How The First Plant Came To Be

I thought I would share this very interesting Scientific American article on how plants came to be:

How The First Plant Came To Be

Seedling Update

Despite a few life issues that caused me to dump my last tray of peat pellets, my seed starting goes well! =) I now have 5 about 1 month old seedlings: 2 Cowhorn Pepper, 2 Thai Dill & 1 Broad Leaf Sage (ones in front in the pic below). In addition to those, I have several wee seedlings, still in the pellets. The Jiffy peat pellet greenhouses are certainly the way to go for excellent germination, in my opinion. Put a heating mat underneath it, make sure to keep the dome on & in a week you'll already have close to (if not better than) 90% germination! I now have 6 pellets each (minus one I tossed because I messed it up) of the following types of veggies: Roma VF Tomato, Brandywine Tomato, Big Rainbow Tomato, Jalapeno Pepper, California Wonder Bell Pepper & Garlic Chives. Not counting the garlic chives (as they really should be directly sown, in large numbers), I used my strong seedling selection method to get one really healthy looking seedling in each pellet. To do this, I'll start by putting 2-3 seeds of the veggie in one pellet. I'll wait for all of them to germinate, then pull the weaker looking 1 or 2 & be left with the healthiest looking seedling to eventually grow into a healthy adult plant. When detemining which one to leave & which ones to pull, I look for stem health (straight, thick, etc.). I also don't want a leggy seedling. So, the shortest healthiest looking one is usually the keeper. I also don't want ones where the seed shell has had a hard time falling off. I've used this method for years now & it's a type of unnatural selection that works very well & leaves me with healthy seedlings that I don't have to worry about babying along for several weeks to get back to what will be a healthy adult plant. :) Anyway, hope your seed starting is going well & Happy Gardening!

Seedlings So Far

I have a small handful of seedlings already growing. Some are Winter Sown herbs & the 2 peppers are from a seed viability test (where the seeds obviously ended up still being somewhat ok). I didn't expect to have pepper seedlings growing their 3rd sets of leaves in mid February! =) I will do my best to keep them in the appropriate conditions indoors, until late April/early May when I feel it's ok to move them outdoors. Below are a few pics of them.


This first pic shows my 2 Cowhorn Pepper seedlings in the front, along with a Thai Dill & a Broad Leaf Sage seedling in the back. The Sage has since started to grow another set of leaves.

This second pic is of my other 2 Thai Dill seedlings. I let these 2 grow for a bit longer in the peat pot & them seem to have taken to the potting up a lot better than the one above. The one above took almost 2 weeks after potting up before it started to grow again.

I also started a tray of seeds in peat pellets (the peat pellet greenhouse) this past Sunday. This time, I am ready for an awesome, fast germination rate, as I have all the potting up supplies already. I will try to post a pic of them this weekend, along with the 6 typed of veggies I'm growing in the greenhouse. I think I have 2 herbs, a sem-hot pepper, bell peppers & 2 types of tomatoes.


Until then, take care & Happy Gardening! - Steve

New Site For Steve's Garden!

My e-mail associated with the other/original Blogspot account & the original Steve's Garden was discontinued after I had it for 16 years, for no good reason! I'm a little upset about this, but no big deal, as I exported my blog from that account & imported it to here. =)


The old blog site is at http://tnveggiegardner.blogspot.com/ (yes, I corrected the spelling of gardener with this one...lol).


I'm only going to keep the old site up for another week or so. So, hopefully, most if not all of my followers can make it over to this one. Please let me know what you think of the new Steve's Garden, especially the text, as I messed with it yesterday to make it a bit less plain. Thanks & Happy Gardening!

