiably is not Galapagos Island. All the volunteers are RL, this year. The other kinds of tomatoes already set fruit in June some time ago.

[Shule]

We got six ripe wonderberries from one of the unthinned plants, today (it was the first to ripen of all the wonderberries, as far as I've noticed).

[Shule]

As tempting as it was to eat all six wonderberries, I decided to do some selective breeding (for earliness) with the four ripest of them by squishing them into spots that don't have wonderberries so they'll volunteer there next year. I mean, they're the first to get ripe out of probably 20-something plants. So . . . I don't want to miss out on that.

The remaining two were delicious. They tasted a lot like watermelon.

[Shule]

We just got 16 new tomato cages (1 arrived yesterday, 15 arrived today). We only ordered 14 for today, but they shipped us 15; Walmart said we could keep the extra. They're all on tomatoes, now. They're one rung taller than our old cages; so, that's exciting. It was pretty hot today.

The 1 that arrived yesterday was to see if we liked them enough to get 14 more. They had free one-day shipping if you got $35+ so, I got a box of fruit and grain bars and 24 pounds of garden rotini to go with the single cage.

[Shule]

I forgot to mention it, but we got our first ripe tomatoes on Monday, July 8th, 2024 (three Galapagos Island fruits, all from the same volunteer plant). I actually haven't harvested them yet, which is a bit odd for me—but it'll be nice to try the first ones extra ripe, I suppose.

[Shule]

Well, as of a few days ago or so, our hot weather is back in full force. So, that's exciting.

I harvested the ripe wonderberries and ate them; there are a fair amount.

I'm getting the most berries on the unthinned patches of plants, so far.

The earwigs are looking extremely healthy and lively this year. They're bigger than usual, too. Earwigs eat spidermites, aphids, fleas, some eggs, and such.