growing food

Analysing our 2022 garden: potatoes, sweet potatoes and sunchokes

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

I can say right now, when it comes to tubers, we had a really poor year in 2022!

We grew three varieties of potatoes, each with a different maturation rate. All were supposed to be good for storage.

They were grown in new beds, using the deep mulch method. The two larger beds had about half planted with potatoes, and the other half planted with melons. A third variety had a small bed all to itself.

The Results:

The early variety, Caribe, resulted in fewer potatoes than we planted. As you can see, there was slug damage, too.

The mid and late varieties got harvested at the same time. A lot of the All Blue potatoes seemed to have scab. The Bridget variety seemed to be clear of scab, but slug damage was a problem with both. Altogether, it was a very disappointing harvest.

Conclusion:

While we may not have gotten much out of them, the potatoes were actually quite delicious. I would be willing to grow all the varieties again.

The main problem is the slugs, and that was an issue the first time we grew potatoes using the deep mulch method.

Slugs were not the only problem, however.

The flooding took its toll. Under all that straw mulch in the above photo is a whole lot of water. Many seed potatoes simply rotted away, and among those that did grow, they never recovered enough to produce any tubers at all. It really is amazing that we got as many potatoes to harvest as we did, to be honest.

I think for 2023, we might look at getting indeterminate varieties that are good for growing in towers and try doing grow bags again. Or, we might get the same varieties, but grow them in raised beds.

The flooding we had in 2022 was more than anything anyone in the area has seen before, and it’s unlikely we’ll have a year like this again in our lifetimes. Now that it’s happened, though, we’ll know where the lower areas are and plan according, as we expand our garden beds.

Potatoes are one of those staple food crops so, in the future – once we’ve got the details worked out – we plan to grow a lot more potatoes for winter storage.

Now we move on to a crop that is more unusual for our area: sweet potatoes!

Most varieties require a much longer growing season than we have, but I did find a short season variety to try. They went into grow bags, and were not affected by the flooding.

Not that that seemed to help much.

The Results:

This picture is our entire sweet potato crop, from three grow bags.

The flooding may not have been an issue for them, but they just never did well. There are people in local gardening groups that successfully grow sweet potatoes, so I know it can be done. The problem is, I’m not entirely sure what, specifically, kept these from growing. I can think of several reasons, and it could even be a combination of them. I just don’t know.

Conclusion:

They may have been small but, when we tried them, they were delicious! I would really like to try them again. There’s only one place that I know of that sells short season sweet potatoes. I think that when we try them again, I’ll grow them in deeper containers that are black, which will help warm the soil, and mulch them earlier. We have not yet decided if we will try them again for 2023, or save it for another year.

Another new tuber we tried is actually in the sunflower family. Canada’s potato: the sunchoke, or Jerusalem Artichoke.

We got a package of 10 Jerusalem Artichokes and planted them in a bed near the garage. Unfortunately, the worst of the flooding in our yard was around the garage. There was basically a moat around it, and almost a pond behind it.

Still, it seemed to only result in the sunchokes growing a bit later. They survived, and seemed to do quite well.

The problem is, they never bloomed. In fact, they didn’t even start budding. At all.

By fall, I decided to harvest half of them, to see what we had.

The Result:

I was pleasantly surprised. The tubers I found looked quite firm and healthy, if small.

There certainly wasn’t a lot there to harvest, and I made sure to plant the largest tuber I found under each plant. So next year, one half of the bed should have just five plants in it, while the other half should have five clusters of plants.

Conclusion:

I’m not entirely sure why the sunchokes never fully matured. It could be because of the flooding and the late start, or it could be because they didn’t get enough sunlight. I did prune some branches from the trees above and to the north of them, so if that was an issue, it should be better next year.

The question is: will the tubers survive the winter? I have no idea. If they don’t, I would want to get more to plant. I taste tested them raw, while the whole family tried them cooked, and we liked them enough that they are worth keeping.

Sunchokes are something that come with warnings about being potentially invasive. I had that in mind when deciding where to plant them. Which means they should survive the winter and grow next year. If they do, as long as we keep harvesting enough of them in the fall, we shouldn’t have problems with them becoming too invasive.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Analysing our 2022 garden: onions, shallots and garlic

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

What a mixed bag it was for onions and garlic we had!

I’ll start with the shallots.

