Sunday, March 23, 2008

Summer '07 Wrapup, Spring '08 Prep

A busy lazy gardener in August, I let my garden go to ruins. Never got to taste any zucchini or squash. If I had been vigilant, I could probably have gotten 1-2 more months of tomatoes and vegetables. Oh well! At least I got to taste these... YUM!
Now it's time to prepare for this year. I started my Sugar Ann Snap Peas yesterday.



Today, I received an incredible array of tomato seeds from a generous tomato gardener on theGardenWeb Forum. I really only have space for 3 tomato varieties this year, so I'm trying Bloody Butcher (indeterminate), Black Krim (indeterminate), and Hillbilly (indeterminate, potato leaf).As of right now, I have 20 5-gallon buckets, and hope to have them all filled with good soil by planting time. Here's my plan for the year:

1-4 - Strawberries (Honeoye and Ozark's Beauty now mixed up and can't tell the difference) around and 1 Rainbow Chard plant growing in the middle. Planted 2007.
5 - Blueberry - Briteblue. Planted 03/05/2008.
6 - Blueberry (type TBD)
7 - Blueberry (type TBD)
8 - Raspberry - Tulameen
9 - Raspberry - Summit
10 - Blackberry - Arapaho
11 - Blackberry - Loch Ness
12 - Fig - Dessert King. Planted 03/05/2008.
13 - Tomato w/ Basil - Bloody Butcher. Seed started 03/23/2008.
14 - Tomato w/ Basil - Black Krim. Seed started 03/23/2008.
15 - Tomato w/ Basil - Hillbilly. Seed started 03/23/2008.
16-20 from March-May? - Sugar Ann Snap Peas. Seed started 03/22/2008.
May? - August:
16-18 - Sugar Baby Watermelon
19 - Yellow Squash - Regular hybridized variety.
20 - Zucchini - Regular hybridized variety.

I've determined that growing water greedy crops like strawberries or any kind of fruit in the window boxes or flat trays just won't work on my roof, where my watering system is still in dire need of perfection. So, I'll just try baby leafy greens in those this year. The same types as last year and a couple ones I didn't get to try:

New Zealand Spinach - Seed started 03/23/2008.
Bull's Blood Beets - Seed started 03/23/2008.
Rainbow Chard - Seed started 03/23/2008.
Rocky Top Lettuce Mix
Arugula
Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach

2 comments:

adlr said...

that sucks about the fruit needing tons of water, because blueberries are my fav.

also i'll be up there in november again it seems.

keep it real,
-andrew

Anonymous said...

Don't worry, I'll still have blueberries, just growing in my buckets instead of the flats. The problem with the flats and window boxes is that they are too shallow, so there is no deepness for water to stay. It all just evaporates, so the soil goes through wild fluctuations of being wet when I water and really dry when I don't. It's not really good for plants.