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A lot of the seeds I will be using this year are leftovers or saved seeds from last year, but I am adding a few new things and new varieties from my past year’s selection. From this trip, I picked up the following:

• Packman Broccoli
• Apollo Broccoli
• Lime Crisp Cucumbers
• Fairy Tale Eggplant (growing eggplant is entirely new for me)
• Cherry Belle Radish
• French Breakfast Radish
• Early Wonder Tall Top Beets
• Sugar Sprint Peas
• Oregon Giant Snow Peas
• Oregon Sugar Pod II Peas

As I like to put my broccoli in the ground before the frost date (it tends to get wiped out when the weather warms up), I already have that started in my garden window. I went with one row each of Packman Broccoli, Apollo Broccoli, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, and Broccoli Rabe. Last year, I used large plant bulbs in domes to produce light and heat for the seedlings, but I had a lot of problems with the bulbs burning out every 3 weeks. This year, I am trying out seed heating mats with my standard seed trays and little peat pots — the mat can’t be seen in the picture above, but it is inside the base which the seed tray sits in. For lighting, I am using a hanging fluorescent lighting fixture with a full spectrum plant light for the second year in a row. So far, so good — my broccoli came up in only a few days! The whole setup has a plastic dome on it to keep it warm and moist, although I do remove the dome twice a day to pour the condensation back on the seedlings and check on them for any problems.

With the frost date so early this year, I will probably be dropping my tomato seeds into the other seed kit in the next week or so. The melons, cucumbers and pumpkins will wait until about 3 weeks before my estimated planting day. I also have a tendency to pick up other seedlings here and there, so the window collection will definitely grow in the next few months.

Tip: To get a general planning guideline for the timing seeds and planting, see this tool from the Farmer’s Almanac. Your mileage may vary though — I found that the multi-harvest broccoli I grow (broccoli that produces side heads after the main head is cut) does great in cooler weather but either flowers or gets wiped out by cabbage moths in later spring, so I plant it earlier than the suggested dates to get the most out of it.

My mom says a true Oregonian goes out in all kinds of weather. To one-up her on that notion, I say a true gardener will go out to save the garden in any sort of weather. So there I was, in thunder and downpour, standing in a sinking bed of mud, pruning and staking the tomatoes. (Yes, I know you’re not supposed to prune or stake when the leaves are wet, but it was either that or have a bunch of main branches on a few bushes snap off—I did what I had to do!)

This week’s (wet) lessons learned:

You do what you have to do, and sometimes it works out okay.

The tomatoes that were tied and pruned while wet were actually okay … so far. It’s probably not the best idea for an extended cold/wet snap, but it works for those freak storms like this one where the weather warms up significantly the next day. (And, again, you do what you have to do—a light pruning while wet was better than losing the entire branch from the weight.)

Small bamboo sticks don’t hold up to Oregon weather.

Those bamboo stakes I brought from California did not hold up very well in Oregon. You can see where the bamboo stake had snapped with water/weather/weight and is now running horizontally in the middle of this picture (larger version):

Free branches rock.

The cherrywood and curling willow branches I picked up for free off Craigslist, however, do stand up wonderfully. They are much taller, stronger, more flexible, and more resiliant than the little bamboo sticks. They also give the whole thing a new, funky vibe:

Weather is fun.

It is probably wise to count seconds between the thunder and lightning if you are standing outside and gardening in a storm. If they get too close together, run in the house … quickly.

Weather and environment can drastically change your plants.

One of the plants that took a huge topple was a red currant tomato. This particular plant (I have 2 of them) happens to be from a small packet of seeds from the Martha Stewart Collection at K-Mart that I bought about 3 years ago. The packet describes it as

‘Red Currant’ Tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum var. pimpinellifolium
A wild tomato from South America. Tangy, sweet, crisp, and just 1/2" in diameter. Very prolific, grows in long clusters on vigorous vines that are easier to harvest if trellised. Good disease resistance.