The Results:

This picture was taken in June. We were still dealing with flooding. The shallots you see here were from sets. Of the shallots we grew from seed, few survived to be transplanted. You can just see some at the very bottom of the photo, and those quickly died.

As did almost all the shallots from sets. They just rotted away.

Conclusion:

The previous year, we were able to grow shallots from sets successfully, even during drought, so at least there is that option in the future. It’s growing them from seed that seems to be the biggest challenge. For 2023, we are trying a different variety. Hopefully, we will have better success with those!

Then there were the Red Baron bunching onions. These were planted in a bed along the retaining wall of the old kitchen garden.

The Results:

I won’t even try to dig up a picture of those. We had better success starting them indoors compared to the year before, but once they were transplanted, that was it. They were a total fail. I think a lot of it had to do with the bed being too shaded by the ornamental apple trees at each corner of the old kitchen garden. They did get pruned, and that space get a lot more light now, but it was likely too little, too late.

That and I think the cats were rolling on them, too.

Conclusion:

While I would really like to grow this variety of bunching onions, we’ll move away from them completely for 2023, and save them for another year in the future.

Our fall garlic was both a win and a fail. We bought the same varieties as the year before, planted them in the fall and had them well mulched for the winter.

The Results:

One variety of garlic, Porcelain Music, was planted in the main garden area, taking up half of a low raised bed. This picture was taken in May. These did very well! In fact, we were able to save some of them to plant in the fall, for our 2023 garden!

Then there were the varieties we planted in the low raised beds in the east yard. These were Purple Stripe and Rocambole. The above picture was also taken in May.

One bed had so few survive, I ended up transplanting them to the other bed, so I could use that bed to transplant the Yellow Pear tomatoes into. While we did have garlic to harvest, the few bulbs remaining were very small.

Conclusion:

The two varieties that failed were, I believe, the victims of our unusually long, cold end of winter. I think the low raised beds simply got too cold, and stayed cold for too long.

But the ones in the low raised bed in the main garden seemed to be better protected somehow. So when we planted garlic this fall, we used another of these low raised beds. Along with the garlic we saved ourselves, I ended up getting a new variety of hard neck, plus a variety of soft neck, garlic to try. In the future, we will shoot to be able to plant a LOT more garlic than this, but for this fall, that’s all we were able to get done. Hopefully, we will have better growing conditions next year, and all three varieties will succeed!

Now we move on to the bulb onions. We had a mix of onions from seed, and from sets.

In the above photo, we have Red of Florence red onions, grown from seed. The yellow onions are both from seeds and sets – there’s no real difference in size between them! These were planted around the edges of low raised beds, to help deter critters.

These are the Tropeana Lunga onions, grown from seed and transplanted into the high raised bed.

These tiny red onions were from sets planted around the Yellow Pear tomatoes.

The Results:

The Red of Florence and Tropeana Lunga onions both did very well! The Tropeana Lunga took a lot longer to mature, and even after they were harvested, they kept trying to grow rather than cure! We all liked their longer shape that makes them easier to cut up for cooking. The flavour of both are good, too.

The yellow bulb onions were both smaller than they had the potential to be, but that had a lot to do with our growing conditions conditions overall.

The red onions from sets that were planted with the Yellow Pear tomatoes barely grew at all. I think they were simply overshadowed by the tomatoes, which got massive.

We did plant extras that didn’t fit in their beds in the retaining wall of the old kitchen garden. Those pretty much all failed, partly because the cats kept rolling on them.

Conclusion:

As you can see in the above photo, flooding was a problem in the main garden area, but the low raised beds were just high enough to protect the things we planted in them, including the onions that were planted around the edges of several of them.

We would very happily grow the Red of Florence and Tropeana Lunga again. Unfortunately, I was not able to get seeds for either of them for 2023. We also went with different varieties of seeds for yellow onions and shallots. Whether or not we get more sets in the spring is yet to be decided.

Growing from seed is touch and go; part of the challenge with starting the seeds indoors is keeping the cats away! The main thing about growing from seed is that you get a lot more plants for your money compared to sets. Another bonus is, onions don’t get transplant shock, so large numbers of seeds can be sown close together, then they’re just pulled apart when it’s time to transplant. How successful we are at starting them from seed will help determine what we get for sets in the spring, if any.

Onions are something we find we use a LOT of. Once we started growing them ourselves, we just can’t seem to grow enough! Thankfully, they can be interplanted with quite a few other things, making for effective use of space. We also like having a variety of types. One of the traits we look for when choosing varieties is anything that is good for winter storage.

