What do my seedlings look like

when they come up? Are they weeds or are they the seeds I planted? It all looks the same... lots of little green things poking up outta the dirt.
Always mark your pots or rows with any kind of marker.... from a popsicle stick to a recycled plastic plant marker, or a map you've drawn of the garden... anything to keep it straight, because even the best memory can fade after a few weeks....
An experienced eye can tell the difference, of course, but if you are new to gardening, or have not planted something for a long time, I'm putting together a series of garden posts that can be your visual guide, to see a few of the most popular and some strange plants, from the first cotyledon to the real leaves, and then the flowers.

From my many decades of gardening, from running a nursery, years of working as a garden designer and from the mistakes I've made, we can see the ups and downs. oh boy.

To go from seed packet, a pot of potting soil or well-prepared garden soil to this....
is an exciting roller coaster.......Anticipation. Thrills. Ups and Downs. Happiness and Disapointment. Just like life.

All these pictures are from my own gardens over the years.
In late winter and early spring these are a few of the sprouts you might see.

If you planted some garlic sections last fall, the little sprouts look a lot like grass. Burly burly grass. You can gently caress the sprouts and smell, and see if it smells like garlic. If it does, it's probably garlic. 

The planting instructions are on the back of the packet, and a search for trusted sources like Burpee or Rodale will teach you all the basics.

Spinach seedlings have their first leaves, the cotyledons, shaped like little spears, and the true leaves, like so many plants are different. The spinach leaves are rather heart-shaped, but longer.

Carrot seedlings look first like long skinny leaves, and not at all like a carrot leaf. The lovely carrot leaf is very lacy and fern-like. They are worth growing just for the leaves! Carrots come in a crazy variety of forms and colors. There is a lot more in the carrot world than just long and orange.

Pak Choi, or bok Choy, is that delicious Chinese Mustard in so many Chinese dishes. These are so easy to grow... so I encourage you to try it. The plants get quite large, so be sure to leave them room.
The seedlings resemble so many others in the mustard/kale/beet/turnip/broccoli family..... the first cotyledons are tiny little hearts.

Lettuce eat, let us!  so easy to grow, even in half shade/sun. They do like water and a fairly rich soil. But so easy, you just gotta try it.

The first leaves are little ovals, and if you plant colored lettuce, the first seedlings are colored too! Then the second leaves really do reveal themselves as the tiny versions of the variety they might be. Red curly, butter lettuce, romaine... and all the others.

Later, after all the frosts have ended, it will be time to plant sunflowers!
Easy. Easy. Easy. Perfect for kids to introduce them to gardening. The seeds are big, and are nearly foolproof. Just bait for slugs and snails.
The seedling pops out with a cap of the seed still attached, but after 2 or 3 days it jumps out and up so fast and the big meaty oblong leaves spread out. After that, the real leaves are large hearts, and the plant will jump up and reward the laziest and the beginner garden, and the old hands, too!

Once again, with broccoli, the first seedling leaves are tiny little hearts. Watch out for slugs and snails and bait accordingly. The secondary leaves are long and curvy, scalloped and ruffly, like oak leaves, and tend to be long and oval shaped.

The most rewarding, is quite possibly, radishes! yes! you can go from seed to radish in about 4 - 5 weeks...and they too come in many colors and shapes. The seedlings start as little hearts, and then the leaves resemble oak leaves, like broccoli too. But radish leaves have little bumps and are kinda hairy-looking. A bit strange.

The Sweet Peas are UP

It is, and should be, a post-Christmas holiday tradition, that Sweet Pea seeds should be planted in January. It's a beautiful and easy to grow vine or bush flower that blooms in earliest Spring, and can go on a-blooming until the early Summer when the garden makes way for the lush gardens of the summer heat.

Sweet Peas, Lathyrus odoratus, love a rich soil with lots of compost, lots of fertility, and aren't too fussy about soil, as long as it isn't too sandy or doesn't have too much clay.
Amend your soil where the vines will grow, and string up some sturdy hemp string, or attach a trellis to a board fence or on a wall, for the flowering vines. They can scamper up the branches of a shrub that leafs out late in Spring. I've had fun planting them in a sunny position at the foot of a large old lilac and they bloomed before the lilac blooms and the sweet peas were nearly done by the time the lilac leaves appeared.

There is also a bush Sweet Pea, and I've had good luck with that version also. So if you don't have room for a trellis or have a wire fence, just plant the shorter ones and you can still enjoy the delicious fragrance.

John Keats loved them so much he took a fountain pen to paper and wrote....

*********** 

Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white
And taper fingers clutching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings. 

