....But There are Harbingers of Spring (Harspringers)

Just in the last week, the pussywillows have started to emerge. This is the first year in a long while that they've begun to bloom at the right time of year. This particular tree is now well over 15 feet tall, having grown more than a foot and a half in height and probably a foot in circumference each year.

I planted a knee-high wispy little shrub in the spring of 1999....I think she likes it here. So, between this "harspringer" of hope and the little green guys shrugging off their potting soil covers down in the fluorescent light-trays, there are signs everywhere that spring is coming on like an avalanche. Gentlefolk......on your mark - start your seeds!

Pix in the Present

....but this is the Kentucky landscape today, on the last day of February. This was taken from kitchen side of the porch, looking across the dormant native wisteria down into the garden. You can see that John spent many hours cleaning the fallen limbs out of the yard under our poor, beleaguered, 70-year-old Norway maples.

John's compost heap is just barely visible behind the hackberry tree (big deciduous tree on the left).

Seed Log

The first of Roger Postley's tomatoes, Moon's SuperBush germinated successfully yesterday, 02/27/09, Friday morning. Five days to germinate with somewhat sparse bottom heat isn't bad for one-year-old seed.

I hope that four flats will carry us through the programs this year. I know there are plenty of seeds to give away - the problem is just getting them packed in record time. There's a good selection this year from Baker Creek Seeds, Tomato Grower's Supply, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Roger's donations from last year.

Although there are still 50 varieties for participants to choose from, I pared the list down to what I think our attendees will want the most. It's still so hard to get people, for the most part, to try anything that isn't big, red, and late. This seems to be the quintessential tomato that people dream of most in the dead of winter, although a choice few - mostly elderly Kentucky gardeners and young adventurous beginners - rhapsodize about the gold-and-red creamy slices of the old-fashioned bicolored tomatoes that were once a staple for many Appalachian truck gardeners.

Rose Beauty, a tomato that supposedly hails from Estill County, Kentucky, is neither rose nor a beauty. It produces a ton of big, pale yellow lumpy fruits with a modest pink blush on its bottom, and the taste is sweet, creamy, and delectable. As a bicolor it doesn't have the truly intense tie-dyed hues of Mr. Stripey, Hillbilly, or Big Rainbow, but it's a winner for taste and ease of growth. It's shown here in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, to the right of Butler Skinner. From left to right sitting on the bench above them are Depp's Pink Firefly, Maruskin's Andes, and a bumper picking of Egg Yolk, a highly productive and lip-smacking yellow that mimics its name.

Raising Miso by the Moon

...and here we see Miso, ever the flower-child, under a waxing moon in the twilight. John is holding him up to see the topmost sunflower at close range.

Moon's SuperBush

Sunday morning I awoke in a panic. I've started two flats of Stupice and a flat of mixed peppers, but it may not be enough.

Everything seems to be a bit off this year. Seed orders from Baker Creek were very late, and with the workshops starting next week I haven't been able to label envelopes and repack the bulk seeds. Looks like it'll be a long week.

Sunday morning (2/22/09) I started two flats of Moon's SuperBush, about which I know virtually nothing except that it's supposed to be a dwarf, productive red globe type. From Roger Postley last year. I have a lot of faith in Roger's seed-saving process (and Roger in general), so I know they'll be great plants to use in the workshops.

...Eighteen Weeks Seems a Lot Longer....

...and even though it's exciting to think of the tiny seedlings pushing up every day, it's still a bit depressing to think that it's at least eighteen whole weeks until I see a ripe Verna Orange again.

For some idea of how very large Verna fruits are, on average, each check in this tablecloth is two inches square. This particular tomato weighed in at 24 ounces, most of it flesh the consistency and color of a ripe mango.

This part of the season, especially with blight-sensitive (although wildly productive) Verna lasts less than four weeks. It's hard to believe that the average gardener's total tomato season really lasts, at best, for 8 weeks...So, gather ye organic home-raised produce while ye may.

In Eight Short Weeks....

It's hard to believe that eight to ten weeks from today the porch will be covered (once again) with hundreds of plants straining out of their pots and boxes...

I'd like to think that I'm a better gardener than I was in 1988, or even in 2001, but I think not....I just love to grow out seedlings for some reason - and I love to pick and can the results. Nothing in the middle of the gardening process truly inspires me, although I've gotten to the point where watering is very deeply satisfying - and I used to hate the very thought of it.

More Peppers Up Today

So far, Tunisian Baklouti (which is a large red tapering spicy pepper used - supposedly- in a variety of Tunisian cous-cous-based delicacies), has been joined today by Aji Dulce, Leutschauer Paprika, and Hinkelhatz.

