First starts of the season 2024

It’s been raining all day, snowed a little last night and Ive just been feeling like hanging out at home organizing my seeds and did some planting inside today. Its now about 7 weeks before the season starts and hopefully the last frost. It’s time for me to get more serious about the placement of where I am planting things. I worked on my garden map last night and made some progress on that. The onions that I planted inside in February are looking great! This is my first time growing onions. The variety that Im growing is from Eden Brothers and are Red Carpet and also Yellow Sweet Spanish. I am not sure about how well they will do here in Nevada as they are considered a Long Day variety and need at least 14-16 hrs of sunlight and usually do best in northern regions that are zone 6 and colder. I am zone 6 and I believe we get 15 hours of daylight but I am not certain. I am just going to try them and hope for the best.

I decided to start the onions inside early to get a head start.This will also be my first time growing potatoes and I plan on growing them as companions in the same garden box so hopefully they do well together. 

Look at these baby snapdragons!! They are doing so well, The ones that are pictured closest to the camera are an orange bronze variety that are from seeds that I harvested in the fall. I am excited that they are growing. 

The seedling that are furthest away are new ones that I just purchased from Eden Brothers called Passion Red Mix. I could not resist these, they are hopefully going to be as vibrant as their photos showed.

Since my snapdragons did so well last year even in the heat of the summer, I wanted to expand on my color varieties for this year and grow much more.

Also an update on my Lisianthus that I started in January, (pictured to the left) they are doing great also. I transplanted them into cups so I can use the trays for other seed starts since I am very limited with space in my little apartment. I will keep them in these until they are ready to plant out in May.

More things that I planted today were some Dahlia seeds that I collected in the fall from some plants that I grew from seeds last spring. It was my first time growing Dahlias and also collecting the seed pods so I am excited to see if they come out looking close to the last flower or if they look completely different. These flowers are so interesting, as Ive read that seeds will always be different than the mother plant depending on how they are pollinated.  

Other seeds that started today are orange marigolds, some Cleome, Bells Of Ireland, Green Ammi and Dara. Pictured below

San Marzano Tomatoes

Tomatoes have always been a favorite of mine to grow. I love eating them fresh out of the garden. My favorite has always been sweet cherry varieties. Last spring 2023, I wanted to try something different and make sauce so I grew some San Marzano tomatoes. I have grown other Roma tomatoes to make salsas in the past but I really wanted to try one that was better for sauces so I chose this one. 

One thing that I noticed with these right from the beginning was that they took longer to ripen than other varieties that Ive grown. I don’t know if it was because I got such a late start on them or if it is just this variety. We did have lots of colder weather for a long time and tons of rain into late June so I felt that might have been the reason. Also I noticed a lot of the first blossoms were dropping off and I thought it was possibly a pest but I wasn’t unable to find anything.  After a few weeks when the temperatures warmed up, they did much better. These tomatoes were beautiful and I was very impressed by the quality.

 I wasn’t able to start harvesting until around September and I still had a ton of green tomatoes on the vines into October so I began picking the rest of them and allowing them to continue to ripen on the vine. The amount of tomatoes on these plants really surprised me. Most of them had clusters of 8 and were about 4 inches long. 

It was fun making tomato sauce for pizza and also pasta but I still had a ton of extra, so I gave many away to my friends and coworkers,

I think that I overdid it and planted too many so I will probably only grow maybe 3 plants instead of 12 this coming spring. I had one garden bed dedicated to these and grew some cosmos and zinnia on the edges along with basil and celery. 

During October I was also harvesting a lot of flower seeds as well as tomatoes and getting the yard cleaned up for fall. The night time temps start dropping early and I had to get a head start on things so that I could focus on digging up my Dahlia tubers for storage for the winter. This was another project that I was new at and had to do a lot of research about it before hand. You can read more about what I learned about Dahlias and storing in my climate at the link below.

Dahlia Storage - Click on heading to the left to read the post

The picture above shows how the San Marzano grow in clusters. I left many of them on the vines to fully ripen. Once ripened, I boiled them for a minute in a pot of hot water and pealed the skins off. Then I chopped and blended them and added my spices to make the sauce. 

Since I have not ever made sauces before I searched for recipes and resources online of how to do it. I was excited to also find a recipe for pizza using a cast iron skillet and it turned out perfect. I have a gluten allergy so I do not eat gluten but I made this for a friend of mine and he loved it.  Because I was pressed for time, some of the remaining tomatoes I had were put into the freezer. I left the skins on and put them into ziplocs to freeze for making roasts and soups in the future. I didn’t know this could be done but someone online mentioned it so I thought it was better than letting them go to waste. I am pretty sure that the flavor changes when they are frozen, but for soups I think it should be good. 

The pictures to the left show the small cherry tomatoes that I love to grow and do so well for me. I do not use these to make sauce but I love to eat them direct out of the garden as a quick snack or cut them up for use on my salads. 