**********
Soak the seeds overnight before you plant them and they'll sprout in about a week or so. After 9 days of waiting, here are my sprouts at 1 day old, 3 days old, 5 days old, and 7 days old!

You can see the little tendrils already, so these need some skinny little branches and twigs to help them get over to the trellis on my patio. It is gonna be fun watching them climb up!

Protect them from slugs, snails and birds and goats and chickens if you got 'em!
Keep them watered well, but don't drown them and if you get some sun on them, they will really take off growing rapidly and probably start blooming in April.
This is California gardening... for a colder climate like Washington, check this post I did in 2012.

Here's a few of the colors you can expect: All the lovely pastels, and dusky tones, almost black, and some are bi-colored, but they are working on the ever-elusive yellow. Blue is particularly charming in the Sweet Pea!
The fragrance is a bit of sweet Spring charm,  the flowers are gorgeous and complicated, and arrive on long slim stems. A bunch of them in a vase or Mason Jar, is a simple pleasure.

Bi-Colors!

Curly tendrils!

Always choose varieties that say on the package or catalog description, that they are fragrant. Sadly, in the quest for color variety or heat tolerance, a lot of fragrance power has been lost.
I always choose the old-fashioned, or heirloom seeds, but this year, I'm trying a New Zealand line,  Cheri Amour, from Renee's Garden.  This variety promises to be both fragrant and beautifully colored with solids and bi-colors, and  the petals are ruffled!

Don't eat these peas.... they are not the garden peas... Sweet Peas are mildly poisonous.
A few old fashioned Sweet Pea varieties are Old Spice which resists heat, Flora Norton, Miss Willmott, the Incense blend, and the Spencers, and here's a link to Swallowtail Garden with 33 delightful varieties. There is still time if you hurry! 

Renee's Garden seeds are here.

Beloved for centuries, this farm in Southern California celebrates an April Sweet Pea day!

A little winter gardening in California

It's time to start the garden year for 2015! I'm so happy I wet my plants. ;-)

It's true, that tomatoes and marigolds will come later in year, there are so many seeds to plant now, for growing your own food. Whether you garden in pots like me, or have a 1/4 acre plot, a big big backyard and front yard, there is simply no greater joy in life than to grow your own food.
You feel strong, you feel smart, you feel a connection with the humans from centuries past, and since you are what you eat......
doncha wanna eat good and healthy? Yes, you do!
Even if you can't grow everything, I can't certainly, but I can grow a lot of food in a few dozen pots and planters.
Follow along with me this year, because we are gonna see some miracles of life, and some of the best food any human has ever eaten!

 Oh yes you can!  if you live in a climate that has a few easy frosts in the winter, say below 32 degrees only a few times during winter, you can plant so many seeds.

Here's a short list of what you can plant, and what I planted mid January here in Northern Cali.

Spinach, beets, radish, lettuce, pak choi, broccoli, mustard, parsnips, rutabaga, and kale.  I always check the back of the package to be sure it says, NO GMO.
Why in the hell would you trust a for-profit corporation that specialized in pesticides to sell you seeds to plant for food?
GMO's are not safe for you. I don't plant them, and I sure don't eat them when I buy food at the supermarket. I have been buying organic, which is 100% NON-GMO, and I read all the labels to be sure it isn't GMO.

See, it will say on the package.  Here is a list of NON GMO seed companies.
The saddest news I have to report after almost 60 years of gardening, that MONSANTO now owns about 40% of the seeds sold in the US and worldwide, where GMO's are allowed, which is almost nowhere!!
They also own some HEIRLOOM names of very old seed varieties. How's that for Evil!!
Monsanto bought Seminis, "Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc. (“Seminis”) has grown to be the world’s largest developer, grower and marketer of vegetable seeds. Monsanto Company purchased the Seminis business in 2005. Seminis offers seed for commercial farmers and home gardeners. For the home garden market, Seminis offers bean, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, melons, onion, peas, peppers, spinach, sweet corn, tomato and watermelon seed."

Beware! What home garden seed sellers are OK? Here is a link and a list.
Good Seeds........ 

This link to the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive, has an article, a long long list, and it will take time to read, if you want to avoid Monsanto. And I know you do!

What seed companies took the Safe Seed Pledge?  Here is a list.
You can depend on these, and many others.
Renee’s Garden , Seeds of Change, TomatoFest Organic Heirloom Tomato Seeds, Lake Valley Seed,  Select Seeds Company, The Pepper Gal , Henry Field's Seed & Nursery Co., Seed Savers Exchange,  Ferry Morse Seed Company,  Johnny's Selected Seeds , Annie's Heirloom Seeds,  Nichol's Garden Nursery ,  Territorial Seed Company, Cooks Garden,  Ed Hume Seeds, Jung Seed Co. , and many many more.

