Here we go again!

I've given up on trying to grow plants in the native soil on my side yard, so I'm going with raised beds there this year. Tomatoes will be in the back yard again, because they like the native dirt here. Also back there, I'm going to try a three-sisters garden with glass gem corn, good mother stallard beans, and winter squash, primarily delicata and buttercup.

Only 18 tomato varieties this year. It was 29, but I kept crossing tomatoes off until I had the ones I wanted.

Anna's Multiflora
Pineapple
Captain Lucky
Cherokee Green
Berkeley Tie Dye (green)
Big Cheef
Bear Creek
KBX
1884
Taiga
Midnight Sun
Girl Girl's Weird Thing
Rainbow Jazz Heart
Marzano Fire
Orange Caprese
Indigo Cherry Drops
KARMA Apricot
Madera F1

Side yard will have greens, root veggies, eggplant, peppers, beans, sugar snap peas, melons, summer squash, and herbs.

I'm trying again with my plant sale, last year's was a bust. Plant sale tomatoes will be: Mortgage Lifter, Pineapple, Cherokee Purple, Rio Grande, Reverend Michael Keyes, Sunrise Bumblebee, KARMA Purple Multiflora, Japanese Black Trifele, Anna's Multiflora, Orange Caprese and Marzano Fire. With covid, everyone is gardening, and around here it's bonnie plants from Walmart, so people appreciate something a little different. I'll also have a variety of herbs, lettuce, and squash.

It looks like you are going to have a very nice garden this year with a nice selection of tomatoes. I think that you will do well with your plant sale. Here, last year our greenhouses and garden centers were out of stock on everything quite early. I usually donate plants but was not allowed to last year due to covid. I placed a local add and put free plants at the end of my driveway. A couple of hundred plants were gone in 1 1/2 days. It was fun to watch people come and look at the varieties and take them home. It was also nice that nobody was greedy and took a lions share.

That doesn't happen around here, people are greedy . I grew some extra plants a few years ago, just to see if people would want them. I had 70 plants. I put an ad on buy sell trade groups and had an overwhelming response, so instead of responding to reach person individually, I said "I'll have them set up outside at 1 pm tomorrow, first come first serve", they were sold in an hour and a half. The following year, I was moving and decided to just give away my extras without trying to sell them and people just wanted to come take all of them.

So I know from the first sale that the market is there. Funny thing was, though, so many people just wanted romas. Lucky tiger was a hard sell. Cherokee purple and pineapple went fast.

I bought this stuff to make cages with. I figure one roll will make 20 cages, and I got 2 rolls, so 40 plants, it is . I can reinforce if it's too thin or flimsy, it's 16 gauge.

My side yard will be raised beds and pots, and the portable greenhouse is over there too. The raised beds I started with aren't available anymore, so I found some fabric ones. They're 50 inches in diameter, a foot tall. I don't know how well they will work, but they were cheap. I can work on building better ones throughout the summer. So there are 2 4x8 raised beds, one for greens, one for root vegetables, 3 fabric beds, and a bunch of pots to grow the rest.

I made cages from similar wire. I have since modified them by combing every other two squares into one larger eight inch square to improve access.

zeuspaul wrote: ↑Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:52 pm I made cages from similar wire. I have since modified them by combing every other two squares into one larger eight inch square to improve access.

That's a good idea. I though people were using the 4x4 wire for tomatoes and found out later it was 6x6, I figured I could just keep wire cutters handy and cut it if the tomatoes were too big

I have both 4 and 6 inch wire and both of them have been modified. It is not the size of the tomatoes that bothers me but the inconvenience of reaching my arm into the cage for any type of maintenance or harvesting. Yes I use wire cutters (actually bolt cutters) to modify. I cut leaving plenty of wire exposed making it easier to bend over. The bent over wire doesn't leave any sharp ends.

Ah, thank you, I was concerned about sharp edges! I'm excited about the cages, I'm terrible at staking the plants up, and they end up sprawling

Portable mini greenhouse for starting seeds. Right next to a window, so I can put a heater in there for cold nights. It was warm today, almost 50 out, tempting to get seeds started, but it's too early. I'll start peppers about mid February, and tomatoes in March.

Cages are done, hard to see in the picture. I realized earlier that 40 cages are never going to fit in this space, so I decided to do 20. I'll have 1 plant of each variety. Adding Stump of the World (thanks Marsha!) and Aunt Ruby's German Green.

