Lessons from the 2024 sowing season
Last year, we were modest in our food-growing plans. Six pots of tomatoes were enough to test the soil, a couple of beds of beans, a few peppers sown too early and then transplanted too late, and a handful of store-bought potatoes was basically all we did last year. Not this year.
This year we were ambitious. There are 28 tomato plants already in the ground and eight more are waiting their turn. The six cucumber seeds we sowed on a “Oh, why not” basis have turned into mighty plants that are flowering like there’s no tomorrow and another round of a later variety just put out its first true leaves.
There are more bean beds this year, four varieties of pepper, there are peas and a handful of corn plants, strawberries, radishes, and the three rows of potatoes we planted this year are coming along nicely.
But this is not a bragging post. It’s a post about the lessons we had the opportunity to learn this spring planting season. Just when you think you’ve finally got the hang of things, it turns out you’ve got no hangs whatsoever, only a hint of a hang.
#1 Radishes need watering
It should go without saying. It should be self-evident. It should be blatantly obvious. But it wasn’t, not after last spring and its copious rains. Riding high on the wave of ‘sow these seeds and transplant those plants’ we kind of forgot to notice that this spring, while warmer than last spring, was also drier. So we watered the radishes more as an afterthought than a rule.
As a result we got a rich harvest that was a bit wanting in the size department. And when we say “a bit”, we mean most of the radishes were the size of an overgrown pea. Worse still, it turned out they don’t just grow continuously until you pull them out. That would have been helpful — we could have simply left them in the ground a few days longer, well watered, and then harvested them plump and full-sized.
But it turned out radishes grow over a certain period of time, then stop and all they do from then on is harden, get nibbled on by ants and worms, and become generally inedible.
(Pine cone for scale)
Note for next year: Water the radishes like you water the strawberries, every other day or once every two days unless raining.
#2 Tomatoes don’t need drowning
As pointed out earlier, our tomato ambitions this year were huge. The weather was with us and provided the necessary warmth and sunlight for the seedlings to grow and flourish, and just like that, it was time to repot. Which is when we had this brilliant idea. It went like this:
Irina: Hey, I just thought of something. How about we fill a third of the tomato pots with garden soil and fill the rest with seedling soil, so they can grow and get used to their forever home?
Cris: Great idea. Might as well go half-and-half.
So that’s what we did. We put the young tomatoes in a two-layer soil mixture, with the special stuff on top and local soil at the bottom. We placed them on the sunny windowsill and started watering them regularly as clockwork — and frequently because the special soil tends to dry up rather quickly.
We were especially diligent with our Buffalo Hearts — Irina’s dad’s favourite, Cat’s preferred shape and structure for a tomato and all that. Imagine our shock, then, when we noticed something wasn’t right the plants. They had pretty much stopped growing and the bottom side of their leaves were turning violet.
Frantic online research followed, yielding as possible causes one, phosphorus deficiency and, two, overwatering — especially common with clay soil. Since most of the other tomatoes were doing just fine in exactly the same soil mixture, phosphorus deficiency was less likely. Overwatering, however, was extremely likely.
Frantic depotting followed, revealing the ugly truth, which was tomato roots soaking in the lower clay layer of their soil. Why? Well, because carried away by our enthusiasm we also forgot to pierce the pots for drainage purposes. Our tomato plans were turning into a major embarrassment.
Luckily, we avoided the catastrophe by adding soil to the drowning plants and suspending all watering activities until further notice, and a week later into the ground those Buffalo Hearts went, on the assumption that bigger (soil, space, fertiliser) is better. They’ve started growing again and the violet colouring is almost entirely gone.
Note for next year: Don’t water, spray for light moistness.
Pro advice: No water in the last few days before transplanting.
#3 Cats are a pest
Picture it: Sicily 1922. Row after row of veggie beds, all clean from weeds, the soil loosened meticulously and fertilised, ready to take the seeds that will turn into plants that will turn into food. You put the seeds in, water them, and go home. A couple of days later you go out to inspect the beds and notice a little mound here, and a little mound there. Vlad Has Done His Business. Where he shouldn’t have.
Because we never thought about anti-cat protection, we got clumps of radishes growing every which way, onions sprouting where we didn’t exactly plant them, and yellow beans taking ages to come out because they were coming out from deeper than we’d put them. It’s mostly a cosmetic defect but it’s one we can do without.
Note for next year: secure the beds with an arrangement of sticks laid out in a chessboard pattern, as recommended by neighbour Valia, who does this for her beds.
#4 Seed packs may contain a surprise
We bought a pack of aubergine seeds. We sowed them. The first one came out almost immediately, big, fat, and lovely. Another 11 followed. We discovered aubergines hate repotting. We rushed to repot before the true leaves had appeared, figuring if the plants don’t even know they have a root yet, they won’t be able to get stressed. All survived. And then that first big, fat, and lovely aubergine put out its first true leaves.
Now, we are aware that aubergines and tomatoes belong to the same family, so we weren’t too surprised when those first true leaves appeared to be amazingly similar to a tomato’s. But then the rest of the aubergine seedlings sprouted their true leaves and, well, they did not look like a tomato’s. We had a cuckoo in the aubergine nest. And we weren’t the ones who’d put it there.
This is not really a problem, because what’s one more tomato plant when you’ve already got 36, right? It’s growing nicely and we’ve already started hardening it, taking it outside with the other tomatoes. But the mystery is killing us: what variety is this tomato?
Note for next year: There is no problem. Keep the surprises coming.