2005, Monsanto grabbed approximately 40% of the US vegetable seed market - See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/the-four-steps-required-to-keep-monsanto-out-of-your-garden/#sthash.QlvfHe2a.dpuf

2005, Monsanto grabbed approximately 40% of the US vegetable seed market - See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/the-four-steps-required-to-keep-monsanto-out-of-your-garden/#sthash.QlvfHe2a.dpuf

first I had to pull all the dead plants from the frost last month, and here are the last blighty tomatoes. This year, I'm gonna start tomatoes that are blight-resistant.

Then in all my pots, I stirred in some organic compost, some chicken poop and stirred it up.
I made little indentations, and dropped in some seed according to the package instructions and gently covered them up, and watered with a gentle stream from my watering can with a rose.

A few weeks ago I bought a few pansies to brighten up the winter garden, and I trimmed back the alyssum, and gave the garden a general clean-up.

The potted garden is a little bleak, I'll admit, but it is nice to see what survived the frosts:
Alyssum, nasturtium (with a few damaged leaves), and all the perennials, that I just cut back to half, or some, to their stems leaving about an inch.

I also tossed in some winter flowers to bloom ASAP! These all have tiny seeds, so only cover them just slightly.... about 1/16" to 1/4".
Godetia, Evening Stock, Garden stock, calendula, more alyssum,  all are reliable early Spring bloomers.
I have some sprouts... so next bloggy post, I'll show pics of what some of the first ones up look like.

What does fall require?

well, it certainly requires some tomato recipes! Tomatoes, to. mate. o's. We wait for months....we deprive ourselves of supermarket red balls of mushy goo....that ain't no tomato.  Here's a mess o' pics of my tomatoes...... I only planted 2 varieties this year.... weird I know. the Heirloom Russian Krim, and the simple old-fashioned tried and true, Cherry tomato.

Just a sample of the first tomatoes this year.... splitting because we had a big rainstorm as the biggest toms were ripening, so they soaked up a lot of water very quickly. I have in the past, covered the whole tomato patch with a makeshift cover of a wood frame and plastic. This is unslightly but it does work!
I didn't do it this year because I was busy being on vacation and swimming, and generally enjoying summer.... a very short season.

I've been growing heirlooms all my life...my parents were gardeners, and the vets that lived at my dad's hotel also had big gardens. Most often, they were planted with seeds that had been saved from last season! Take that Monsanto!
If you can do nothing else.....I implore you to never ever buy a Monsanto seed. Here's a list of companies that are independent and believe food is too precious to make it a corporate property.  Garden of Eatin' blog is a wonderful and detailed resource for quality seeds.

I have bought a lot of heirloom seeds in the 80s and on, from these companies... Totally Tomato, Tomato Growers Supply, Seymour’s Selected Seeds, R.H. Shumway, Park Seed, Territorial Seed, Shepherd's Seeds, and lots of seeds from European companies.
My mom used Burpee seeds a lot. So, I'm naturally drawn to them, and they are very sentimental.

One of my favorite cookbooks is The World In Your Kitchen, by Troth Wells, pub. 1993. It's all vegetarian.  It's a delightful book with lots of pics of people from all over the world cooking the food they and their families and tribes have eaten for centuries.
That is kickin' it Old School! If you want good food, go back to basics and learn what the classics are....then venture out to Thomas Keller....et al.
;-)

from the Middle East, stuffed tomatoes, Mahasha. this is really great because you probably have all the ingredients right in your cupboards.

Cut your 4 big tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds and pulp. Turn on the oven to 325 degrees. Heat up oil in a frying pan and add 2 tbs of cilantro or coriander leaves, and crisp them. Add 1 tsp. of curry powder, 1/2 - 1 tsp of chili powder, 2 tsps of cumin seeds, 1 tsp of mustard seeds, 1 clove of crushed garlic to the cilantro and cook for 2 minutes, then remove from the heat, and add salt.
Add 1/2 pound of mashed potatoes, or the same amount cooked bulghur, 1/3 cup of peas, to the reserved tomato pulp.
Stir it together, and fill the tomato halves and place in an ovenproof dish. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes.

A simple relish from Africa.  A peanut and tomato relish.  We substitute walnuts, or cashews for the peanuts, because we are allergic! Again, simple ingredients you have on hand.

a favorite picture from the book......look at those tomatoes!!

and........when you just wanna eat some of those many many many green tomatoes....
I took this picture and the rising steam fogged my camera lens!

You can just slice and fry in oil, or coat them with flour..... and there are a lot of variations.... do a search on TEH InterWebs!