My Declaration of Agricultural Independence!

Well, the first seeds of the season are in the ground, um, basket.  This is my second season of growing sugar snap peas in a laundry basket.  While the temperatures have been balmy enough--70 degrees in Tennessee in January??????--the ground is sodden, ergo, basket farming!  (If you want to see just how sodden, check out the pictures on my Live a Savory Life blog!)

A previous entry in this blog detailed my adventures in potato basket farming (Mama, Them Tater's Got Eyes!)  Well, the sugar snap peas work similarly, except they need a column of wire in the center.  I just used "hog wire" and hooked it together. 

All of this water has given me time to think about last year's garden.  For tomatoes, I tried Opalka, Goliath (recommended by many in my community), and Roma with very little success.  A cold, wet spring prevented me from setting out the plants until the first of June.  Immediately, the weather turned hot, and night-time temperatures remained in the 80s for most of the summer.  During that time, I learned a valuable lesson:  weeds love night-time temperatures above 80 and those varieties of tomatoes will not set fruit at those temperatures. 

I have come away with a two-pronged plan of attack.  To combat the weeds, I'm mulching with grass clippings (see Thank You Very Mulch). 

As for the issue of varieties, I'm ignoring all those USDA zone recommendations and declaring myself a microclimate!  A microclimate is a "loophole" in the macroclimate--a place that isn't quite like the larger area.

This year I'm trying varieties appropriate for southern Louisiana and Florida to allow for nighttime lows above 80 degrees (which happened last June, July, and August).  I'm trying heirloom varieties Florida Pink and Creole from TomatoFest.  I'm also trying Burpee's old faithful heirloom Mortgage Lifter.

The variety I had the most success with last year was an unnamed currant tomato which lived in a pot on my back porch.  While only 1 cm to 2 cm in diameter, these little gems gave a flavor explosion when bitten into.  I really enjoyed them in salads and casseroles (try them instead of pimento!) last year and am expanding varieties this year:  Hawaiian Currant and Gold Currant.

I'm also playing around with some varieties just for fun:  Italian Tree, Roma VF, and Black Truffle Hybrid.  These will be my early-season tomatoes and may live entirely in pots.

I have other garden plans for the year, but that's a topic for another day.

So, that's the tomato manifesto, um, news from my newly-declared microclimate.  What's happening in yours?

This winter, "picture" next year's garden!



Seed album with sticky notes

 The fact that I'm writing a garden blog is perhaps the most ironic thing in the world.  My ancestry would indicate that I'd be good at it:  my grandfather was a farmer, then a gardener; my mother could grow the most beautiful roses; my mother's mother's yard was a showcase; and my father's mother grew the loveliest orchids.  But, Gregor Mendel was right; the odds in genetic roulette eventually catch up with you, and they did with me.  I have a black thumb.  There.  I've said it, and I feel much better.

Perhaps it's more precise to say I had a black thumb.  It's getting greener by the year, albeit at a glacial pace.  Despite what anyone may tell you, gardening is hard work.  You're constantly battling to keep Mother Nature's minions--diseases, pests, and weather--at bay, all the while knowing they have the upper hand and will, absent your constant attention, take back the land you've worked so hard to prepare for plants that probably were not meant to grow there.  So, after years of tiny tomatoes, squash bug invasions, and drought, I'm surrendering, after a fashion.

Maybe, instead of surrendering, I'm taking a new tack.  First, a bit about my land.  It's buckshot.  During the dry summer, it becomes so hard I cannot put a shovel into it.  When the arid hot wind kicks up, dust devils swirl over cultivated land.  The sun is scalding hot within ten minutes after it rises over the trees.  It's desert-like in summer.  Winter is a different story.  Buckshot, when sodden, becomes so sticky and mucky that it sucks your Wellies off your feet.  It takes forever to dry out, so spring plantings are problematic.  So, I have a short, hot season which lasts from mid-May until November. 

Amending the soil with leaf matter
(picture taken before I fell off the trailier into the leaf pile).

Yes, I am amending the soil (I saw you raising your hand in the back of the room!)  Every year, I add more organic material--mostly leaves from my in-laws' trees.  The soil is improving, but, until it's the lovely humus we all covet, I've decided to be more selective in the varieties I plant.  But how would I know what worked and what did not?

The first few years I gardened, I kept my seeds in a lovely flowered box, rubber-banded into categories.  But that really did not help me keep track of what was working and what wasn't.  On a trip to my local Dollar General, I spotted an inexpensive photograph album and an idea sprouted:  why not a SEED album?

My seed album with journal below

So I slid those little packets into the photo sleeves, separated into kinds of vegetables and used sticky notes for comments about planting and progress.  And, yippity-skippity, it worked!  It keeps my seed packets neat and orderly and gives me a place to connect the comments with the pictures on the packets.  Using sticky notes will allow me to reuse the album another season.  I'm actually considering purchasing another album for the "don't even consider planting these again" varieties.

I also began a gardening journal (see the picture at right) for general impressions, rants, tantrums, and long-term planning; that's a topic for another day.

So, seed catalogs at one hand and seed album at the other, I'm planning for another year in the garden.  Stop back by to see how it turns out!