2025 gardens

[Sonny580]

Welcome! Time to start the 2025 season thread. Post your gardens AND small acres here. Ideas, equipment, methods that work for you, varieties and whatever else you like! Thanks!!

 

[Oaktree]

Way too early to even start thinking about it for another couple months. Maybe start pepper and tomato plants inside end of Feb, cukes & squash mid-late March. Nothing planted before mid-May at the earliest, and that would just be peas, lettuce, spinach, etc. Anything beyond that would be Memorial Day weekend into early June.
Last year tried putting down black plastic for most of May to pre-warm the soil and maybe discourage weeds. Didn't really make much of a difference.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Haven't even thought about next years garden yet but 2024 garden is still providing. We have some arugula and broccoli still rocking. We have a good cold snap coming that might knock it out. Some years I get kale or brussels to over winter and by the spring they are HUGE. I usually harvest them before I plant the spring babies and freeze them.

Thanks for the reminder to start looking at my 2025 stuff. If I do my own starts I usually get that going in early February for an early March planting of spring crops.

 

[flyerdan]

I had a couple of late tomatoes that I brought inside before the frost as they had a couple of green to ripen. When they ripened and died, I put some seeds in as a test since last year's starts were so abysmal. So far looking better than the seed start mix/potting soil that I usually do.

 

[DJ54]

Stopped at the Southern States farm store in Paris, KY. today on the way home from Sis's house. They normally have left over 2024 seeds marked down. Hit the jackpot today on sweetcorn, snap peas, Rutgers tomatoes, Buttercrunch lettuce, mix of gourds, straight neck gourds, all marked 50% off of already marked down prices. This is $15 worth, and had a lot left. LOTS of Blue Lake green beans, a full box, plus about half a box of 1,000 seed packets. Just checked other places and the amount of sweetcorn here alone other places is more than I paid for all of these.

It's been years since I've planted Rutger's, and not my favorite but couldn't pass them up for the price. 1,000 seeds for $1.20. If anyone has a Southern States store in your area, might be worth stopping in.

 

[Sonny580]

savin seeds and drying them. Started on the canners the other day and got a bunch of nice seeds out of this one. It was a 32 pounder.

 

[DJ54]

Hybrid..?? With an F1 hybrid there's a good chance you'll get something pretty close to what you've got. Seeds from a second generation may be more like one parent or the other they were developed from.

I saved some (trying anyway) second generation cabbage plants, to grow seeds. Just curious as to what I'll get out of them. It may be next year before I find out though, the second generation did great, and 75% of them made heads like to parent plants, the rest were smaller but could be because of the drought. I watered them enough to keep them alive, but rains from Helene saved them.

 

[Sonny580]

Libby's save seed from their crop every year. They gmo their seed every year, These were from 42 years ago when most everything was straight. I have over the years gotten them to the over 100 pound size and excellent quality still remaining so I continue to plant them. Best pie pumpkin around!

 

[DJ54]

Getting off to a meager start here with approx. 150 yellow sweet Spanish onions and 50+ Zebrune shallots in the germination chamber.

Apparently, the slow cooker and grow light still working after a couple years along with the digital grow mat thermostat, temp is up to 71º from 37º when I turned it on a while ago. With any luck they should be germinated by Sunday at noon.

 

[DJ54]

The onions and shallots are up, took longer than they normally do for some reason. I may have planted the seeds a tad deep, and on the day I thought they should be showing noticed the temp in the germ chamber was 89º. The large grow light that can be seen hanging below was on at the time, and it puts off a lot of heat. I thought maybe I'd cooked them.

Pulled the plug on it and temps dropped to around 79º after opening the door to let the heat out. They started showing about 30 hours later. Picture was taken on Friday evening, left them in there and will put them in the greenhouse tomorrow, once we get by a low of 32º expected tonight.

I'll be starting some Late Flat Dutch cabbage probably on Wed./Thur. I found some bulk cabbage seed at one of the Amish suppliers I buy from. Sign on the bins said the 1 TBS. scoop held approx. 1 oz. of seeds. Heaped it well and it weighed 6/10's of an oz. or approx. 1800 seeds according to info I found online and cost me $2.10. I want to try selling some plants very reasonable to help offset gardening supplies, buying in bulk without having a lot of money tied up to see if it will fly. Plant prices seem to have gotten stupid too. Local very small people who sell plants ask $6.00+ a dozen for all vegetable plants, whereas I can buy the same or better variety from the Amish for $2.75 a dozen. I also plan to plant quite a few to sell this summer in bulk quantities as Farmer's Market prices seem to be way too high for folks wanting to make sauerkraut, etc. I'll watch grocery store prices and cut that price by 20 cents or so a lb. and still should come out very good. With free advertising on social media such as FaceBook, and friends sharing my post word should get around. Guess we'll see.

 

[sixdogs]

We're down to just 12 tomato plants and enough Delectable sweet corn to eat and freeze. The tomatoes I like are Steak House from Burpee and then a couple of Juliette smaller tomatoes. We have had the best luck with them and they respond well to our climate and diseases.

