cjsmith | Gardening

I usually buy starts rather than seeds (although I grew tomatoes from seeds last year). I got some Roma starts off Freecycle and planted them a couple of weeks ago. A little early, but they seem to be doing okay.

So I'm about ready to clear and clean out my pots and plant some herbs, all from starts. I'm going to plant basil around the tomato plants (which will keep some of the wormier pests away), and pot some thyme, mint, oregano and tarragon. I've got a pot of rosemary that's been going for about three years now, but I let the rest of my herbs go to seed and weed, so I have to start over with some of them.

This is all going to happen next week.

Next week would also be fab from my point of view. I was afraid I was too late for most stuff, but it seems like it's not so bad if I can get starts. I'll head down to the nursery and see what they've got!

You'd wander over to Yamagami's Nursery (85 & De Anza) and see what they're selling. In short, it's tomato time. :)

Hee! This answer (head over and see what's being sold) makes way too much sense. :) :)

Yamagami's also has a ZILLION varieties of tomato. Want heirloom Amish Paste tomatoes? They've got 'em.

Herbs being in general tough, weedy things, they can go in at any time.

This book (http://www.amazon.com/Northern-California-Gardening-Month-Month/dp/B0011MO5V6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205432476&sr=1-1) is a must for gardening in Northern California. For every month, she tells you what's going on and what you need to be doing. I have the first edition, which I highly recommend; the link is to the second.

NB: I didn't find the Bob Tanem books (Gardening Month by Month in Northern California, etc) very useful. YMMV, but get it from a library first.

Thanks!

Now I want to skim a copy of that book for each state. What would it be like to try to grow my corn in Maine or my lemons in Utah? ...Some day I may get over this compulsion to optimize every @#$!ing problem.

I just put in 4 inch pots of carrots and onions...I'm looking for roma tomatoes and persian cucumbers...and a watermelon plant if I can pull it off...pumpkin and zucchini too...

Oh wow, watermelon AND zucchini? You must have loads of space. :)

Carrots: check. Sounds like I can get those and tomatoes in soon.

Not really. But I do have a front yard I don't mind destroying a bit...=) I think if I just cut a hole in the lawn it should work.

I picked up 4 inch pots of two types of tomatoes, 2 of green beans, a corn plant and an armenian cucumber...should be intersting.

Hey, I'm only doing seed starts of my peppers, because I'm impatient. Many herbs are available now, ready to be planted. I'd say this week would be better than last week to go. OSH has a crapton of tomatoes, we were able to get whatever we wanted. Strawberries: get em now.
Carrots are easy-peasy to grow from seed in containers (6-21 days to germinate), and they LIKE that-- they like rich soil with no rocks.
Herbs: take your pick, though the woodier ones (thyme, rosemary) were scarce.

Oh excellent: herbs and tomatoes = happy CJ. Thanks.

sicarii (who I need to introduce to your LJ at some point) was asking similar things. She's looking forward to starting some Thai basil, but I think we're still a few weeks early for that.

Ah, we are still early for some things? That's good to know. (I never did get the hang of gardening here; my brain is all back in New England, where herbs go on the windowsill.)

It's a fine time for carrots, herbs, and early tomato. Too soon for corn and melons of any kind. Peppers? A little early but doable.

Thank you! I'll try for those first three and I'll chat with Rob about the corn and the melons when he's back in town. He's the one who likes those anyway.

tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, lettuce, spinach

(Guess what I'm doing this weekend or next? :D)

Wheee! :-) (& thanks!)

My carrots do best over the winter and into spring but struggle through summer, for some reason, so I wouldn't plant those now, that might just be my dirt.

You can start almost anything now if you start from seedlings from a nursery, but you'd be fine now with earlier-producing corn seeds (note: You need at least 10 or so plants in a grid unless you want to hand-pollinate,

luna_torquill plants fewer in a tub, but she hand-pollinates). I've only grown tomatoes in Sacramento, no idea about down here.

