Update on Growing Artichokes from Seed

Last year I started some artichokes from seed, but they did not seem to do well. Some were eaten by bugs or other critters, and I had one lonely survivor, which was overwhelmed by the rampant tomato plants around it.  That one was not fooled by the "vernalization" treatment I gave it, which was supposed to trick it into thinking it had already gone through one summer. Artichokes are biennial, and they only make their edible buds in their second year. This one knew it had only been through one summer despite my earlier cold treatment, and it was just a little rosette of leaves on the ground. 

Last December I visited the Clark Botanic Garden and noticed that they had cardoon, a close relative of artichoke, planted outside and that it seemed to be doing fine. So I checked my own garden, and there was that one artichoke plant, looking pretty good! The coldest part of winter was still ahead, so I mulched it well and covered it, hoping it would survive and give me artichokes in 2013.

Today I uncovered it to see if it had made it through the coldest part of winter, and it had:

This year I'll make sure it has more space, gets lots of manure or compost, and is well-mulched. I'm hoping for some artichokes from it this year!

And now that I know you can overwinter artichokes here, I'll plant more of them and let them go through their normal 2-year lifespan, instead of trying to hurry them up and trick them into doing two years' worth of growing in one year.

Transplanting Tomatoes

A few weeks ago I planted tomato seeds. I usually start seeds in those clear plastic boxes that cherry tomatoes come in from the grocery store. I leave the plastic cover on until they sprout, and then I cut it off so they have less humidity and more air movement.

I put the seedlings in a sunny window, under lights. The light was not enough for them, though, because they grew up tall and skinny--what garden people call "leggy." This means a plant is looking for more light and for most plants, this is a disaster, because you can't fix it and it means the plant will forever be weak and spindly.

With tomatoes, though, you have a second chance. Unlike most other garden plants, you can transplant them and bury them deep, up to their necks. That long stem, once buried, will produce roots all along its length, and in the end you'll have a much stronger plant. Tomatoes thrive on being transplanted. When I start tomatoes from seed, I usually end up transplanting them two or three times, always into deeper and bigger pots, before planting them outside. Every time I transplant them, I plant them deeper.


These tomatoes are from free seeds. A few years ago I saved seeds from tomatoes I got at a farmers' market, and every year since then I've planted them and saved the seeds from that year's tomatoes. When I travel, I look for unusual heirloom (non-hybrid) tomatoes and save their seeds as a souvenir. This year I'm growing tomatoes from seeds I got while visiting relatives in Lebanon.

Sometimes a farmer's market will list tomatoes as heirloom, but they may not be. A few years ago I bought a gigantic, pale-yellow tomato with a smooth, mild flavor. I saved seeds from it and planted them the next year. I got two kinds of plants. One produced medium-sized, bright yellow-orange tomatoes with a bright, sunshiny flavor. The other produced big red beefsteak tomatoes. Clearly, my pale yellow tomato was a hybrid. This year I'm growing seeds of the bright yellow-orange offspring to see what I get. 

Here's one of those leggy plants after being transplanted. It looks much happier now.

Perennial Onions!

I love onions, and I have an especially soft spot for weird onions. Like these:

They're called Walking Onions, Egyptian Onions, or Topsetting Onions. As far as I know, they're not from Egypt and it's a mystery how they got that name. They grow from bulbs, produce a huge amount of long, delicious scalliony leaves, and eventually send up a flower stalk. Instead of flowers, it makes more bulbs, in a little cluster. Those bulbs often send up shoots that have another cluster of bulbs on top, and some plants make a third level of shoots and clusters on top of those. Eventually the whole plant falls over from the weight of all these airborne bulbs, and when the bulbs hit dirt they dig in roots. This is why the plant is called "Walking"--because it can move its own bulbs a few feet away from the original plant. 

It reproduces through these airy bulbs and also by creating more bulbs underground, adjacent to the one you originally planted. If you start with one or two bulbs and replant all the offspring, in a few years you'll have hundreds! These are truly perennial onions, and once you reach critical mass with them, you will never have to buy green onions at the store again. The small bulbs on top are strong and spicy and can be used for cooking, salads, or pickling, and so can the underground bulbs. The underground bulbs are about 2 inches across and taste similar to the yellow onions at the grocery store, just a bit stronger. The airborne ones vary from the size of a popcorn kernel to an inch or more across.

Unlike some plants that spread, these are not weedy and it's easy to keep them in one area. If a plant ends up in an area where you don't want it, just dig it up and move it, or eat it. You can eat all the parts of this plant.

