2020 Garden Update: February 10

We've had wet, warm weather much of the last week here in North Alabama, which means lots of plants are sprouting and growing outdoors. With a cold snap moving in this week, I'm hopeful that my sheltered backyard will be protected from the worst of any frost, but the only seeds already planted there (green peas and lettuces) are cold hardy, anyway. Still, there has been plenty to do whenever the sun comes out!

My indoor seeds are doing well, with the Purple Bumblebee tomatoes germinating really nicely in spite of being seeds left over from last year. The sunflower and cucumber seeds are also sprouting robustly. Hopefully the few stragglers will make an appearance soon. The zucchini, the Purple Russian tomatoes, and the straightneck yellow squash are the only seeds not to show any signs of life yet, and all of those are also leftovers from last year.

Outdoors we are slowly bringing in garden soil for the raised beds (always a big expense and a lot of work when you have to start from scratch!). We went back to the old house and divided some of the daylilies and irises already growing there and transplanted some babies to the front yard beds at the new house. There will be plenty growing for the new owners at the old place, but now they won't have to be divided as soon over there. Hopefully our transplants will spread and grow as well as they had in the old garden! If the cold snaps should kill any of our transplants it will be OK because we can replace them later.

The daffodils are coming along in the front and back beds, and we have our first flowers now, which is very exciting. I'm already wishing we had planted more bulbs back in the fall! This coming fall I will have a better sense of the new garden spaces and what I want them to include and look like through each season, but I expect to have 15-20 years with this garden to make it everything it can be.

While I'm at it, here's a reminder to novice gardeners not to plant mint in open areas or large beds. It will take over! The previous owner planted mint in the front beds, and I have been pulling it up nonstop ever since we moved in. I love mint, but I always grow it in a container because it's so opportunistic. Put your mint in a nice big pot and let it poke along through the winter. It is really hard to kill!

That's the garden update for February 10, 2020. I'll post a report on the progress again next week!

Garden Wishlist for 2020: Tomatoes

Tomatoes! The one vegetable I absolutely have to grow every year is tomatoes. We eat tons of them! I prefer cherry and grape varieties because they're better suited to our needs and are more prolific, making it less nerve wracking to lose a few to the local wildlife. Last year I experimented with growing tomato plants from seeds that I bought at Baker Creek Seeds. The results were mixed. Heirloom varieties were pickier and more delicate than sturdy starts I bought at Lowe's, and some of the specialty tomatoes disappointed us in terms of flavor, but others were really tasty. I also got a huge thrill out of growing them and having so many different kinds. This year I'm still interested in growing from seed, but with less experimental space I want the tomatoes I grow to be tasty, disease resistant, and prolific. I'm considering some determinate varieties in addition to my usual indeterminate types so that I can expand the container garden effort on the patio to include more tomatoes there.

2019 Tomatoes

Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry

From Baker Creek Seeds -

Barry's Crazy Cherry (husband thought they were bland, but we had a lot of them, very prolific and small)

Russian Purple (critters got almost all of them and yield was low, but they were delicious, plum size, juicy)

Purple Bumblebee (yielded less and succumbed to problems faster but quite tasty)

Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry (Tasty and good yield - definitely the winner of the Baker Creek picks! They were larger than the usual cherry but excellent in a variety of dishes and salads.)


From Lowe's (Bonnie Plants brand)

Bonnie Plants cherry tomatoes

Husky Cherry Red (solid producer that grew well and survived better)

Sweet Million (early producer and grew as well as Husky Cherry Red)

Volunteers from the previous year also popped up in some surprising places around the yard (thanks, chipmunks!), and I transplanted several of these to the kitchen garden. None of them produced a lot, and they were an odd hybrid of the cherry types I grew in 2018, but we still got some bonus edible produce. I wasn't going to turn down free tomatoes!

In all I had about 14 tomato plants for 2019, which was probably way too many for three people. I gave away lots of tomatoes and froze several bags of them slow roasted with olive oil.



2020 Tomatoes

Of the Baker Creek seeds, I'm most likely to grow the Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry again, especially since I still have plenty of seeds. Other Baker Creek varieties I'm considering include:

2019 got tomato crazy! Let's do that again!

Black Cherry
Isis Candy Cherry
Pink Bumblebee
Sunrise Bumblebee
Orange Hat
Micro Tom

Bonnie Plants are the most widely available brand where I live, so I'll also be looking at these indeterminate types for starter plants later in the spring, in addition to the two types I had last year and liked:

Black Cherry (the Bonnie version)
Braveheart Cherry
Candyland Cherry
Chocolate Sprinkles
Midnight Snack Cherry
Sakura Cherry
Sun Sugar
Tidy Treats
Yellow Pear

Because I'm planning to have more containers this year, I also want to consider these determinate types:

Taste the tomato rainbow.

Red Robin Cherry
Tumbling Tom Yellow
Tumbling Tom Red
Sweet n Neat Cherry
Yellow Canary

Obviously, I've got way more contenders than space, but not all of the Bonnie varieties are likely to show up at my local garden centers, so that will limit my choices a fair bit before I get there. My goal is to have 8-10 plants in all with a variety of types and colors.

Which tomatoes will win a spot in the 2020 kitchen garden? Stay tuned to find out!