Valentine's Day reminds me of.... Tomatoes!

What's red that you think of on Valentines Day? - Hearts? Roses? Not Me! Valentine's Day makes me think of Tomatoes!

Early Tomatoes to be exact.

Around here, folks use holidays as reminders of when to do things in the yard and garden. They say to set out peas and potatoes on St. Patrick's Day, set out tomatoes and peppers on Mother's Day, open your pool on Memorial Day and close that pool on Labor Day. Call me strange, but I add "start tomato seeds on Valentine's Day" to that list.

Last year, I started extra-early tomatoes with the goal of getting ripe ones by my birthday on June 24th. I actually picked the first ripe red tomato on June 15th!

This year I'm putting more work into it and setting the goal at May 31st. If I'm really lucky, I could have a ripe tomato by Memorial Day!

How do I plan to achieve this here in Northern Zone 5 where most ripe tomatoes are harvested in Late July and early August? Much like I did last year by planting early under grow lights and potting up multiple times until I transplant the monster-huge tomato plants outdoors in April. What I will add to the strategy this year involves the outdoor planting site. I will put down black plastic to warm the soil, and I will wrap the new plants with plastic cages and possibly construct a temporary hoop house over the early plants.
I will let you know all the details in these pages as we go along.

Last year, my extra-early tomato plats were the Early Girl variety. They did well but this year I will be planting 4 other extra early varieties to give Early Girl a run for the money!

The GardenDesk newcomers are: Hybrids New Girl and Orange Blossom from Johnny's Selected Seeds and Heirlooms Siletz and Sub-Artic "World's Earliest" from Baker Creek. Both of these companies are amongst my favorites. More details to come!

Getting back to Valentine's Day - before I get any angry email accusing me of not being a romantic, I want to state that I DID give my wife and daughters the real red of Valentine's Day - Roses.

Now they will lovingly let me start tomatoes tonight! Yum!

Green Thumb Super Bowl Sunday!

Okay, I haven't actually been using my green thumb much lately but the NFL Super Bowl marks the beginning of the gardening season for me. I know that sounds strange but I usually spend much of Super Bowl Sunday planning the upcoming growing season. After church I will likely get out my seeds, my seed catalogs and my graph paper and get to work. By the time kickoff happens, I will have most of my 2008 garden planned out.

You may think I'm crazy, but organizing a garden is a lot like an NFL football team. To get into the spirit, here's my garden/football team's helmet:

I'll call my team the "GardenDesk Growers"!

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the off-season for the NFL. The off-season for a team is spent figuring out which players and coaches are good enough to remain and which ones need to be cut. They look to add new players to better next year's team. They also look back at the season that has just ended to figure out what worked well and what didn't. All teams but one did not achieve their goal of winning the Super Bowl. They try to learn from last season's disappointments so they can do better this season!

These are the things I have been doing in the past couple of months because my garden's off-season actually took place in December and January . I have been pouring over seed catalogs looking for new star players to draft and have decided to cut some of my under-achieving vegetable varieties. I am redesigning part of my game plan and am even planning to increase this year's playing field! I have carefully looked over the 2007 "touchdowns" as well as the "fumbles". I will be reporting more about that in the near future.

So the Super Bowl marks the beginning of The "GardenDesk Growers" 2008 pre-season! Many players will soon report to my basement to begin their season under the grow lights! Today I will be mapping out the 2008 garden and figuring out what plants will occupy what spot on the field. Of course I will also be dreaming of winning the Super Bowl of gardening in which every vegetable grows to perfection and every flower is beautiful!

If you are a gardener, chances are that you are also dreaming of a winning 2008 garden. So I know it is only February, but I must ask you that famous question:

Are you ready for some Football Gardening?!! I sure am!

Since this is the official beginning of my 2008 gardening season, this will also be the kick-off for my 2008 Green Thumb Sunday posts. This post is actually not a very good GTS post, but be sure to visit other Green Thumb Sunday participants!

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My next GTS post will be much better I hope.

For today I say, GO GIANTS! I mean GO PATRIOTS! No, I mean GO GARDENDESK GROWERS!