# Self Sufficiency/Living off the Land or Off the Grid > Gardening >  It' seed planting time

## LowKey

I always look forward to the first seed planting of the year.
This year I'm starting a traditional physic garden which adds some work.
Some of the seeds for those plants need a cold stratification before they will germinate so anything that needs cold gets flatted up now and put in the cold frame. I do that with some of the native plants too. Just a few more flats this year.

All the onions go in under lights now to get strong starts for early spring. 

And I'm a sucker for trying artichokes every year, even though they don't really like to grow here. They get planted now to get some size on them before spring. Have to watch the weather pretty closely in the spring with those as they need 3 weeks of 35-40° in order to set the buds, but don't let them freeze solid or they turn into a little puddle of mush.

Kicking myself I never got the morel boxes built last fall. I suppose I could still put them in if the snow melts. The gray rodents around here love mushrooms so if I want to grow those they have to be well caged.

----------


## Chī

Good luck with your artichokes this year. I am going to try a three sisters garden along with my normal garden. I got some genetics that the Iroquois have grown for generations. I'm kinda curious about the morel boxes, I gather wild mushrooms every year but the only ones I have grown were oysters, thinking of ordering some spore plugs, there are at least a dozen good host trees on my property, and I never take advantage of it.

----------


## old soldier

this year I planted 18 different kinds of tomatoes all in containers. going  to do a taste test and decide which one or two to go with the rest of my life,. also 6 different peppers and kale. I'm mostly into growing apple trees and grafting different kinds all on the same tree, I have one tree with nine different kinds.

----------


## LowKey

With me, tomatoes are more the ones that last the season and ripen without getting the rot of some kind.
Ranger plum tomatoes seem to be best as long as I rotate the planting bed every year. Taste good too. Great for sauce. Still working on finding a cherry tomato. Sure wish I'd saved seeds of the ones grandpa had. Tiny little things but tasted so good.

I'm not a fan of grafted stock. It doesn't last as long. I say that even though all six of my crabapples are grafted stock.
Try air-layering to make own-root trees if you want to increase in number of trees. They'll last a lifetime. Grafts are inherently weak. Unless you are trying for dwarf trees. Grafting to dwarfing stock has an even shorter lifespan than a standard graft. Less than 20 years or so. "Fruit salads," not a fan of at all, even as a space saver. Production/disease issues, but your mileage may vary. Guess you might call em self-fertile at the very least (if they are compatible varieties that flower at the same time.)
Grafting is fun though. It's always quite something to see a graft take and grow. Used to do a LOT of it with ornamentals, mostly rhodies, way back in my first career. Did a lot of air-layering and rooted cuttings too for stuff that had no suitable root stock.

----------


## Alan R McDaniel Jr

We aren't doing many tomatoes this year.  They are usually our mainstay but The f-wilt, blossom end rot and some other stuff (likely nematodes) are getting the best of them.  We're going to put nearly the whole garden in purple hull peas, green beans, and cucumbers.  #1 wife is on a pickle kick.  We still have carrots from over winter.  The greens are gone but there's still some NZ spinach (I love that stuff with scrambled eggs, on sandwiches, salads, etc...).  

Alan

----------


## Pol090

Every year I grow mostly vegetables in my garden. I have got a greenhouse where I keep more demanding plants and grow more unusual varieties. If it goes to tomatoes I grow them every year. This year is going to be full of cherry tomatoes because I want to try new varieties of seeds I found in the Internet. Have you ever grown black cherry tomatoes?

----------


## old soldier

I,ve done all kinds of grafting over the years, now I graft almost everything on to Bud 9 root stock that I have grafted on to M111 rootstock. that way I get the large vigorous root on a dwarf tree. get apples in four yrs  it's very windy 24/7 where I'm planting them and they need a good foundation without staking. at my age, you don't plan on anything long term. I have 45 scions to graft and have ten M111 and five Bud9 and five M26 root stocks coming, they'll both be grafted to the M111 and the apple scions to them.
 also have 24 trees about 5 inches high grown from Gala seeds, they may get some kind of non edible apple in ten years, but I told my son that his son would have some good fire wood in thirty years

----------

