Fish Emulsion! Good Stuff!

 

It's amazing what a little fish emulsion in the water can do for your seedlings, even if you're using potting soil with fertilizers in it.  Most of the seedlings doubled in size over the past 3 days.  Good stuff!!  Be sure to dilute to half the usual strength for indoor use.  I'm using a quarter teaspoon in a half gallon of water.

I've thinned the tomato seedlings down to one per pot, and as soon as I see some good true leaves from the peppers and eggplants, I'll thin those as well.  Still no sign of the New Hanover Ground Cherries in the lower left corner, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  They can take a LONG time to germinate.

Garden Season has begun for me!

  

The nightshades are coming up in 4-inch pots, safe in their cat-proof chickenwire enclosure by the kitchen sliding glass doors.  As a newcomer to the Willamette Valley, I've chosen a mix of old favorites and some varieties more suited to this climate than to the SF Bay Area where I'd gardened for over 20 years.  I'm also growing fewer eggplants and peppers, as I have heard that close square-foot style plant spacing needs adjustment for this area.  

Tomatoes:  Instead of the beefsteak tomato "Pineapple", I've substituted the salad tomato "Dr Wyche's Yellow", reputed to have a tropical taste.  In place of "Aunt Ruby's German Green", I'm trying "Lucky Tiger", a green and yellow elongated cherry tomato which I hope will have a similar flavor.   I'm staying with "Speckled Roman" for my paste tomato, though I may switch back to "Amish Paste" next year.  Still have seeds for "Speckled Roman", so I thought I'd use them again.  I'm going to do single-stem trellised tomatoes this year, so I have room for six-- another cherry, "Honeydrop", and two interesting salad tomatoes, "Queen of the Night" and "Paul Robeson".  

Peppers:  I'm taking Steve Solomon's advice from "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" and putting aside my beloved large bell peppers.  Instead I have "Golden Star", a 4-inch bell from Territorial Seeds, and a mix of Italian style sweet peppers.  Jimmy Nardello is a favorite that should grow well here.  I'm trying some new-to-me F1 hybrid versions of Corni de Toro, a red called "Carmen" and a yellow called "Escamillo".  Megan at Creative Veggie Gardener says they do well in her Michigan shorter season, so I'm hopeful they will do well here.  I'm also going to grow a few "Lunchbox" mini Italian style peppers in a planter for fun.

Eggplants:  Not many changes here, I've never gone in for the giant black oblongs that so many people love.  My largest eggplant is the softball-sized "Rosa Bianca", which I've grown for many years, along with the gorgeous "Listada de Gandia".  My other eggplants are Asian types, the lavender "Bride" and a generic "Long Purple" from Botanical Interests.  I won't rule out picking up a "Fairy Tale" mini-eggplant for one of my planters, if I can find a seedling.  I'm out of seeds for it.

Starting from Scratch

 

Welcome to my new garden.  It's a far cry from the set of 12" raised beds with drip irrigation that I had in my old place in California.  There's the outline of a bed that we put in for our tenants a number of years ago, with some hilled rows and a lot of weed debris.   I have big dreams, though:

The top of this diagram is the fence that you see on the right of the snow picture.  So the garden beds are perpendicular to the fence.  The garden planning software is from growveg.com, and I'm finding it to be really useful.  I can lay out irrigation and structures and choose from various cultivars, move things around, switch to irrigation-only or structure-only view, and get a parts list of things to build or plants to sow.  Really nice, and only $39/year subscription.  I have no connection with GrowVeg other than as a satisfied customer.

The beds are 3 ft wide by 8.5 ft long, and are arranged in pairs with a full size cattle panel trellis between them.  I will have large planters for herbs instead of an herb bed.  My experience with herb beds is that unless you are constantly trimming and pruning, one or two herbs (looking at you, sage, and you, fennel) will suddenly take over and crowd out everything else.  This should be easier to control in pots.  Plus the pots will have better drainage than in-ground planting, which should help my Mediterranean herbs cope with rainy Oregon winters.

The apple tree a few feet in front of the fence is a multi-graft espaliered apple tree that I will be picking up from One Green World nursery in Portland around mid-April, when it should be safe to plant it out.  I'm also getting a pair of fig trees, which will live in resin half wine barrels for the first few years until I figure out whether I want them planted in front of the fence or not (and whether we will be replacing the fence anytime soon).  I put my fig trees in the ground in California and they quickly grew out of control, which I don't want here.