Another year has come and the decision on whether or not to have a garden this year was one I pondered for the first time in a long time. As evidenced by the dearth of posts from the latter part of last season, my free time has been drastically curtailed. I’ve decided to cut back a bit this year focusing mainly on the existing fruit and some tomatoes, eggplant and perhaps some beans if I am feeling particular daring.
A couple of weekends ago I took a ziplock bag of some Brown Turkey fig cuttings out of the crisper that I had cut last fall. Half of these I treated with dip n grow and placed in cups of vermiculite in my cutting bench and turned the bulbs on. Half of these were covered with the tops of soda bottles sans the lids. I just checked on them and a couple under the covers are working on some small leaves and others have green buds. I’m sure there are no roots yet. The ‘soil’ temp is right around 72-75F
Today I took some cuttings of the female arctic kiwi that I purchased last year. She needed a trim and I got about 9 5″ cuttings that I treated like the figs above. The stems weren’t as large as I would have liked but I thought what the heck. I have no experience propagating either figs or kiwi so I don’t have a clue how this will turn out.
Last night I purchased some tomato seed. 5 varieties in all. Two of these I grow every year (Big Beef and Celebrity). I decided to try Jetsetter and two smaller varieties, Florida Petite and Florida Basket. All were purchased from Tomato Growers Supply. I’ve ordered from them before and have never been disappointed either with their selection or their seed. I and a fellow gardener at work have been asked to give a talk on gardening later this spring. Since many of the staff live in nearby condos I thought I would try the two cherry varieties as Fl. Petite boasts of growing in a 4″ pot and the 40 day to harvest I couldn’t pass up. Fl. Basket is supposed to work well in hanging baskets. I should have time to get these planted and some good sized transplants ready for our talk. The Jetsetter is an indeterminate variety that sounded promising with its disease resistance. Stay tuned.