Sky's 2010 Non-pepper grow thread

[Skydiver]

Just starting this topic to start it, I will need to snag some pics later.
Growing some stuff other than peppers from seeds this year instead of buying stuff from greenhouses.
My list consists of commercially available stuff (read as: stuff I bought in home depot and true value stores), so it's a fairly small list of nothing too impressive.

Tomato seeds started:

Brandywine Red
Jubilee Yellow
BetterBoy Hybrid
Supersteak Hybrid
Roma

Veggies started so far:
Pea
Cowpea
(those two I'm planting more to try and condition the soil beneath my pine tree, if I get a harvest I'll be happy, if not, I'll still be happy if they can fix some nutrients in the soil and act as compost when I till them under)

Flowers:
Lavender
Coleus
Marigold
Foxglove
Chinese Lantern
Cactus
Bells of Ireland
Aster
Flowering Cabbage


That's about it so far, I'll get some pics and update later.

My tomatoes, the thing with me and Mom with tomatoes. We don't like them raw. We primarily use them for making gallons and gallons of salsa, also make some sauce out of them, but yeah, never eaten raw. Blech.
I wanted the Brandywines since they're supposed to be tasty, I'm going to try and make some sun dried tomatoes. Maybe when they're dehydrated I'll find them tasty to munch on.

I've got about six or so Romas going already, not having the best of luck with them as this is the first year for growing basically anything from seed.

Again, this is more of a placemarker post for now until I can organize it and add some pics.

 

[Skydiver]

G-ddamn doves at my roma toms.

Just started a new batch in Son of Frankengrow, but here are a few of my Supersteak and Better Boy hybrids.
They look a little damaged, they are. I let them get a little colder than they liked one night, they seem to be rebounding, though.

This image, it looks bad. yes, that's something growing on the coir, and I will be correcting things, but here's the heartwarming part of the image's horror.
I planted this seed around a month ago, and somehow forgot to put it in with everything else I was growing. I found it around 4 feet away from the light, the plant is leggy as hell and it was pointing it's cotyledon's at the grow light.
So it's now inside Son of Frankengrow and already straightening out. Good light, good temps, water. It's coir, so I will be able to get the plant out of that icky stuff with ease and back into some clean stuff.

 

[wordwiz]

Yeah, they are somewhat leggy! Thankfully, you can pot them up or transplant them to the leaves and actually end up with better producers (though you may a post-hole digger or auger by May!). I have a few BBs getting ready to ripen. I'll let you know how they are.

One new one I'm trying this year is Red Stuffer. Suppose to grow like a bell pepper - few seeds, mostly hollow inside. They should make a great salsa tom, plus I want to try one with tuna salad inside it. Another one I tried and like for salsa is Green Sausage. It's a determinate plant but only in size. Huge production on very compact plants, even until the killing frost. Very few seeds and juice. The kids loved them.

None of my GH toms are ripe yet (but they are getting very close - hopefully no more than two weeks away. Even better, almost every type besides Siletz are first-timers for me. BB, Florida 91, Legend, Sacramento, ITC 06 313 and Cabernet. Last time I counted, over 90 toms in varying stages of ripening and more coming every day!

Good luck with yours.

Mike

 

[Sorellina]

Ciao Skydiver-

Let us know how the Bells of Ireland do for you. I've tried growing them a few times and both have been utter failures. Some say to cold stratify the seeds for a few days to a few weeks in the fridge, some say the seeds require light for germination, some say just to throw the seeds onto soil in the Fall. I'm going to start some seeds either today or tomorrow and keep them in a protected spot outside.

 

[Skydiver]

Seeing some stuff popping up in Son of Frankengrow:

Cactus

Yellow Jubilee tomato

My cold-damaged tomatoes seem to be recovering nicely.

Supersteak Hybrids

BetterBoy Hybrids

Still waiting on most of the flowers and my peas and cowpeas to show up, one marigold is off to the races with growth.

 

[Skydiver]

My cold damaged tomatoes are doing pretty well.

Big Boy Hybrids

Supersteak Hybrids and 4 peppers.

Also planted some herbs a few minutes ago.
Parsley
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
(yeah, I know)
Basil
Oregano
Sweet Marjoram
Spearmint
Lemon Balm

 

[Skydiver]

Two tomatoes top left are Yellow Jubilee
Four tomatoes bottom right are Brandywines
The flowers are Foxglove, Coleus, and Snapdragons.
Yes, there's some green ick in there, and a lot in the next pic, this is my first year growing inside a sealed incubator thing, so I made a few mistakes at first, the rest of the stuff in there is ok, I've started giving it proper ventilation and no more new ick.


