Tuesday was a bright, beautiful, warm, sunny day, so I took advantage of it by starting some of this year’s seeds. As I did a couple of years ago, I spent some time with Environment Canada’s temperature database and came up with my “Best Guess” of a last-frost date for our area of March 8th. I do this because I can’t find any published Last Frost data that A) isn’t 30 years out of date, and B) is for a city within 50 kilometers of where I live. Calculating 8 weeks back from March 8th tells me I should be starting the bell pepper and hot pepper seeds this week. If I was planning to grow eggplant/aubergine, I’d be starting them too:
- 12 pots of “King of the North” sweet red peppers
- 8 pots of “Marconi Red” sweet red peppers
- 2 pots of “Long Red Cayenne” hot peppers
- 2 pots of “Orange Thai” hot peppers.
Yes, it’s a lot of peppers, but sweet red peppers are A) expensive, and B) t!’s favourite vegetable, so I want to grow as many of them as I possibly can. I’m trying hard to concentrate on growing what we eat this year, and growing things that are high up on the “Dirty Dozen” food list, and growing things that are expensive to buy in the shops. So for instance, this year I’m probably going to give the corn a miss, but try to grow two crops of spinach (an early one in the spring and a late one in the fall).
Once the seeds were planted, I racked them in the mini-greenhouse that usually starts out in a sunny corner of the kitchen, and then moves outside once the seeds have sprouted and the weather has warmed up:
These are just the tip of the massive iceberg that is this year’s plans for the garden:
- Tomato, paste – Amish paste
- Tomato, paste – Opalka
- Tomato, paste – Federle
- Cucumber – Straight Eight
- Zucchini, yellow – Golden
- Squash, winter – Australian Butter
- Squash, winter – Connecticut Field Pumpkin
- Melon – Cantaloupe
- Onions
- Parsnips – Harris Model
- Turnip – Golden Globe
- Peas, edible-podded – Mammoth Melting Sugar Pea
- Peas, sweet – Sugar Snap Pea
- Spinach – Bloomsdale Longstanding
- Beans, dry – Great Northern
- Beans, dry – Black Turtle
- Carrots – Scarlet Nantes
- Basil – Genoese
- Potatoes, early – Norland
- Potatoes, main crop – Desiree
I get most of my seeds from The Cottage Gardener, because I like supporting a small, relatively local, family business, and because I believe in buying seeds from as geographically close to me as possible so that the varieties I’m planting are well adapted to our climate. I highly recommend them.
out here 
There’s an early potato that was developed at the University of Guelph called the Eramosa … it’s super yummy. Might be fun to try some year if you can get your hands on some. I had them from the farmer’s market in Kingston. I’m surprised you’re not growing any eating tomatoes … they’re always one of my garden favourites. What kind of perennials do you have?
I’ll look for the Eramosa potato, and I’ll ask around at my farmer’s market so see if anyone is growing it. One of the varieties of paste tomato is also an eating tomato, and I’ll probably start a couple of Brandywine tomatoes as well, now that you mention it. I tried an early slicing tomato last year called “Carlton” and I wasn’t happy with it – it wasn’t early at all. In terms of perenials, I planted 20 crowns of asparagus two years ago, so I’m hoping to get some spears to cut this spring. My rhubarb failed, so I have to re-plant. We have a few very young grape vines, and two blackcurrent bushes. We’ll be putting in some nut trees this spring to add to the small fruit orchard, which currently has 2 cherries, 2 plums, and a couple of apple trees that survived – we planted 6 but most didn’t make it through their first winter, unfortunately.
I love that we are growing some of the same vegetable varieties (Amish and Opalka paste tomatoes, Harris Model parsnips, spinach, black beans, King of the North and cayenne peppers…). I’ve started onions and leeks so far. I think peppers are on my list for this weekend…or maybe next. It seems like I usually start them too early, and then they are blooming before I set them out, and then they drop all their blooms and start over. I’m hoping that by waiting a bit this year, they will not be so far along by the end of May and therefore that I’ll have better luck getting them to set and keep fruit.