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2022 garden: tomatoes

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

Okay, let’s start with something that actually produce quite a bit!

For 2022, we grew four types of tomatoes. In the main garden area, we grew Cup of Moldova paste tomatoes, and Sophie’s Choice; both rare varieties we got from Heritage Harvest Seeds.

We ended up with mostly Cup of Moldova tomatoes. In fact, a couple of them had to be transplanted in another bed, because we ran out of space. There were just a few Sophie’s Choice in comparison.

I’ll have to talk about our issues with starting seeds indoors in a separate post, but suffice to say, we managed to keep enough seedlings alive to have a decent number to transplant. Thankfully, these went into a low raised bed in the main garden area, which means they also escaped harm from spring flooding.

The Sophie’s Choice was more of a bush type tomato and didn’t need a lot of support, while the Cup of Moldova could have used a bit more support.

Both varieties took a long time before they matured. Being determinate varieties, I was counting on them to mature all at once, but that didn’t really seem to happen.

The Results:

While these were grown more for cooking and preserving, they were also used for fresh eating. Both were described as being very mild in flavour.

For preserving, most of the Cup of Moldova went to making tomato paste; we got a dozen tiny jars out of it, and have quite enjoyed having those available. We also dehydrated some, using our oven, which worked out rather well. I rather like having dehydrated tomatoes available to cook with, too. We also used some to make a tomato sauce that was quite enjoyable.

Along with the ripe tomatoes we had for preserving, there were quite a few green tomatoes that we harvested to ripen slowly indoors, which extended their use for quite some time.

Conclusions:

We saved seeds from these, because we want to help preserve the varieties. However, their flavour was nothing special, so we will be trying other varieties. Once we’ve found varieties of paste tomato we’re happy with, I want to grow a lot more for making tomato paste, dehydrating and for making tomato powder.

We also had some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, which we planted in the south yard, along the chain link fence. Though this went into a low raised bed, there was so much flooding in the area on the spring, it was still affected. Of what we planted in that bed, however, the tomatoes seemed to be the least affected, though they did not grow as well as last year’s tomatoes did, in the same location. It was handing having them where they were, though, as we could use the chain link fence to support them as they grew.

The Results:

These were not as prolific as I was expecting them to be. What I’m not sure of is whether it was because it was such a poor growing year, or if that was just the variety. We tried drying some, and at the end of the season, we picked them green and let them finish ripening indoors, giving my husband and daughter (the only to members of the household that enjoy fresh tomatoes), something to snack on for quite some time!

Conclusions:

They were the most flavourful of the varieties we grew this year. While we will be trying other indeterminate varieties for fresh eating, the Chocolate Cherry was good enough that we’d be happy to grow them again. We did save seeds from them, too.

The Yellow Pear tomatoes were the most successful of all the tomatoes we grew this year. The plants themselves got huge; they needed a lot more support than we were able to give them! They were also incredibly prolific. Not only did we have plenty to pick for fresh eating, there were LOTS of green ones to pick at the end of the season, to ripen indoors.

The Results:

In the above photo with all our green tomatoes, the Chocolate Cherry is in the foreground. The rest of the tiny tomatoes are Yellow Pear. The round ones in the middle screen are Sophie’s Choice, while in the back corner, we have the Cup of Moldova. We dehydrated some of the yellow pear tomatoes, and made a yellow tomato sauce as well. Amazingly productive plants! As the green tomatoes slowly ripened, they were quite enjoyed simply as fresh snacks.

Conclusion:

These were very mild in flavour and, while my family liked having fresh tomatoes to snack on, we will probably not grow these again. We did save seen and will have that option if we want, but only if for some reason, we don’t have other choices. We will be trying other varieties of cherry or grape tomatoes for fresh eating, instead. They were fun to grow, but the flavour just isn’t there.

Still, as far as things went in 2022, tomatoes – all the varieties – were among the most successful things we grew.

Planning Ahead:

We have different varieties planned for our 2023 garden but, if we have the space for it, I’d still like to grew at least a couple of plants each of the Sophie’s Choice and Cup of Moldova, just because they are rare varieties. I want to keep them going and collect fresh seeds again. However, the only variety we grew in 2022 that stood out for flavour was the Chocolate Cherry, but the plants were not as vigorous, nor as productive, as I would have liked.

