BIG Garden Plans for EMPTY BEDS!

I spent so much time researching the web for info on Ojai vegetable gardening – what to plant, when to plant, etc. I found a great source of info on http://www.gardening-coaches.com/whentoplantveggies.php which helped a lot, and led me to three seed catalogs: Seeds of Change, Renee’s Seeds, and Seeds of Italy, as well as some growveg.com software to help me lay out the beds. Armed with those three catalogs PLUS Territorial Seed AND Burpee AND Harris Seed AND White Flower Farm (a friend gave me a $200 gift certificate – THANK YOU LORETTA!), I weighed and guessed and had so much fun picking my seeds! I think you will see that I chose many things for the color – fun picks like: red scallions, purple carrots, red corn, yellow watermelon, rainbow chard… there is so much irony – picking beets and tomatoes and watermellons that are yellow while picking corn and carrots that are red!

Here is what is on order so far – this will keep me busy!:

Tomatoes

Black Krim (Russia heirloom)
Sweet Persimmin (orange flesh heirloom)
Costoluto heirloom
Marmande (North Italian/French fav heirloom)
Chocolate Cherry
Razzleberry (gift, I don’t know that I would have found this one)
Cherokee Purple Organic heirloom
Pineapple heirloom
Yellow Pear Heirloom (I had tremendous luck with these last year)
Red and Yellow Pear Mix
Red Lightening Hybrid
Japanese Trifele Black Tomato (looks like an interesting unique one)
Brandywine Heirloom

Corn

Casino
Mirai Collection (yellow, white, yellow&white)
Maple Sugar Hybrid
Ruby Red Queen Hybrid (red edible corn!)

Beets

Jewel-Toned blend (has Red Sangria, Golden and candy-striped Chioggia beets )
Touchstone Gold Hybrid
Detroit Dark Red

Asparagus (nervous about these, have not done these before, worried they will take over beds!)

Purple passion
Jersey Giant

Carrots

Purple Haze Hybrid (purple! Need I say more?)
Tendersnax Hybrid
Purple Dragon
Red Cored Chantenay

Peppers

Giallo di Cuneo (Yellow pepper from Cuneo)
Flavorburst hybrid
Sweet Rainbow Mix (every color purple, red, yellow, green, orange)

Radishes

Watermelon (white with pinkish-purple inside)
Confetti Blend

Pea/Sugar Snap Peas (had great luck with these last year too)

Super Sugar Snap
Super Sugar Snap V.P.
Sugar Pod II

Onions

Red Delicious hybrid (first time I am doing onions, they might protect the other plants from pests so useful AND edible!)

Scallions

Tokyo Long White Bunch
Red Beard

Leeks

Broad London
Titan
Electra

Basil

Genovese

Kale

Lacinato
Dinosaur
Red Russian

Chard

Bright Lights (from two different sources to compare performance)

Spinach

Whale
Olympia
Bordeaux (has red stems)
Taste of Asia

Other Greens:

Sputnik Arugula
Komatsuna
Maruba Santoh
Mizuna
Tatsoi

Eggplants

Asian Bride
Little Fingers
Farmer’s Long
Fairy Tale
Burpee Hybrid (big dark one)

Zuccini

Striato d’Italia – Italian Stripe

Broccoli

Barbados Hybrid

Cauliflower

Brocoverde

Brussel Sprouts

Diablo Hybrid
Falstaff (red purply ones!)

Watermelon

Yellow Doll
Tiger Baby
New Orchid

Sunflowers

Sunfower Heaven
Organic Mammoth Sunflower

I also am planting Marigolds for pest control and a Butterfly/Hummingbird/ecology attractant/enhancement seed collection.

I am planting all these using seed starter kits. Last year I used the Jiffy kits – the seeds mostly BUT they ran into the plastic lid ciling far too soon, so I had to prop things up, very awkward and hurt the greenhouse impact of the setup. This year I am trying Park Seed’s Double Bio Dome with 80 JUMBO cells; this setup has somewhat taller plastic lids and comes with seed starter food, which I think sounds beneficial, time will tell!

In addition, throughout the rest of the garden will be our fruit trees, more on that in a future post.

So where to plant all these things? Using the demo of http://www.growveg.com/ garden planning software AND armed with a copy of Edward Smith’s “The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible” (the software takes into account crop rotation from season to season but NOT “companion” planting – things like tomatoes like carrots but not pole beans), I created the tentative garden plan below… This will keep me busy!

Another nice thing about the growveg.com software – it will tell you WHEN to generally plant indoors/outdoors and harvest what you put in your plan, based on your zip code 🙂 When my seed packets arrive, I will compare what the software produces to what the seed packets say. Also nice, I understand that I will get reminder emails from growveg.com – I haven’t experienced that yet because I just signed up for the trial and finished my plan.