Chinese Lanterns.

Now, will the ick hurt my plants later on?
The lantern especially, it's in coco coir, so it won't be a problem getting rid of the starting media, I was going to wash it away anyway and start them in new potting soil.
Should I just start over or is there hope for them?

 

[Josh]

Now, will the ick hurt my plants later on?
Should I just start over or is there hope for them?

I think you should just scrape the algae off the soil and let them dry out a bit. As long as your plants aren't experience damping off then you should be fine.

 

[Skydiver]

I think you should just scrape the algae off the soil and let them dry out a bit. As long as your plants aren't experience damping off then you should be fine.

I'll scrap the top layer off, see how it goes.
I let them dry out last night by accident. Basically I left the cover off and a window open and passed out drunk before I got around to covering them.

 

[Skydiver]

Transplanted some stuff from the greenhouse into cups, out of those horrid peat pucks and into some proper media, the Pro Mix BX.
At least I hope it's good for tomatoes and flowers and stuff.
We'll see.
Things in the greenhouse, I'll admit I let them go too long and they got leggy as hell, so they look a bit spindly. I planted them deep for support.
Next year, No More Peat Pucks. I really love the greenhouse thing but I hate the peat pucks with a passion.

Burpee Supersteak Hybrids. Thought I had more of these going.

Burpee Better Boy Hybrids.

Brandywine Reds.

Jubilee Yellow.

All of these tomatoes are side projects for the most part. I have a place where I get really productive healthy tomatoes that make up the bulk of our yearly crop, these are more to see how they grow and how they taste. I want to make some different tasting sauces and salsas this year.

 

[Skydiver]

Peas.
Can't seem to get any of my cowpeas to germinate for some reason. I'm going to try sowing directly into soil later on.

Foxglove.

Coleus. Awesome how the leaves are already multicolored.

Bells of Ireland.

 

[Josh]

I wouldn't worry too much about the tomatoes I am sure they will bounce back. I planted mine too early. My Neves Azorean Red is like 2' tall and in the same size cup you have there. I am going to start hardening them off this week but it is still going to be much too long before I get them in the ground. Oh well though. I certainly won't make the same mistake again next season.
The foxglove and bells of Ireland are probably going to go really well together.

 

[Sorellina]

Bells of Ireland.

Hey, look at that, you got one to come up! I'm still waiting for mine to emerge. My seed is a couple years old, but that's what I had to work with. I put the flat outside because those silly seeds are supposed to be cold-stratified AND require sunlight for germination. I wouldn't normally bother with such a high-maintenance requirement, but this is a very cool flower that looks outstanding in arrangments.

Well done!

 

[Skydiver]

Snapdragons doing fairly well.

Chinese Lanterns. Pretty excited about these, they look to be a pretty cool flower.

Coleus and Foxglove doing pretty well.

My little herb box. Things looking well. There used to be this stuff in the supermarkets called Spatini, some sort of herb mixture for spaghetti. They stopped making it, so the Momster found out what was in it and bam, who needs premade, we'll grow it and make it ourselves!

 

[Skydiver]

Update

Feel a bit bad, haven't done much with this thread, but things on the non-hot side are going fairly well with a few unavoidable stumbles.

First, my italian seasoning stuff is pretty much all dead. we had a run of hot sunny days and I didn't do anything as my dog was very sick and I was inside with her after she got home from the doggie hospital for those days.
I'm ok with that. My dog is getting better, so it's all good.

Put in two new beds on the other side of my lawn. Dug them out, tilled in some good soil and compost and built this contraption.
Left side bed are Pumpkins on the far left, a purple beauty sweet bell pepper in the middle, and cucumbers to the right. there's a trellis between the two beds that we're going to try and train the cukes and melons to crawl over.
Right side bed is cukes, then another purple beauty, but with watermelons on the far right.

Green beans. Love me some green beans. Dunno how well it'll show but at the bottom left corner in the pic is a damned cherry tomato. I planted them once a few years ago. I never planted them again. they just won't stop coming back no matter how well I try to rid myself of them.
I like them, they make good sauce, and I'm actually glad that they keep sprouting, it's more of a game at this point with me trying to see if I can kill them all for good. I'll never win, those darn things will probably be growing there when our Sun goes all red gianty and kills the planet in a few billion years.

Venus flytrap. I've always wanted to grow a carnivorous plant, saw this lil' beaut at the local nursery.


My flowers are all doing fairly well, the coleus doing better than everything, bells of ireland is doing ok, but to be honest I've not snapped any pics of them lately.
I'll see about rectifying that.

 

[kiddc]

that flytrap looks so cool.