So we will continue to experiment, and continue to have both determinate and indeterminate varieties, choosing some specifically for fresh eating and others specifically for preserving.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Veseys seeds, second order arrived

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The rest of the seeds we ordered from Veseys arrived today. You can read about what we ordered and why, here.

It was difficult to get a photo of them all, because the cats immediately came over and tried to roll all over my little display on the bed! You can see Leyendecker in this photo, and then Ginger came in and threw himself bodily onto the Dalvay peas!

Speaking of which, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d ordered the Dalvay peas before, so I went looking at my old photos. Sure enough, we did order Dalvay peas back in 2020, for our 2021 garden. I knew we’d ordered green shelling peas before; it was the name I wasn’t sure of.

And this is why I take photos of everything, and use this blog as a gardening journal! 😄

The tomato packet felt so … empty… I double checked the site. It says there are approximately 50 seeds per packet in this size (they also have packets with 200, 1000 and 10,000 seeds available). Tomato seeds are so light and thin, I guess that would indeed feel pretty thin!

Now, there are just the seeds we ordered from the US to come in, and from the tracking number, they have not reached Canada, yet.

Next month we will order more, but I don’t know that we’ll be ordering more seeds. We’ll be ordering things like potatoes for sure, and probably berry bushes, all of which won’t get shipped until spring.

We’ll be planting another really huge garden for 2023. Hopefully, we’ll have better weather and growing conditions!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Heritage Harvest seeds have arrived!

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These came in really fast!

The top row is all stuff we tried to grow in 2022. The only change is that the Candy Roaster seeds we got for last summer was from Veseys. We should still have some of those left, so if we wanted to, we could try both and see which does better here.

The middle row is also all stuff we tried growing last summer, except for the Chamomile, which is new for 2023.

In the bottom row, the Little Finger Eggplant is a repeat, while the Red Wethersfield onion and Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify are new.

The Lemon Cucumber are our free package of seeds with this order. (Image belongs to Heritage Harvest) I had actually been eyeballing these as something new to try, but had decided against them for now. In fact, I wasn’t sure if we’d try growing cucumbers again at all this year. We did actually get cucumbers, and they would have been enough for our own use – but then my sister gave us massive amounts of cucumbers from her own garden, and we were overwhelmed.

We like cucumbers, but not that much!

Anyhow, if we were to order more cucumbers, it would be another dual purpose type, good for both fresh eating and canning. Now we have these, so we will at least have a fresh eating type! Plus, it’s something we’ve never tried before. I’m looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: first Veseys seeds are in

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There were two seed orders waiting for me in the mail today. The first had the seeds I’d ordered with some trees from Veseys, earlier.

I don’t know if we’ll plant the Caveman’s Club gourd this year – it depends on how well we manage with building trellises in the spring – but we will definitely start a few of each variety of peppers. We’ll have so many varieties this year, we won’t need to start many of each, and should still have a lot.

Assuming we have a good growing year in 2023!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: Veseys seed order is in

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One more order of seeds is now done! This is actually our second order with Veseys for next year’s garden.

We had intended to order our potatoes from here, as they have varieties we tried two years ago we really liked. Unfortunately, all their potatoes are currently listed as sold out. There were issues with this last year, when no potatoes were allowed to be sold out of PEI. I’d hope that wouldn’t be an issue, this year! This order ended up being just seeds. No trees or other such things that would be shipped in the spring.

One thing I noticed with their new inventory for 2023 is that their seed prices have increased substantially. I’ve seen increased prices across the board and was expecting it, but the increase seems quite a bit higher here. High enough that it actually affected some of our purchasing decisions.

As with our other seed orders, we have purchased a few things we’ve bought before. This includes the Pixie melon that we enjoyed so much the first year we grew melons, but weren’t able to save seed for, Lakeside spinach, one of three varieties we’d purchased as a collection, Lewis green beans and Merlin beets.

These are the new items and varieties we’ve ordered this time. All images belong to Veseys.

Purple Queen Improved Bean

The first variety of purple bush bean we’d ordered before did very well, even under drought conditions. In fact, all the purple items we ordered did better. I didn’t see it listed anymore, so I decided to try this similar one. The description notes that it has “amazing flavour”.

Red Swan Bush Bean.

These are noted for their exceptionally high yields, and long production season. It can be used as a fresh bean or a cooking (shelling) bean. I will have to remember to leave some of them specifically for shelling, while harvesting others fresh, so we can try it both ways.