2012 Garden Seed List Draft

These are most the veggies, fruits & such that I will attempt to grow this year (or want to grow, at least, as I'll run out of space). I may add a few more as the year goes on. This doesn't mean I'll be able to sow them all either, as some like Stevia are hard to sow, but I'll sure as he** try! =)



Tomatoes:
Golden Nugget Tomato
Coyote Tomato
Chadwick Cherry Tomato
Placero Cherry Tomato
Super Sweet 100 Tomato
Amish Paste Tomato
Orange Banana Tomato
San Marzano Lampadina Tomato
Sungold Select II Cherry Tomato
Yellow Pear Tomato
Celebrity Tomato
Wild Everglades Tomato
Dr. Wyche's Yellow Tomato
Amazon Chocolate Tomato


Herbs:
Thai Dill
Broad Leaf Sage
Stevia


Peppers
California Wonder Bell Pepper
Golden Marconi Pepper
Long Thin Red Cayenne Pepper
Cowhorn Pepper
Scotch Bonnet Pepper (Yes, I'm crazy...lol)
Hawaiian Sweet Pepper
Orange Sweet Pepper
Yellow Bell Pepper
Cherry Bomb Pepper


Cucumbers
Thai Green Cucumber


Fruits/Melons:
Dragonfruit
Sara's Galapagos (Tiny Currant like fruit with tomato flavor)
Tigger Melon
Sugar Baby Watermelon
Dwarf Pomegranate




I think I need to add in some beans. Will definitely start more garlic & probably add a few more other misc. edibles.

Happy Gardening! - Steve\tn_veggie_gardner

tn_veggie_gardner is back!!! =)

I know it's been a while since I've posted on here & I want to apologize to my dedicated followers for that. I have had both of my hip replacements done & am in a nice duplex/house where I can have a great garden again. In the time between my last post on here & this one, I lived 3 different places, had one of my surgeries & also had to have my garden taken care of by my aunt for a few months. Crazy, huh? =) I plan on trying Winter sowing again & also soon will be ordering my usual round of seeds from Baker Creek, and probably a few supplies from Greenhouse Megastore. For now, here are a few pictures I've taken over the last month or so...

A few pics of my Red Dragon Flower. After having a few plants of this (and giving away a few, then growing a few more from single stems) for 3+ years, I finally got to see a bud & flower!

My Dwarf Lime Tree, now about 4 years old. She's getting big! I say this every year, but hopefully I'll get some limes off it this year!

A few cherry tomato pictures. None of these plants turned out too well since I was recovering from surgery & unable to take care of them, but that doesn't mean I didn't get any maters or cool pics of them! :)

I got the usual mid Summer cheapie $1 tray of 8 pepper plants from my fave nursery, and as always, most of them grew well. The 4 I managed to bring back to my house grew excellent. The 4 I left at the not-a-green-thumb-aunt's house did not do well. ;)

Some berries, almost all of which went to the squirrels. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

A pic of my aunts pretty (unknown) Hibiscus.

Some pretty flowers I found growing on the Stones River side of the dam.

A lil critter pic from work.

Hope you like the pics & look for more posts to come soon regarding my Winter Sowing! Happy Gardening!!! - Steve/tn_veggie_gardner

A few weekend updates

Thanks to Mother Nature calming back down, my plants went back outside Saturday afternoon. I think though, they somehow got a little wind/cold burn on 4-5 of the mater plants though, when they were inside (prob cuz I had window open those 37 degree nights...good job, Steve!). :-\ Stuff happens when you garden though that you just have to deal with. I'll give the burnt ones an extra little shot of fertilizer this week to help them recover. All will be well. :) I found a few more signs of Spring & some of the higher heat (Summer soon to come) too!.....



A bud set about to open (I'd say by this weekend!) on one of my Sungold Select II cherry tomato plants:


First open Blackberry flower! Probably about 100 buds on this plant; Not nearly as many as the Wineberry Raspberry plant has, but still enough:




Last, but certainly not least, is a pic of this supposedly invasive plant I saw at my friends house on Friday (while we were drinkin a few beers & cookin some dang good ribs!). I think i'm gonna try and get him to split it/give me some. Love the little blue flowers! Some kind of Cane Grass, he says:


Happy Gardening, all!