I spent most of yesterday in the greenhouse. I’ve got about 150 tomato plants potted now. Most are seedlings, but about 40 are around 18″ high. I’m just waiting until the deer fence is up and the ground is tilled. The tiller is due to arrive next week.
Here are the tomato varieties we have that I can remember off the top of my head:
- White Tomesol
- Indigo Rose
- Black Cherry
- Japanese Black Trifele
- Chalk’s Early Jewel
- Moneymaker
- Peron Sprayless
- Atkinson
- Garden Peach
- Riesentraube
(Those links will take you to pictures of the varieties.)
I also have seedlings of mustard, collards, blue curled leaf kale, lacinato kale, broccoli, cauliflower, a couple kinds of cabbage, cucumbers, and watermelon ready to go in the ground. I’ll also be direct seeding these and more. In addition to the plants I’ve already started, I’ll be planting Swiss chard, carrots, onions, Glass Gem corn, pole beans, beets, radishes, yellow summer squash, butternut squash and/or acorn squash, and bok choy. I’m also going to be putting in an herb garden. At the very least, I’ll grow mint, chamomile, and probably lemon balm there.
To get enough poles to enclose the north yard with deer fence, I’m cutting down trees in an area that will have another garden as big as this one, probably in 2016. Mayda was telling her dad, who grew up on a farm in Cuba, about me building the fence. He said the poles would last about a year, maybe longer since I’m painting the ends that go in the ground, but the old guajiros would fell their trees for fence posts between the last quarter of the moon and the new moon. He says that’ll make them last ten years. Something about the way they dry. I figure it can’t hurt to try it. I’ll set the smaller trees aside for use in furniture making. Basically, though, that gives me between now and next Wednesday–when the tiller arrives–to clear that field.
One final note, just a reminder that WE DO NOT HAVE CHICKENS YET. Please stop calling asking for eggs and meat. We don’t have any and won’t until some undefined point in the future. Probably this year, but no time soon.
