I started sprouting tomatoes, peppers, and other plants from seed at the end of March. I wasn’t aware that the real last-frost date here is really May 15, or Mother’s Day at a minimum. So informed, I’ve been sprouting and sprouting but can’t say I’ve ended up with good looking plants. I have already decided not to go this route for 2010. I shall instead just buy plant starts at the farmers markets and other plant sales.

I have been planting the lettuce starts for the past three weeks and eating some of the results. I put them in the front of the garden for easy access. I then have a long row of tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and peas. I’ll have to install netting for them to climb onto. Meanwhile, I have planted seeds for carrots and onions and plan to add in beets and others. Those were failures in the sprouting-indoors experiment.

I also plan to plant dahlias to bloom alongside the garden, and hide it a bit from the living room windows. But planting all of the garden was so exhausting that I’m delaying that till next weekend.

I visited The Garden Corner nursery in Tualatin to look for hanging baskets to mimic the ones Rich loves from Switzerland. The problem is that I don’t know for sure what flowers they use. My photos of the Hotel Gletschergarden don’t resolve the mystery. So instead I searched for near matches. With the help of one of the staff, I decided on making up my baskets with a mix of orange and pink geraniums, verbena, and petunias. Those should give me blooms at three levels, and I think Rich was really after the color combination more than anything else.

I made up my baskets, hung them, watered them, and sat back with wine and cheese for dinner. Ah, the good life.

On my way back from the walk at Mount Hood Community College, I stopped by the Troutdale Farmers Market. Now, this one was truly tiny, just four tables. But they had exactly what I wanted, farm eggs and salad greens and some fingerling potatoes. It was a good stop.

On Sunday I stopped at the Vancouver Farmers Market and bought another 12 lettuce starts. The lettuce starts I planted three weeks ago are really going to town. The lettuce I planted in my planters is starting to take hold, but the most recent starts I made indoors are wimpy. I transplanted all of the my starts except the tomatoes, but I fear they are all anemic failures. I have good hopes for the tomatoes and pepper, which I will transplant in two weeks. I planted seeds for carrots and onions outdoors right before a big thunderstorm squall came through. I hope it didn’t wash them all away! I am thinking that next year I will plant seeds outdoors and buy starts for tomatoes, peppers, etc. rather than trying to sprout them inside. I just don’t have the right light, etc.

Yikes! Another 45 days without being able to use my jet tub? I have to trust my parents, we always had a great garden bursting with tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, corn and cukes. But all of those seed packets led me astray with their talk about starting the plants weeks before the Last Frost date (March 23) and implying you should get them into the ground soon thereafter.

“Peas,” said Mom, “I think people are planting peas now.” For some reason, our family almost never planted peas, although Mom loves fresh peas.

In response, I bought lettuce starts at the Vancouver Farmers Market and took them out to my new garden plot. Lettuce doesn’t mind the cold. I have some sprouting in the bathroom, and I planted spinach and lettuce seeds in my containers. The containers are slowly sprouting. I planted the lettuce starts and impulsively planted three of my collard sprouts. We shall see if they all survive. I also planted some peas in the area where I’ll be putting up the support net for the tomatoes and peppers.

It makes sense that Mom bought plant starts rather then sprouting seeds. Our family home doesn’t have a good sunny room for sprouting seedlings.

Life on the farm is good. I called the landscaper and my garden plot should be installed early next week. It will be another couple of weeks before these guys are ready to plant. Meanwhile, the lettuce seeds I planted outside in planters show no signs of sprouting. But those planters also seem to be tilled by the squirrels as they bury the peanuts a neighbor gives them. I don’t know what this bodes for the garden.

The First Family is following in my footsteps and Michelle Obama broke ground on a kitchen garden at the White House today. Is she sprouting her seeds, too? I suppose they have some federal greenhouse that provides the landscaping plants for around the White House. I am preparing my garden plot the lazy way, by having a local small business install it and the sprinklers. That’s my local stimulation plan! Seeing Michelle with a shovel makes me think I really need to read about Back Safe Gardening. My plot doesn’t have any grass to dig up, and our soil is mostly a pile of rocks and gravel. So I’m having all of the good soil delivered and mounded on top.

My freezer is almost devoid of last autumn’s bounty. Tonight I use my last batch of slow roasted tomatoes for a puree to top baked parmesan chicken breasts. I’ll have only a bag of whole frozen tomatoes I plan to use in soup and chili, a few cubes of pesto and some forgotten frozen garlic tips I should use in soup.

The Vancouver Farmers Market starts up again this weekend – and none too soon!