Custard Bean

A new variety of yellow bush bean to try that’s noted for being prolific.

Yeah, we’ve got a LOT of beans on order this year. I like to have the different colours, and a mix of types to try. With how prolific these and the other varieties are supposed to be, we don’t have to plant a lot of each. There tends to be quite a lot of seeds in each packet, so we can likely have enough to last us 2 or 3 years, at least.

Dalvay Peas.

This variety of shelling pea is noted for its long pods, well filled with at least 10 peas per pod, and sweet flavour. We’ve had poor results with peas for the past two years, due to weather conditions, and I’d really, really love to finally have more than a snack’s worth of fresh peas! 😁

Sarah’s Choice melon.

This variety is described as the most flavourful in Vesey’s trials, and matures in only 76 days. Our first year growing melons was better than expected, while the second year’s melons were flooded out, so I’m really hoping we have cooperative weather for 2023. We really like melons in this household!

Honeyboat Delicata Squash

I’ve been hearing rave reviews for Delicata squash, but I also saw warnings that they were not a good storage squash. So when I saw this variety was noted as high yielding and a great storage variety, I figured it was worth a try!

Talon Onion

I was planning to get the Oneida onion again, but choked at the price increase, so I picked these, instead. They are described as a great storage onion that does well in dry conditions, and matures 85 days after transplant.

Ambition Shallot

I was going to try the Conservor shallots again, but the price increase was even higher than the Oneida onions. There was another variety that interested me, but it was already sold out. We’ve had no luck growing shallots from seed so far. Our first attempts were destroyed by cats, and the second by flooding that even killed off the shallots we planted from sets. This variety is supposed to be easy to grow, and store extremely well. Here’s hoping we succeed this time!

Cheyenne Pepper

While we have quite a few varieties of sweet peppers, my daughter requested we get a hot variety, too. This is a high yielding variety of cayenne pepper that is ideal for growing in a pot.

Naval Carrot

I was happy with the Napoli carrots we’ve ordered before – I got two years out of the amount of pelleted seeds we got. However, their smallest size packets currently available was more than we needed, so I chose this variety, instead. It is described as keeping its sweet flavour even after months in storage, and as easy to harvest.

Espresso Corn

We actually discussed not doing corn again for 2023, and waiting until we had better soil conditions for such a nitrogen hungry plant, but I think I know where I want to grow these where they should do quite well – I hope! This variety matures in only 67 days, which solves another of our problems, too.

Classic Eggplant.

Yes, we have the Little Finger Eggplant, with their long, narrow shape, but I thought it would be good to have the more traditional type as well. It is described as having “tremendous yields”, and matures in only 75-80 days, so they should work out well.

Roma VF Tomato

Yes, we saved seed from the Cup of Moldova Paste tomato, and we do want to keep that rare variety growing, but they weren’t exactly a flavour power house. At least that’s what my daughter tells me (I can’t eat non-processed tomatoes). I still want a paste tomato, so I chose this Roma variety. I don’t know what the VF stands for, but they are supposed to be quite prolific, and mature about 75 days from transplant.

Lemon Grass

Another request from my daughters, for our culinary herb garden. It has a hardiness zone of 8-9, though, so this is going to be grown in a pot, and in a very sheltered area. I know just the micro climate spot to put it in!

German Winter Thyme

This culinary variety (they also had ground cover varieties) is a bit hardier, but still a zone 4 – 8, which means it will likely be in a pot, too.

And that’s it for this order – and for any other orders until next month’s budget! Those most of what’s left that we want to get is stuff like potatoes, and more sea buckthorn to replace the ones that died – stuff that won’t be shipped until spring. Still, we don’t want to wait to long to order them, as I expect things will be selling out quickly.

We’re ordering a lot more seeds than we actually need, but if there’s one thing we learned from our 2022 garden, it’s that it’s well worth planting more than we think will be enough. In fact, we planted with that in mind, and it still didn’t cut it!

Nature can be brutal.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Baker Creek seed order is in

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For most things, I try to order from Canadian seed companies. The chances of success is higher, for starters. Plus, there’s the dollar difference. Baker Creek has some pretty incredible stuff, though, so I’m ordering from them again this year. I don’t know if I’ll keep it up, though; orders higher than $20 will now get charged customs duty. I’ll see how much that turns out to be before I decide if it’s worth buying from the US again.