This plant is hardy and will come back to life in spring even in the coldest gardens. You usually plant the bulbs in the fall, like garlic, and that's when most seed companies sell them. 

But if you have bulbs and forgot to plant them in the fall, you can plant them any time of the year. I just found some bulbs that I forgot I had, and I'm planting them now.

If you plant these onions in very early spring, you might get a crop of airborne bulbs by the end of the summer, or you might just get the scalliony leaves. The airborne bulbs will show up in the following summer, but they will be worth the wait.

Gilligan's Island Gardening

I've never been happy with the way I do tomato supports, pea trellises, and other vertical gardening elements. I have some of those cheap, badly welded tomato cages, but the tomato plants are too tall for them. The cages bend, come unwelded, and are hard to store in the winter. My old pea trellises, also made of wire, are too short, and I'm too cheap to buy new, bigger ones for either the peas or the tomatoes.

For years I've wanted to find bamboo to build strong, lightweight trellises. It's the Gilligan's Island theory of stuff: whatever you need, you can probably make it with bamboo. So I've been hunting for it as I drive around. 

And I've found it. It grows all over the Island, and I could probably draw a map showing you every place it grows. The problem is, most of these spots are in rich people's yards, and I'm too chicken to knock on their door and ask if they want to get rid of some of their bamboo. The rest are along roads so busy that it would be suicidal to pull over there and start hacking. A few days ago, though, I found an ad on Craigslist by a guy who has way too much of it growing in his yard. 

Free bamboo! All you have to do is come cut it!

I was on the LIE the same afternoon, heading to his house.

The guy was not kidding about how much bamboo he had. It had taken over his entire yard and was advancing on his house. He told me that somewhere in the thicket was a boat that the previous owner of his house had just left there, because he couldn't get through the bamboo to retrieve it. I couldn't even see the boat through the forest of thick stems. I cut a truckload full and went happily home with my treasure.

Check out this website for all sorts of ideas for trellises you can make with bamboo. If you have a small yard, like I do, you can grow many vegetables vertically and thus grow a lot more in a small space. You can even grow winter squash vertically, if you support the developing fruit in slings.

More than 50 photos of bamboo garden trellises!

This morning I built my first trellis--this one is for peas, in a formerly-neglected corner of the yard. I am reclaiming all these out-of-the-way corners to grow veggies in every possible spot. I planted peas under this trellis today, and put onion sets in the area in front of it. Soon I'll also plant lettuce and kale there. The spot is partly shaded later in spring, so it will be great for heat-hating lettuce and peas.

The two different kinds of chicken wire are from rolls I found in my basement--I have no idea where they came from and I know I never bought them, so I can only assume I found them on the side of the road somewhere and kept them because they might be useful. 

Winter Sowing

Long Islander Trudi Davidoff, like many of us on the Island, had a small house but wanted to start a lot of seeds. She came up with the idea of using recycled milk jugs and other plastic containers to make free, easy mini-greenhouses to start seeds outside.

Over time, she found that even seeds that traditionally were treated with tender loving care indoors, with heat and lights, would sprout happily in unheated containers outside, in winter. All sorts of annuals, perennial, and vegetables can be easily winter sown. One advantage of winter sowing is that the plants get full sunlight, even better than indoor grow lights.

You can start tomatoes this way. I've done this for the past three years, and the tomato plants that I started outside have been bigger, stronger, and more hardy than the indoor ones. They sprout later than the indoor ones, but they  have strong root systems and once the weather warms up and they're transplanted to the garden, they quickly catch up and surpass the indoor ones. All of my outdoor-started tomatoes have been bigger and more productive than the coddled indoor-started ones.

On the Island, which is Zone 7, most people winter sow their tomatoes outside in plastic containers at the end of February or the beginning of March. They usually sprout in late March or early April, and take off from there.

Some people cut the milk jug in half, put the soil and seeds in, and then tape the two halves back together. Poke some holes in the bottom of the jug and leave the top off for ventilation. I make a cut shaped like an upside-down U on one side of the milk jug, load the soil and seeds through it, then tape the flap closed. Label them on the side of the jug, and also on the bottom--labels on the side often fade in the sun, but labels on the bottom don't.

Put the jugs outside in a sunny place. Even if it's snowy or icy outside, they will do just fine.

You can learn more about Winter Sowing at her site: http://www.wintersown.org/