More Seed Planting

Today I reused some of the tomato seedling punnets to try growing a few more plants from seed:
* "Alpine Delight" Strawberries
* Oregano
* "Costoluto di Marmande" Tomatoes

A couple of weeks ago I'd planted some basil seeds in punnets and they've germinated.

Most of the tomato plants in the garden bed have flowers, and a couple have already started bearing fruit.

Tomato Seedlings, Part 3

My local garden supply and hardware store had some tomato seedlings on sale, so I thought I'd add a few more to my garden. I got a mixture of varieties again:
* 2x Super Roma
* 3x Grosse Lisse
* 1x Cherry Ripe

Today I planted all but the Cherry Ripe in bed #2 (refer map). I filled in some gaps where my uncle's seedlings had not taken.

So now I have 27 seedlings in bed #2 (from north):
* row 1 has 6 seedlings from my uncle
* row 2 has 3 Grosse Lisse plus 3 from my uncle
* row 3 has 6 from my uncle
* row 4 has 4 Acid Free seedlings
* row 5 has 1 Beef Steak, 1 Tickled Pink, 2 Super Roma and 1 Pot Roma

I'm holding the Cherry Ripe over to either fill in a gap in bed #2, or possibly try growing it in a transportable pot.

Slideshows from Spring 2004 Season

I had a bit of time last year and came up with web-page slideshows of the progress of some of the plants I grew in Spring 2004. There's a page on my main site that explains this:

http://homepage.mac.com/bruno_andrighetto/Garden/index.html

You need a JavaScript-savvy browser. And since there are a lot of images, high-speed internet access would help. You can set the slideshow to loop automatically through the photos, using a timer. Or if you prefer, just select photos manually from the mini-preview.

Here are direct links to the slideshows:

• Tomato Plants
  


• Beanstalks
  


• Basil
  

Spring Season, 2005 - A Sad Retrospective

It's been well over a year since I last posted to this blog. The main reasons were a lack of time and not much to say.

After the success of the Spring planting season in 2004, I had high hopes for 2005. I'd grown my own tomato seedlings from the seeds saved the previous year. And my uncle once again gave me some tomato seedlings. These were planted, but failed to grow properly. I followed the advice of planting in a different area. The plants grew to less than half the height of the previous year's crop, and very little fruit emerged. My uncle experienced a similar problem, so perhaps the seedlings were diseased, or the varieties were not hardy enough. Ironically the best tomato plants in my garden last season had actually grown "in the wild", possibly from seeds scattered by birds or the wind.

More success was had with the Basil plants I grew, but without home-grown tomatoes it was rather moot. Parsley and spinach seemed to have very little problem propogating by themselves.

I'm trying again this Spring. I should have a bit more time this year, and I hope to post more often to this blog. But I doubt that I'll be taking any photos unless I buy a new digital camera. The old one (an Apple QuickTake 150 from 1998!) still works but the process of transferring them to my primary computer is too time consuming.