County Agent News

Dan Folske

March 14, 2011

Are Your Garden Plans Ready?

            The onslaught of seed catalogs has finally slowed down although I still seem to be getting another Gurney’s catalog every week. I have most of my seed ordered and even have a few tomatoes started. The tomatoes which I started a month ago are destined to be planted in my small greenhouse. For outdoor transplanting I will be starting most of my cabbage, tomatoes and peppers this week. The only flowers which I have started in previous years were marigolds. This year I have also bought petunia seed to try. 

            How do we choose seed? Some varieties are chosen because we’ve previously had good success with them. These will be the varieties which we plant the largest volumes of for Kathy’s farmers market sales. However I always try a few new varieties. Some will be standard types of vegetables that we want to try because they may offer better production or disease resistance, or maybe easier or earlier harvesting. These varieties would be ones, which, if they do well might become our main varieties next year. I also like to experiment each year with unusual varieties or new types of vegetables which I haven’t grown before. This year I’m going to try a couple of the giant pumpkin varieties and one of the white varieties like “Lumina”, “Moonshine” or “Valenciano”. I’ll probably also try some type of watermelon again although I haven’t had much luck with them in the past. Kathy wants a few purple carrots and we will probably try some purple string beans and “yard long” beans. While not big sellers, these types of unusual veggies can attract people to a vendors table at a farmers market and they can be a fun way to get kids interested in vegetables.

             Other things I’m trying this year is starting my own onion plants from seed and I may try grafting some tomato plants. Commercial tomato growers are doing more of this all the time. They graft varieties which have special features like great production or heirloom varieties which feature different colors and tastes to rootstock which has better disease resistance. 

            Another thing I’ll be doing this year is sending a sample of my composted manure to a lab for nutrient analysis along with soil tests from our garden areas. This should help me apply the right amount of compost to get the best production and maybe that supersize pumpkin.