As with our Heritage Harvest order, there are some things I am ordering again. This includes the Red of Florence onion, Uzbeck Golden carrot (last time, these were the free seeds our order came with), plus both the Kakai and Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins.

New with this order, we will be getting:

Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify

Yes, you read that right. The same variety of salsify that I ordered from Heritage Harvest. And yet, they look quite different, as is the taste description. I figured we can try both and see if there really is a difference, and which one we like better.

Indigo Blue Chocolate Tomato

An indeterminate variety for my tomato loving husband and daughter, for fresh eating.

Black Beauty Tomato

Another variety for my husband and daughter for fresh eating. The description neglects to mention if it’s a determinate or indeterminate variety, but apparently they are extremely tasty, and only 80 days to maturity. The description even says the flavour even improves with room temperature storage.

Sweet Chocolate Pepper

We’re going to have a lot of varieties of peppers this year! These are supposed to mature in 75 days, which should not be a problem for our area. I figure if we grow a few of each variety, we’ll know which ones we like best to narrow it down to in the future.

Well. My husband and older daughter will know. My younger daughter and I don’t like peppers.

African Drum Gourd

Have I mentioned I’m a sucker for punishment? And that I’m determined to grow gourds?

They can reach maturity in 90-140 days, so there is a possibility that it will work here. We have a growing season of about 110 days, on average.

On top of these, our order qualified for 2 free packets of seeds. It should be interesting to see what we get!

So that’s it for our Baker Creek order. I’ll be placing at least one more order for our 2023 before the end of November, but that order will include things that won’t be shipped until spring.

I think these planning stages can be some of the most fun in gardening!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Heritage Harvest seed order in

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It may be the end of November, and I may still be sick, but I can still do at least some garden things!

I got two seed orders in today. This first one is from Heritage Harvest Seed. We ordered from them last year, and I was very happy with them. Plus, they grow their own seeds, and are located even further north than we are, so we can be assured that, barring unusual circumstances (like the flooding we got in 2022!), anything we order there should be able to grow where we are.

Though we do still have seeds leftover for some things, I went ahead and ordered a number of things we ordered last year. Among the things I have re-ordered are: Tom Thumb popcorn seeds (we got none last summer, due to flooding, so for 2023, these will be planted in a completely different location, in a raised bed), Little Finger Eggplant, Canteen, Apple and Yakteen gourds, and Zucca melon (because I’m a sucker for punishment and determined to grow more gourds), Styrian hulless pumpkins and Boston Marrow. I am also getting Georgia Candy Roaster. Last year, we ordered those from Veseys, but I want to try Heritage Harvest’s seeds this time.

New for 2023 are:

Red Warty Thing.

Gotta love that name! I wanted to order these last year, but they were out of stock when I was placing my orders. I wanted to make sure I had some seeds for this year. According to the description, they are great for soups and roasting.

Pink Banana Squash.

This is another one that I had wanted to order last year, but they were out of stock.

Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify.

My older daughter requested we try salsify, because it apparently tastes like seafood. More specifically, according to the description, this variety tastes like oysters. Apparently, they can be very difficult to harvest and break easily, so she plans to grow them in something deep, like garbage cans (we have a remarkable number of garbage cans around here), so they can be just dumped out to harvest.

Red Wethersfield Onion.

Last year, I was torn between ordering these or another type, so I’m trying these ones for 2023. They are noted as being a good storage variety. There are only 50 seeds per packet, so I ordered two.

We’ll be ordering a lot of different onions for 2023. We just can’t seem to grow enough of them!

Chamomile.

Lawn chamomile grows wild where we are, but this is the larger type that is what you would find in the chamomile teas you buy in stores. Over time, we will be planting a tea garden, and this is our first start!

I’ll be doing an assessment of our 2022 garden later, but we had a lot of failures, especially with the squash. It is unlikely we will have the level of spring flooding we had this past spring again next year, so I hope things will have a better chance of surviving. I was really looking forward to trying the different varieties of winter squash we’d planted, but we’ll just have to try again!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: first order in, with Veseys

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We haven’t even done a thorough assessment of our 2022 garden, nor fully decided what we plan to grow next year, but I’ve gone ahead and made our first order for next year’s garden, today.

The main reason is, there are things I wanted to order before they have a chance to be out of stock. Particularly with trees for the food forest we are slowly developing. These will be shipped in the spring, and we won’t be billed until they are shipped. I ordered seeds as well, because I used a sponsor promo code from Maritime Gardening, which gives free shipping if there is at least one package of seeds in the order.