The book is super easy to read and very easy to understand – I didn’t need “Gardening for Dummies” after all. I read the pages about starting seeds and checked the Old Farmer’s Almanac frost chart for Portland and realized that I needed to get started now! My grandparents and parents always consulted the Old Farmer’s Almanac for farming and gardening advice. Grandpa had a farm and everyone in our family had a big, successful garden. I guess I need to buy that next!

I started planting the seeds and realized I didn’t want to go overboard with tomatoes, as I get some from my CSA subscription. But I also wanted plenty to roast and freeze or make into sauce and freeze for the winter. I planted at least 8 Romas for freezing and paste, at least 5 Early Girls for slicing (and hopefully for earlier maturing), and four cherry tomatoes. I also planted green peppers and jalapenos. But I didn’t want to go overboard with them and had a row left. I decided to plant the beets there.

The Jiffy Greenhouse has little disks of peat moss wrapped in netting. You add water to the base and they soak up the water and expand. Then you fluff up the top of each disk (now a tube) and plant 2-3 seeds per disk. You cover it with the clear plastic dome and let them sprout. Once they have sprouted, you prop open the top and put them in a sunnier location till they are big enough to transplant. I found an online review that had helpful hints such as transferring the sprouted disks to a clear plastic cup as some will sprout sooner than others.

I shall get to work with the 72-plant greenhouse next. I have beets, beet greens, collards, carrots, sweet onions, onions, lettuce, and basil to plant. I couldn’t find my old seed packets for mesclun mix, cilantro, or chard. I’ll have to pick those up before I start sprouting more in the 72 pack.

The Veggie Gardener’s book recommends growing things you can’t easily buy in the store. For me, that means things I don’t get from my CSA in enough quantity for my needs, or only get rarely. All of the seeds except for the tomatoes are things I don’t get enough of from the CSA. I didn’t get seeds for cucumbers or squash or green onions or radishes – I get plenty of those from the CSA.

I look forward to seeing my babies sprout!

I contacted the landscaper our development is now using and spent a pleasant 30 minutes discussing my dream garden with Tim of Water-Rite, Inc. He immediately steered me away from raised beds. He pointed out that the area I wanted to use was already well-contained, all it needed was a bed of good garden soil. I didn’t need new sprinklers, just changes to the existing zone of sprinklers. I liked the idea of not building raised beds that will eventually decay and look shoddy. Also, with the new plan I could change the area to anything wish in the future without having to dispose of the raised beds lumber and hardware.

I’ll also have the sprinklers extended to water my hanging baskets from above. I’ll have to come up with some other weight lifting regimen vs. daily plant watering. And I’ll be able to take a long weekend without coming home to dessicated hanging baskets. The cat can care for herself for days, but plants need lots of attention!

The price tag isn’t cheap (about $500), but this is an investment that will pay dividends for years to come. I spent about $200 last year on self-watering containers, potting soil, and plant starts. My new garden will have far more growing potential. Now I’ll have to go browse the seed aisle!

My cherry tomato plant is also putting on lots of fruit and the first one is now yellow. I have a third plant, which I think it another large tomato, and it is only now beginning to show some tiny tomatoes.

Oddly enough, I’m not a fan of fresh tomatoes except in BLT sandwiches. In part, that is due to commercial tomatoes being tasteless bags of squish. Home-grown tomatoes are the only ones worth eating for taste. But even then, I believe they need the proximity of bacon and mayo. And so, I had my first BLT of the season:

Where is the L, you say? While I have some lovely heads of organic lettuce and my own lettuce growing outside, I actually don’t like lettuce on my BLT. It makes the B and T slide around too much. But if you say BT sandwich, folks don’t know that is. Really, it’s a BMT for me, as the mayo is an essential ingredient.

Review: The tomato was perfectly sized to make one sandwich. But the thick bacon overwhelmed the balance of the sandwich so I couldn’t really taste much of the tomato. I need to get some of the humane local bacon and see how that works.

It was nice to see the area when it isn’t mile 20 of the marathon and I just want to sit down and die. The walk started from Kaiser Interstate Clinic, near Overlook Park. Immediately I was struck by how many front yard gardens and even parking strip gardens we passed by. I guess this is a big trend for Portland. Last year I heard Mark and Dave on the radio complaining about them, Dave just thought that they made the neighborhood look less classy. I found an interesting selection on Amazon.com, Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community. Sounds like it’s a movement!

Personally, I don’t want my veggies growing where everybody’s dog can pee on them. I’ll keep my veggies out back where I have better control over access to them. We live in a new subdivision and have only a tiny patch of lawn out front anyway. I loved seeing this 10-foot high artichoke, along with other vegetables in one front yard. I can see why the neighbors might look askance!