If you would like to try making pizza with a cast iron skillet here is a link below to a simple basic description of how it’s done and you can add anything you like. I found that there are lots of recipes online to make this type of pizza but I believe they all use the same basic instructions that you will find in the link below and you can add whatever veggies and topping that you want to, I think the main thing is heating up the pan to a specific temperature and amount of time cooking. The instructions here are by Lodge.  CAST IRON PIZZA

I think that there is also instructions on their website to make pizza dough if you need one. I currently buy my pizza dough in the produce section at Trader Joes premade and freeze it until I want to use them.

If you are looking for tomato’s seeds, there are a few sellers that I like to purchase from. I get a lot of my seeds from Baker Creek because they have a ton or rare varieties and fun selection, but these San Marzanos were purchased from a rack possibly Lowe’s garden center. I cannot remember but they are from Ferry Morse and they worked well for me. 

I am also sharing the new tomatoes below that I am going to try out this coming spring. 

Pictured on left are varieties that I recently purchased for 2024. Super Sweet Cherry and Giant Pink Belgium, also Cherokee Purple and Purple Bumble Bee from Baker Creek. I am excited to try these new ones and hopefully will have some great things to say about them and photos to share this summer. My growing season doesn’t start until the middle of May so I am very anxious to get started.

Setting Up Grow Lights

If you want to save money on plants and you want to get a head start on the growing season, setting up grow lights is very simple and you can put them almost anywhere. 

I set mine up in my kitchen in an area that I am not using very much, but you can set them up in a spare room or a garage if you live in a climate that doesn’t freeze. 

I prefer to use metal shelving because it’s sturdy and easy to clean and provides great air circulation. It also has wheels on the bottom so you can move it around easily. The lights that I purchased here have a nice feature where they connect in a series. I also recommend a timer. It made my life so much easier not having to turn them on and off. 

The first year that I started my plants indoors was so much fun. Once they were big enough to start hardening off I transport them to their permanent location and set them up outside for a part of the day and bring them inside at night for a 2 days, then after that they stay out all day and all night out of direct sunlight and kept them well watered. Day 4 or 5 I plant them in their permanent spots in the garden. I know that I could probably extend the process but I get very impatient when it comes to getting things planted outside. 

When delivering them to the garden and transporting them in my vehicle, I use large clear plastic tubs that allow sunlight to shine through and recycle old cardboard boxes to keep them contained. They are also great for keeping them outdoors for those few days which protects them from the wind and other elements. It gets very windy in our climate here and you will see lots of seed pods from the tres that landed in the cups and all over the ground while I was hardening them off that year. 

I do use paper cups sometimes as I feel it allows my plants to get a little bigger and easier to handle than the tiny seed trays, plus when setting them outside to harden off I think they get dried up too quickly in tiny black trays. I like that I can also write on each of the cups as well. Since I live in a tiny apartment I don’t have room for a lot of large containers so the cups work very well for me.

 

A Snow Day with Luna

It is currently early spring and the weather is kind of funny right now. We have had some sunny days and in the 40s and then lots of snow and the temperature drops into the 20s and below. I enjoyed the day with Luna, we played in the snow. She really loves the cold and the snow. It was so cute, I would throw the ball for her, she would run to chase it and get all excited and then she would drop the ball somewhere and try and find it, sniffing it out because she would lose sight of it when falling under the snow. I am really enjoying her and she is teaching me a lot about trust. I have had some bad experiences with dogs when I was a little girl and into my adulthood and trusting large dogs has been a challenge for me. Today she was there for me and sensed that I was having a hard day, showered me with love and dog kisses. It’s amazing how she knew that I needed to relax and calmed me. I don’t think she realizes how big she is though. She likes to try and cuddle with me and puts her huge paws on me and pushes. She needs to be reminded that I need a little personal space and she can sit next to me instead. She is completely adorable and loves the attention.  

Since it has been warm and sunny in some of the previous days my spring bulbs have started to come up and the daffodils are the first ones to pop up. I picked some today and added to a vase since the heavy snowed crushed most of the ones that were blooming. I am hoping that once the sun starts to shine again the next set of bulbs that surface wont be affected by more snow. The snow is hard on them. 

It is such a joy to see these bright and cheerful flowers in the middle of the snow storm. 

Alpine Strawberries

I first became interested in growing strawberries again when my daughter told me how she found wild strawberries on her walks in Germany. I was fascinated that strawberries grow in the wild like that so I began looking up information to learn more about them and found that they are called woodland strawberries. 

Another name for them is the Alpine strawberry and though the varieties here are very different than the type that grow wild, I found that there were seeds that you could purchase and grow at home. 

The seeds that I chose were from Botanical Interests and called Red and Yellow Wonder Blend. I really liked that these did not spread by underground runners and instead were individual plants. Another part that I liked is that the package said that I should get fruit the first year. 

I started the seeds in trays in my kitchen under grow lights in February of 2023 and planted them out in the garden in May. I was happy that the plants produced fruit all summer. The fruit was unlike any other strawberry that I’ve had before. They were very small and sweet and fun picking them as a snack while I was doing other gardening chores. 

I was expecting to get more red ones but all they produced were the yellow ones. I think that I picked maybe one red one the whole summer. I am excited to see what they do this season. Right now we are still at the end of winter with very low temps so they are currently in their dormant state.