This is what I ordered today. All images belong to Veseys, and links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place. 😊

The new Trader Everbearing Mulberry is the main reason I wanted to place an order right away. We tried a different variety before, that promptly got killed by an unusually cold night shortly after it was planted. Cold enough that even if we had this variety, it likely would not have survived, so soon after being planted.

Here is the description from the site (in case you’re reading this years later, and the link is dead).

Morus alba x rubra. There are so many things to love about ‘Trader’ Everbearing Mulberry! First, the tree itself is absolutely beautiful and can be grown as a single trunk or multi-stemmed shrub. Big, glossy black fruit are present throughout the summer and are an irresistible blend of sweet and tart. Even the leaves are starting to be considered a super-food and can be made into a powerfully healing tea. ‘Trader’ is winter hardy (Zone 3-4), vigorous, long-lived and disease and pest resistant.  We ship 8-12″ non-grafted tree.

Please note: Due to a crop shortage, we are not able to supply the Mulberry in a 3.5″ pot. We can supply in a 2.5″ pot. Since these are smaller, we will send 2 of the smaller size for spring 2023.

That last bit about pot sizes is another reason we wanted to order the mulberry right away. They may be smaller, but we’ll be getting two trees for the price of one. Which means chances are better for at least one of them to survive!

The other tree we ordered was Liberty Apple. From the website:

Malus. Superlative variety resistant to a host of diseases. This apple has outstanding flavour and is aromatic and juicy. The conical red fruit is among the very best and as an added bonus is excellent for cider. Crispy, juicy apples right in your back yard. Good Scab resistance, making them much easier to look after. For best results, two varieties should be planted. We are offering 1 yr. whips. approximately 18-24″ in height which have been grafted onto hardy rootstock. They should mature to about 15-18 ft. Hardy to zone 4.

Yes, it says zone 4 and we are zone 3, but we will just have to take extra care in where it’s planted, and to protect it while it’s small. We have crab apple trees, but no regular apples. One apple tree should be enough to provide for our needs, and the crab apples will be the second variety pollinator.

Then there are the seeds.

While we didn’t have much to show for peppers this past summer, that had more to do with our horrible growing year in general. My pepper loving daughter had thought we would be ordering several varieties for this past year, but I’d only ordered the one type. I think we learned enough about growing them to order more varieties, so I ordered a sweet bell pepper combo.

This is Vesey’s Sweet Pepper collection, and here is their description:

A few of our favourite sweet peppers! This collection contains 3 pkgs, 1 each of Early Sunsation, Early Summer and Dragonfly sweet peppers.

Early Sunsation: Bright yellow and big. Very heavy yielding with thick, juicy walls. This variety stays nice and crisp even when fully yellow. 3 lobed fruit. Resistant to Bacterial Leaf Spot races 1-3. 65 days to green; 80 days to yellow from transplanting.

Early Summer: Elite, early and extra large! Early summer is an early maturing, yellow bell pepper. The fruit are large at 5″ and an elite disease resistance package gives Early Summer a winning combination.

Dragonfly: Sweet and colourful. Dragonfly’s early production was a standout for our trial staff. Fruit emerges green and turns deep purple when mature. Dragonfly continues to produce fruit into the fall even after temperatures have dropped.

The Early Summer is new to Veseys for the 2023 growing season.

There was another new for 2023 item I just had to order.

The Caveman’s Club Gourd! This is definitely something for the “just for fun” list. 😁

Truly different! This 12-16″ gourd produces a dark green, ridged, alien-like, bulbous fruit that are not like anything we have seen before! Growing them on a trellis ensures a straight neck. Plant early for best results. Matures in 120 days. Approx. 15 seeds/pkg.

I just couldn’t resist. This will be an ideal thing to try growing on the new trellis tunnels we will be building in the spring.

After we’ve taken the time to assess things from our 2022 garden, then gone through what seeds we still have, we’ll start making final decisions about what else we want to order for the 2023 growing season. One thing we will almost certainly be ordering are different raspberry bushes, that mature at different times. Any raspberries we order won’t start producing until their second year, so what we order to plant in 2023 will be to have raspberries in 2024. As we add to our perennial food producers, while still staying in budget, it’s a balancing act between ordering things that will take years before they start producing, like the apple and mulberry trees, and things that will start producing more quickly, like the raspberries.

Little by little, though, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer