Garden 2024 Update #2

I'm doing these garden updates mostly for myself to keep accurate records of what worked, what didn't, and why. 

I thought it would be fun to make them public, in hopes of inspiring or encouraging anyone else out there attempting to grow their own. 

I accidentally deleted the actual #2 update. Some pics from the now-deleted last update:

Since my last update I'm thankful to say overall, things are still going really well.

Seen in the pics above are sweet potato slips at about 30 days after clipping off the sweet potatoes, and there were roughly 18 of them.  Things have changed a lot since then. 

The yellow onions are still doing really well.  So far, after many years in a row of yellow onion failure (in one form or another) I'm delighted to say this is the best they've ever done for me. Since my growing philosophy is simply to grow what you eat, and this household goes through a lot of onions every year, this has been my most challenging crop. I'm hopeful this is the breakthrough year where it all goes well!  I greatly overplanted with the hopes they'd all do well, so whatever I don't use will be going to my daughter and son-in-law's garden to feed their family. 

For the last several years I've gone between a growing station in my dining room to a cheap plastic/aluminum greenhouse on my deck. I loved the greenhouse (and it held up impressively well, but wasn't designed for the harsh, southern Ontario winters)  but it was too much work to dismantle & rebuild every year. This is my set-up now in an almost 0% traffic location of my laundry room.  It really didn't take much to re-imagine the space, move a couple of things and create a very convenient indoor, temperature & light controlled grow room for all my seed starting needs.  What's growing here currently is sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes, yellow onions, Alpine strawberries, 3 varieties of tomatoes, 3 varieties of peppers, ground cherries and a pot of lemon balm I planted from seed last spring. 

In a couple more weeks I'll start my zucchini and that will be it for the indoor seed starting this year. One major change is not growing my pickling cucumbers from indoor seelings.  I'll be direct sowing cucumber seed this year, and seeing how that works out over starting them indoors.  

Overall, germination has been really successful except for a couple of things I used older seeds for, that were purchased last spring. That was sort of an experiment to see if year old seeds did as well as recently purchased seeds.  Results: they do not. Lesson learned.  This year I'm also going to be more geared toward seed saving with all my most common crops. 

This is my kitchen window shelf now, where the sweet potato slips live in their jars of water, while they develop their lovely roots.  I've lost an accurate count but after I snipped more off the potatoes today and added them to the jars, there are roughly 60 slips here. One slip will produce roughly 6 sweet potatoes so, assuming each one remains healthy until time to plant ... you're looking at roughly 360 sweet potatoes here. 😲

I don't have nearly enough room prepared for that many slips so all the extras will also be going to my daughter and son-in-law's garden.  One of the coolest things about these slips is that they all came from only 3 medium sized sweet potatoes. If this is something your family eats a lot of, this is a fantastic way to save money on groceries. 

All of my tomatoes are doing well.  I'm growing sauce tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes.  Germination rate has been really good for most all of them except the sauce tomatoes.  Only around 50% there, so I re-seeded a few days ago and we'll see how it goes.  If I don't have what I have already planned for by outdoor planting time I'll pick up plants at my local organic greenhouse.  Which is always a dangerous trip since I tend to then come home with extra peppers, some different herbs, and sometimes another fruit tree. 😂

I have experimented enough over the years to know for sure now, that I need to toss out any and all seeds over a year old.  Every time, they've proven to be very low producers in germination rates so it's time to get rid of them.  I'll only be keeping any flower seeds I have, and creating a spot for those in the front yard.  I have some really big ideas of turning my front yard into a Pollinator Paradise, so this will be a fun step this year to see how that goes. 

I hope this blesses you and encourages you to be a good steward of God's awesome gifts.