What are you guys planning for you 2012 Garden?

[matt walker]

Well, I ordered some more seeds last night. Eliot Coleman's cold weather gardening has me all inspired to change up my style a bit. I've been pretty successful, sorta without trying too hard, at growing food most of the year, but I want to get better and make it easier. I ordered a bunch of greens I've never eaten, but should be really easy to grow here in the shoulder seasons. I ordered a bunch of the selections from Territorial's European Greens section, Oriental Greens section, and Mustards. I've always done well with their mustard mix and mesclun blend, so I've eaten some of the greens before, but didn't know what they were. This year, I'm going to plant the varieties and see what works the best with the least inputs. I'd like to start getting areas outside the garden to produce more food, and I'm thinking that some of these, the mustards for sure, will probably do pretty well in some of my wild areas. I also want to let the mustard go to seed and hopefully self propagate, and grind 'em up to make mustard!

Here's a few of the greens I selected:
endive
Mache
Mizuna
Radiccio
Purslane
Sorrel
Edible Chrysanthemum
etc.

Anyone have any experience with these guys? What are you planning/planting?

[the north wind]

We haven't planned specifics, but will for sure be doing a large crop of tomatoes, some squash, kale, arugula, basil, mustard greens, cauliflower and broccoli.

This lacinato kale is a big hit at our house :


It's also super cold hardy (grew right threw heavy frost and snow all winter long last year, an dis doing fine this year), it's really good for you, and we have a fucking killer Kale Ceaser recipe for it.

We've also got the permanent stuff like the pear trees, apple tree, blueberries, grapes, gooseberries, strawberriessage, mint, hops etc.

[matt walker]

Wow, you are way ahead of me on the perennials. I need to get on that. Good tip on the kale. I have a different style, and it pretty much has taken over one end of my garden, so I haven't brought any kale in for a few years. That said, I don't particularly care for the taste of the variety I have, so maybe I'll try yours.

I want hops. Can't be shipped to WA from places like territorial, so I'm gonna have to find somebody near by with some, and get a cutting.

[the north wind]

Yeah, I was not a big fan of kale until I had this variety. It's much more tender than the others I have had, so you can eat it without cooking it, like in a kale caesar. Maybe try a bunch of it from the store before planting a ton of it. But I think it's hella tasty.

We also started some winter crops in small hoop houses before the winter, but the heavy winds kept taking the plastic off, and the starts never really got going. The rest of the beds are all mulched with leaves from the apple tree. We've got two compost piles going besides the worm bin as well. I have high hopes for the garden next year.

[pa_friendly_guy]

I plan on adding an asparigus bed this year. I have never tried growing it befor and thought it might be fun. It does take a couple of years, but I think the fresh asparigus will be worth the wait. They are a very heavy feeder I have been told, so I really added alot of organic matter to the bed I prepaired. I picked an area of the garden that I had already double dug 7 or 8 years ago. It was great to see how the leaves and sub soil had changed since I had put them in layers that long ago. I put a small PU load of well rotted horse poo on the bottom. My friend only has one horse, and he Loves that horse. So it was mostly saw dust with some urin and poo mixed in with it. It was well aged though. Then I got a small PU load of chicken poo. When I double dig an area I have one pile of top soil and a separate pile of sub soil and rocks. This time everything went onto the same pile because it had all been sifted and improved. I layered the soil and chicken poo in small lifts and added some more leaves just for good measure. I did also add a bit of lime here and there as I went up. Because of the extra volume of stuff I ended up with a slightly raised bed about 4' wide and 16' long. My neighbor feels that it should grow hair on a rock, lol, it is a pretty fertile area now. I plan on ordering an all male type of asperigus so that I do not have as much problem with spreading from the berrys. The least you can buy is 25 plants. That might be a bit much for me, I may have to give a few plants away to friends. I planted garlic right along the new bed figuring that once the new bed is planted Nothing more will be done with it and the garlic would not hurt. It was a way to save space, the garlic is right up against the bed. Everything else I grow will be about the same as other years, 6 kinds of tomatos [ I only plant 12 plants, there are only 2 of us now ] white and red potatos, zuccini and yellow squash, carrots, green and yellow beans, early and mid season cabbage [ I never get any of the late season type the bugs get it all ], 3 or 4 types of leaf lettus. red yellow and white onions, red yellow orange green and purple bell peppers, 2 kinds of hotter peppers, garlic. That is about all I have room for in my 35' X 40' fenced in area. In prior years I did plant three 3' X 25' strips out side the fence, things that deer would not hurt as much like zuccini, but we do not need that much any more and one of those beds was convered to black berrys a couple of years ago. I have grown pumpkins outside the fence for the grand kids, they not only got to watch them grow all summer, they got to pick their own jackolantern for Halloween. Not sure if I will do that again or not. I did through a bunch of winter square onto the mulch pile , I may see what grows from that next spring.

[eeldip]

nothing too different this year. i already had my first round of seed ordering, and it just came in today. park seed got me with a sale on their seed starting terrarium thingy. 20 bux and nice hard long lasting plastic, that will hopefully take to boiling water.

i got my seeds from this place last year, cherry gal, http://www.cherrygal.com/gardenheirlooms-c-12.html they work for me because i have a relatively small garden. so i don't need 200 seed count packs at all. she breaks up things into little packs, and sells them all for $1.25 to $2.00.

i have also given up on starting the warm weather stuff myself. tomatoes, peppers, etc i just buy the plants from a nursery or from someone on craigslist. i have found that in Portland, you get better tomatoes if you plant very very late. like mid june. so i buy AS BIG AS POSSIBLE plants, usually with tomatoes already on them. basically, for $5 each, i "rent" someone elses greenhouse and have them start my tomatoes for me. totally cheating, but i have the first tomatoes in the hood.

[matt walker]

[eeldip]

have you tried purple tomatillo? i have had better luck with them for some reason. they seem to also be more frost hardy, and produced a good 3-4 weeks longer than the green kinds this year. (last year they were both totally wiped out by the mid november 17 degree night)

[matt walker]

Hm, nope, have not. I'll add it to the list. Those Toma Verdes did very well for me. I had a bumper crop this year, as cold as it was.

[George Collins]

Tomatoes of course
Turnips
Mustard
Thomas Laxton English peas
Bell peppers
Cheyenne peppers
Jalepeno peppers
Collards
Cucumbers
Yellow crook neck squash
White winter squash
Running butterbeans
Black eyed peas
Pink eyed purple hull peas
Ice berg lettuce
Cabbage
Zucchini
Blue Hubbard squash
Yellow meat watermelons
Cantelope
Corn

Pretty standard stuff for the most part. Might try a few freaky things. I've marked up the J.l. Hudson's seed catelog pretty good with a highlighter but most of that is stuff for the food forest.