Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Seed day..

Got my seeds from Amishland Heirloom Seeds this morning. The seeds look good, She was unfortunately, out of one of the seed packs i really wanted, it was a mini melon that is very early since it needs much less growing time.  Since i lost most all my melon plants in the frost on Monday, i was looking forward to this little melon.  BUT- its not like it is her problem, she is a small operation and it is early May. I was happy she had enough seeds for me at all this year. Snooze, i lose....  but i will remember to order from her next year!  I hope to add her to my recommended shopping list too.

I also managed to replant many of my seeds, there were a number of them that i had no replacement seeds for and there are now even more that i am totally out of.
I am mostly upset about the Roma tomatoes...  i really wanted lots of paste tomatoes this summer. We use those more than the juicier types and i hoped to learn how to can this year and spaghetti sauce was high on my list. Hubby loves tomato products.

But i separated out the 'hopefully not dead' and i have about 1/4 left... the Roma tomatoes are among those but i completely lost my Garden Peach and Black from Tula tomatoes.  The Romas might pull through.  I have one Black from Tula that i kept, the seed had just sprouted and it almost looks fine.  But i don't know if it will get anywhere cause late seedlings are often very weak and don't do a whole lot after  finally sprouting.  But i kept some just in case they pull through,  even then i expect weak plants. This will be a hard setback to recover from.

I really wish i'd brought them in, but the forecast tripped me up... still i should have simply taken the precaution.

I was pretty surprised to see that the Slim Jim eggplant and the New Ace peppers were fine. At least from where i can see. The seedlings must be small enough to have withstood the frost. The ZsaZsa peppers are still no-shows.  Even the second batch i planted 6 days ago (and have kept inside) are showing absolutely nothing.  I have never had unexplained bad germination from Pinetree before...  i wonder if this is a batch problem or if it is too early to tell.  Obviously they are not a good wintersowing variety since they were the only seeds that did not do anything..
Everything else i planted was... if it wasn't such a weird spring the seedlings probably would have stayed smaller and taken that hard frost better.
I got an email from Farmer's Almanac yesterday and they had an article on how the last 3 days historically carry frosts...  If they had sent it Sunday, i might have taken it as historical advice.

This is stuff i need to remember for next year! lol

But in all i guess it is ok.  I fortunately had some seeds left, and there is a good nursery nearby, though i really wanted to do this completely on my own this year... I almost made it!
I will have to edit my Ridiculously Long Seed List...maybe  it won't be so ridiculous after all.

Scary thing is that i may go hog wild next winter and buy another huge bunch of seeds to replace all the empty packets i produced this year!  It almost makes me look forward to January.


Oh, i did plant a few Salsify seeds to fill up space in the resown flats and i took the Marigold flat and resowed in the cells where nothing had sprouted. So i am out of those Marigold seeds.

I have to go through my herb flats and resow some more no-shows and my Basil that got frosted.

I consoled myself by ordering some books at Amazon.
I found some pretty decent used prices...
"The Pruning Book"  i got for $6.84 shipped
"Seed to Seed"  for $11.94 shipped

I also bought "Root Cellaring" on Kindle for PC -which i thought was awesome since i use my netbook for reading PDF books, and now i can read Kindle books without buying a Kindle.  "Root Cellaring" cost $9.99, no paying for shipping.  Amazon had a few other books for a few dollars that i grabbed andthere were a couple good freebies.  So i have plenty to read- as if i didn't before. :0)

I checked Henry Field's website for my Fig tree since i have heard nothing...  shipping date is now set for May 19-26..... *sigh*
My Venous Orange isn't looking so hot.  The curled leaves dropped a couple days ago. It simply looks yellower than the others, so i don't know if it will slowly die or not. But the other two do look fine.

I didn't get the Parsnips planted yet,  with the replanting i had to do, i ran out of time.
So i think that is it for today.

2 comments:

Faith said...

I mostly did Romas as well. When I buy tomatoes, seems that's what I always go for. I hate losing all that juice in the other types.

That pruning book has been on my want list for a while. I have another one, but this one looks really good.

~Faith

icebear said...

i think the one i got is an earlier edition, i was amazed at some of the prices people are asking for some of the used garden books at this time of year. it took a little bit of digging to find the same books for only a few dollars.

my local greenhouse carries Roma tomato seedlings every year, so i can get them there if i have to. its just not as fun as it would have been to plant out my own :0p