Oh yeah, I'm fine with hand-pollinating. That's what we did when we had a big hydroponic setup in the Palo Alto apartment. We grew tomatoes, corn, and cantaloupe hydroponically. We had to put stakes in to hold the corn up, because the plants didn't bother growing any roots. For lack of anyplace else to put the cantaloupe vines we draped them up and over the fence, eventually finding most of that harvest in the neighbors' back yard. And yeah, hand-pollination for the corn. The tomatoes probably worked the best; those were for me, and MMM YUM they were good.

I would LOVE to know how to grow corn. When I had a big organic plot, we gave it a shot, and we must have been doing it wrong because it was YUCKY. Stick-your-tongue-in-library-paste bad. What might we have been doing wrong?

I hope somebody here knows. The first time we grew corn it turned out scrumptious, so I am no more knowledgeable than someone who's never tried. Different kind of corn?

Summerwinds has lots of veggies and herb plants.
I bought 5 tomatoes, a 6-pak of parsley, zuchinni,
and some flowers. It feels a little early for
planting tomatoes to me, but I don't think I have
a good sense of the proper time -- I am pretty random.
They have lots of all the "standard" herbs -- I
already grow most of what I'd want, but did buy
a camomille (sp?) and an oregano plant.

Common Ground (off of ECR in Palo Alto) has a
great Bay Area gardening calendar. What I like
about it is that it is very concise. For each
month it lists plants to start from seed, plants
to plant from starts, and any general gardening
tasks recommended for this time. All on one page.

Turns out there's an online version of this calendar <href="http://www.commongroundinpaloalto.org/plantingcalendar.htm">here - thanks for the pointer!

My spinach is starting to come up nicely, tomatos are a few inches tall, onions and chives coming along.

Urg, I've forgotten how to do hyperlinks in LJ. Cut and paste calendar URL: http://www.commongroundinpaloalto.org/plantingcalendar.htm

Oh AWESOME (the online calendar). Thanks!

Heh, I never thought of growing chamomile. I drink it (as herbal tea) by the gallon. I wonder if I could just stick a plant in the dirt and then go pinch off some "tea" when I want it. :-)

It's very cool that the calendar is online -- although I think the printed version has a bit more stuff.

Chamomile tea is made from the FLOWER of a chamomile plant. So, um, it is a teeny bit more complex than what you said. Stick plant in ground, water, enjoy, etc. When it flowers, cut and dry the flowers, and then stick dried flowers in tea drawer, etc. Other things work more in the "pinch off a piece of the plant" mode, like, um, mints come to mind (peppermint, spearmint, lemon balm...) Chamomile also smells fabulous, so the plant is nice to have around. (I've grown "the other kind" a lot. I've forgotten which is Roman and which is German. Ug. I think German is the tea one, which has flowers with petals, and doesn't spread. I've grown mostly the creeping kind (Roman?) which is NOT used for tea and has flowers w/o petals.) I *thought* that both have foliage that smells great -- but I just went and smelled the tea kind (my new plant) and it DOESN'T smell like the creeping kind! So, huh, I guess one gets either great smelling foliage OR tea, not both.

Oh darn. Well, I do like chamomile tea, so maybe it'd be worth the extra effort. And mint is scrumptious! I have a few favorite herbal teas, one of which is peppermint. :-)

You had best be pinching off mint roots as well as leaves, so it doesn't take over the garden and strangle you in your sleep.

OK, I exaggerate a bit, but mint does like to spread via root network if not watched... morning glories are the ones that grow so fast they'll strangle you in your sleep (but oh, so pretty).

Yeah, we used to have some form of mint in our Palo Alto apartment's garden and it was nearly evil in its ability to take over the world. When we redid the entire plot -- including ripping out the ill-conceived concrete-and-wood tiered structure underneath all the dirt with a sledgehammer -- the mint didn't die. :)

Gardening

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Common Ground calendar

Re: Common Ground calendar

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