Farm dog, Sam, who is half goat, I think, helped me put them together. They will definitely need staking, but I think they'll work great. I have 5 rows of 4 cages. The 4 cages have about a foot between them, with about 4 feet between the rows, so I can walk through.

Updated grow list. I stumbled across the tomatofest website, and so I added a few more .

Several inches of snow on the ground right now, dreaming about spring. Talking myself out of starting seeds, I can wait 2 more weeks

First tomato plant

The rest haven't been started yet, but I plant dwarfs with peppers. The peppers aren't up yet, but I don't heat them, so they take a bit.

It seems like I have a plan for each of these, but my garden space seems small compared to the amount of seeds here.

lol, tell me about it. Since the MMMM, my mind has become totally blown and it now seems like a production line of germination. The next step is bringing on to transplant size. And as i have plans for a sale and also a give-away freebee i hope i can give a home to all the babies. It is however, a most wonderful dilemma compared to most of things in the world and i am sure you will squeeze every ounce out of your growing space. I am sure you will choose wisely and grow a wonderful garden.

ooo that looks like the makings for a very delicious garden

Plants are so generous with seeds, I always feel filthy rich digging through the seed box. No doubt there's space for them all somehow, or at least for some from each packet!

I decided not to have a big crazy plant sale, so I just planted extras of most things, and I'll sell the extras after I plant what I need. My greenhouse isn't big enough to go too crazy.

I started my tomatoes today. It's about 8 weeks until I can probably plant out, but might go an extra 2, depending on weather. I've been able to plant mid April most years, but last year was weird, so it was the beginning of May. Most of the time, though, I'm planting in April. The greenhouse will give me the extra space to allow this, rather than having giant plants all over my house.

A few plants got bumped off the list while I was planting them, I just decided not to plant them. 1884, it was great last year, but I have lots of red and pink beefsteaks. Pineapple, because with Midnight Sun and Rainbow Jazz Heart, the bicolors are covered, plus I'll have three other yellow and orange beefsteaks. And Anna's Multiflora, which is consistently the earliest, and with good flavor, nice fruit, no disease, but I'll have so many tomatoes, I'm giving it a break this year. I don't know, maybe I'll bring it back, it's been a very good tomato.

We've had cold temps lately, and today it got to 35, with very bright sun, so I put the little sprouting tomatoes, eggplants and peppers in the greenhouse, to get used to the sun. 2 different thermometers in the greenhouse showed it getting up to 77 degrees. I had no idea it would heat that much. It's supposed to be in the high 40s and low 50s next week, I wonder how warm it will get then. I'll probably have to vent it.

Not much to look at yet, but give it time . One variety per tray, 2-39 seeds per pot. Seriously, my sister bought a pack of mixed color bell peppers, and wanted to plant them. I asked her how many she wanted to plant. I don't know, "All of them?" . So one pot has 39 pepper seeds. Thinking back, I could have probably put them in more than one pot, but this way is funnier.

All of my tomatoes are sprouting, they'll be spending sunny days in the greenhouse, because I don't intend to set up grow lights this year. When I pot them up, I'll use a heater in the greenhouse to keep night temps above freezing. I need a new thermometer first, the one in using was chewed by my dog, I thought it was fine, but today it said it was -32 in there, then a minute later it was 73.

So many tomato babies! Some are in another tray.

I decided to start a few to add to the sale after all. The weather is super nice right now, people are going to be itching to start gardening. Romas for the people who think they must grow them, they were wildly popular last time. Cherokee Purple, Pineapple, Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter will give people a good variety of well known heirlooms, and then some cherry tomatoes. Plus there will be all the extras from the ones I started (I'm only growing one of each, so those cells with lots of plants will mostly go to the sale), so there will be a good variety of well known tomatoes, and some pretty weird sounding ones. It should be fun!

I did a trial run with the heater. I turned it down pretty low then left it, it didn't come on, temp got down to 42 in there, I went to bed, heard it come on, checked and it was up to 64 degrees. I didn't really want to run it that warm, but I didn't want to get dressed and go outside either, so I decided to leave it and see what it was in the morning. At 6 am it was still 64 degrees, and 35 outside, so I know it will maintain a steady temperature, though hopefully I can get it a little lower, I don't think it needs to be that warm at night. Plants aren't ready to pot up yet, but I hope to have them only in the greenhouse by the time they are in individual pots. Seems doable now.