What fun! Peppers are always so sturdy and jolly looking; tomatoes, by comparison, often seem so wispy and fragile at the seedling stage, belying their resilience and hearty constitutions.

It's a lovely thing to imagine all the late summer and early autumn suppers that will feature the fruits of these newborn jolts of bright green.

I pledge that this year I will bag the blossoms from each new plant I try so that I can save my own pepper seeds. I'm tired of buying pepper seeds every year - and I'm not as greedy to try new ones as I am new tomatoes. Peppers are also so much easier to tuck into a flower bed or a pot...and a few hot peppers go a long way...so the end product is in many ways much higher.

Looking forward to the next variety up - it looks like Tobago Seasoning and Topepo Rosso have loops up in the soil, leaving Paradicsom and Roberto's Seasoning bringing up the rear. I'm actually a bit worried that these last two won't germinate for me at all; I think the seed was already compromised when I bought it last year.

Today the Tunisian Baklouti germinated - looks like well over 95%, which is very good (I think) for pepper seed over a year old.

I don't think I've seen this pepper listed commercially this year, but I haven't checked the big pepper sites for it, either. I still haven't looked up the description since I planted it.

It looks like Aji Dulce will be next, which is surprising considering that the C. chinense are supposed to be later in germinating. I've never ever had a problem with the chinense or baccatums, perhaps because I like them so well - and they know it! We all do better, strive harder for someone who has a genuine fondness for us, yes?

Perhaps plants respond to us as we do to each other - it's so much easier always when you know someone understands you perfectly. I often say in workshops that the plant chooses the grower - and this is true! Very often the plant we desire the most will not do well for us, but another species will respond so beautifully that it's impossible not to fall in love with it. As for me - I love green beans and asparagus above all, but the nightshades are what grow best for me always.

This magic element of being simply understood - understood without a negative or positive cast - just that someone knows who you are when the fences are down - and sometimes when the fences are up! There must be a single word for this special category of relationship in some language somewhere.

Perhaps they know that I understand them without trying hard, that I can feel the way they grow and recognize so many of the varieties' special scents - Mortgage Lifter with that orange bergamot odor! And Stupice with its own strange smell of mineralized earth and fresh-cut grass.

Seed-Starting Again

This year I've already started the first tomatoes for the AppalSeeds workshops. Two flats of Stupice are beginning their second set of leaves (first set of true leaves) on my wonderful hand-me-down light shelf.

This year I used commercial seed-starting mix with as few additives as possible; I plan to experiment at last with a brick of coir that is lurking under a table in my office like a giant chunky cocoa brownie.

Stupice seeds went into the seed trays on Monday, January 26 - just in time for the big ice storm - but they germinated fully on Friday, January 30. They seemed to be gazing calmly and unconcernedly at the winter wasteland of snow and ice, these little spring-green harbingers of warmth and light.

Yesterday I planted 8 varieties of peppers in recycled mushroom tills, my favorite mini-seed tray of all time. All varieties were from last year's orders, and are as follows:

Paradicsom Alaku (Sarga) (a Hungarian selection from Baker Creek)

Roberto's Cuban Seasoning Pepper (a hot Cuban - no! - from someone named Roberto, we can only surmise - also from BC)

Tobago Seasoning Pepper (sweet flesh, hot membranes, with all the smoky floral bouquet but none of the heat of the most feral Habanero. From Seed Savers' Exchange.)

Hinkelhatz (A reddish-orange William Woys Weaver hot pepper approximately the size and shape of a chicken heart, hence the name. Hot, hot, hot and quite prolific - and it always makes me think of the old Cosby comedy routine.)

Topepo Rosso (a sweet round pimiento type that I've never grown. Seed from Roger Postley of Lexington, KY.)

Leutschauer Paprika (supposedly a Slovakian pepper that wound up in Hungary. Thin walled, sweet and spicy, for drying as paprika.)

Aji Dulce (another sweet Habanero type without the bite. Golden gleaming orange, like a Halloween moon, instead of the solid Crayola red of Tobago. Flatter and more Chinese-lantern-shaped than Tobago, which looks like a wrinkled pendulous day-old party balloon)

Tunisian Baklouti (I can't remember. All I know is I like saying the name. From Baker Creek.)

It's pepper-eating weather. Time to break out some hot peppers, roasted garlic and tomatoes preserved in good green olive oil and lather them up in some thin, tender pasta for a good, soul-warming dish on a bitter evening in the dead of winter. We are, after all, nearly a month into our journey back to the sun from the Solstice...so break out some sun-soaked harvest of the 2008 summer's end and think yourself toward tree frogs, sandals, iced tea, fishing, fresh-mown grass, and floating...