I rotate the crop every year and rip out the old plants and dump far away from the house. I think that has kept or disease situation down.

We started tomatoes yesterday and will gradually acclimate to outside when they are just a few inches tall. You have to be careful to keep out of the wind and up against the house till they get stronger. A little at a time.
We plant in mid May when they are about a foot tall and maybe a little leggy. I snip all the leaves off except the last inch or two and dig a hole deep enough so just the top part sticks out. That whole stem will root and you barely be able to rip it out of the ground in fall.

We had a cover crop last fall and the ground is fertile so no fertilizer, especially nitrogen. I have 18" x 60" welded wire cages I made and place over tomato and zip tie to a metal post driven in the ground. I snip off the bottom branches that touch the ground to keep diseases down. Until the cages go up, I cover with a 5 gallon bucket at night to stop the rabbits and frost. Now, we wait.

Usually no fertilizer at all. The plants will go to 6' on their own and the ground is already fertile from last year. Last year we planted 12 or 13 plants and got 460 lbs of tomatoes. The Steak House can be 2 or even 3 lbs each so that helps the weight.

Come late fall just before the freeze or frost we pick what's left and store in the garage. Most will ripen. Very disturbing about last year and again this year was that our seeds, even though from Burpee, came from China. Nothing against that but it's not what I paid top dollar for and don't want it. I'm going with USA standard varieties next year.

 

[masseyrider]

I'm still debating the garden.
Lots of work, more free loaders coming around for freebees.
I did buy some seeds cheap last week.
We don't plant until May 21-24 so I won't be starting the plants until the last week or so of April.
Last 2 weeks spent under outside glass hardening off before the big move.

 

[DJ54]

5, 72 cell trays sowed with cabbage this evening, will do 3 more tomorrow. Hopefully will be germinated by Sunday, then do a couple more of 2 more types of cabbage, and Buttercrunch lettuce.

 

[DJ54]

8 flats/576 cabbage seeds in the germination chamber and still a little room left to fill in around the bottom, and shelves in the door. I have some second generation Greenboy I saved from a couple years ago, and some smaller head Copenhagen I want to start too. Hopefully have enough room after that to start a dozen Brussels Sprouts.

 

[Sonny580]

Going to be a late start in the greenhouse this year here. still getting light snows, hail and rain here. Water still freezing on top of the catch tanks.
onion plants are to come the week of the 24'th and more rain on the way.
Been mowing the farm off and still have about 1/4'th of it left to do.
Had hail a few days ago and didnt quite make it to the truck in time. 1/2 to 5/8'th hail balls hurt when they hit your face.
Got a lot of the acres plowed in the garden and ready to munch up with the big tiller when it dries off enough.https://youtu.be/TOMCftPHyHU

 

[part-time-Farmer-NC]

Wifey started our garden plants for the spring. Brassicas are going out to harden off Monday, forecast shows no hard frost for next 10 days so we will plant them and corn in the next week.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

We planted 1 acre of phacelia last week, for honey production. We are planting two (72) cell trays this weekend with tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, cabbage etc…
We will also be planting bush beans, 2800 stalks of sweet corn, and 96 pumpkin vines

 

[DJ54]

We planted 1 acre of phacelia last week, for honey production. We are planting two (72) cell trays this weekend with tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, cabbage etc…
We will also be planting bush beans, 2800 stalks of sweet corn, and 96 pumpkin vines

Did you plant the phacelia as a monoculture crop or a mix..?? Drill or sow to plant..?? This may be a good legume for my buddy the market gardener to use for a cover crop in his rotation of leaving some areas fallow for a couple years. It would make a great food source for their bees and other pollinators. I did a Google search to find the seeding rate per acre, and price per lb. It'd probably have to be in a mix as he'd be too tight to spend $50+ per acre for a cover crop, even though it appears like it will reseed itself for 2-3 years after the initial seeding. I tend to be somewhat thrifty myself, but this dude screws his socks on in the morning.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

Did you plant the phacelia as a monoculture crop or a mix..?? Drill or sow to plant..?? This may be a good legume for my buddy the market gardener to use for a cover crop in his rotation of leaving some areas fallow for a couple years. It would make a great food source for their bees and other pollinators. I did a Google search to find the seeding rate per acre, and price per lb. It'd probably have to be in a mix as he'd be too tight to spend $50+ per acre for a cover crop, even though it appears like it will reseed itself for 2-3 years after the initial seeding. I tend to be somewhat thrifty myself, but this dude screws his socks on in the morning.

We till, broadcast, cultipack at a rate of 25lb per acre. So, $100 per acre. We use this and buckwheat as nectar/cover crop on this plot. It is monoculture.

 

[DJ54]

We till, broadcast, cultipack at a rate of 25lb per acre. So, $100 per acre. We use this and buckwheat as nectar/cover crop on this plot. It is monoculture.

Thanks..!! My buddy is somewhat interested. Wondered where you by the seed. Locally..?? We have several cover cop seed dealers close, but I'd have to check their websites to see if they handle it. I saw a price online from a seed dealer that it was $6.95 a lb. $4.00 a lb. sounds a lot better.