The first year, a "normal" weather year in Concord, CA, these seeds produced neat 4-5′ bushes with ample fruit and leaves. The second year, where we had late cold and then blazing heat, they were small little shrubs with a lot of fruit and barely any leaves. This year, after moving to Oregon, this same packet of seeds is producing these beautiful 6-8′ vines that I finally discovered after the storm and had a crazy time tacking up! It’s just amazing to see what an heirloom or wild variety of plant will do in response to changes in the environment, where as a modern variety of tomato (created for a specific commercial purpose) might not be able to adapt to changing weather conditions as well.

Plant spacing is not overrated.

As I’m considering how I would change things for next year, I definitely think I will make the garden bigger overall but put more traveling pathways within the garden. There’s nothing like having to fix these fallen tomatoes, stepping into the garden while balancing precariously around a bunch of sharp support sticks, and having my foot sink about 8" down. The one bit of good news, though, is that the ground has somewhat compacted—when I first added the dirt, the sink level was about 12-18" deep.

I can’t dismiss some of the benefits of the spacing, however. For example, my basil is growing fantastically in the filtered sunlight below the tomatoes, and my fall broccoli is being kept from blazing sun in the same manner. The soil is also drying out slower, the plants are working to support each other as they grow, and the planting density is doing a great job suffocating out most of the weeds.

The peas were trellised this week (a bit too late, but I’ve been busy!) and the evergreen blueberry bush has been planted in a wine barrel container.

The baby peppers were dropped in their coconut pots into 4 in plastic pots, while the taller ones got a bath in the sink to remove aphids from their tops. The peppers will be heading into the outside garden soon. I also harvested the top of some of my basil plants.

Yes, it’s just as you are picturing it—I walked along the rails and squatted down to plant each plant in the row. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, as I got a great workout and the cedar rails helped me line up things to get them equally spaced. I started in the middle of the beds, and then worked the beams outwards until I had planted nearly all the bed.

I now have a neatly planted garden with:

• several varieties of tomatoes
• broccoli
• celery
• corn
• 3 kinds of cucumbers, one from starts and 2 from seeds
• sweet, lemon and lime basil
• sweet potatoes
• strawberries (I’m not even sure what kind, as I started out with 5 varieties and they are planted all over the house, some were given away, etc)
• blue lake bush green beans (planted from seed with a bit of legume innoculent)

This week I will also be adding carrots, radishes and beets from seed; eventually the peppers will also go in.

I can’t wait until the first harvest!

Why raised beds? While there are many reasons to plant in raised beds, mine were pretty simple. First of all, my soil is clay. Now I don’t mean clay as in, yeah, it’s kind of hard. I mean clay as in, you could dig it out, form it into cakes, bake it, and create your own bricks that way. It’s the kind of clay that stays cold for a long time, drains very poorly, turns into solid concrete when there is a few warm days, and that would stop pretty much any delicate root. It’s the kind of clay that sticks to your shovel and any rototiller you would try to use on it. So the better solution is to pile the dirt I want to use on top of the existing grade and go from there. As the garden breaks down, it can only improve the soil below it and make future plantings better. (Eventually, the bales themselves will break down enough that I can plant directly into them!) Second, this is a new house, and I don’t really know what is down there, so I feel better building on top than digging into the ground. Third, raised beds can warm faster than gardens planted in the ground, which may prove to be a lifesaver when I try my hand at winter gardening at the end of this summer season. Last but not least, it gives the garden a defined space and looks pretty cool in the process.

After deciding on what type of garden I wanted to go with, the most important decision I made was the site selection. I had to consider light, the movement of the sun, wind, temperature, ease of access, flow of the yard, and drainage issues. I spent quite a lot of time in the yard during the past 4 months, tracking the movement of the sunlight overhead and wind through the yard for both the raised beds and the container garden. I had a mental picture of where I wanted the gardens, but I am not the kind of person who writes these things down or maps them out. After cutting back the overgrown lawn, this is the area that I had to work with (dogs not included):

It is near a water source, which will be important during the summer here in Eugene (at least until I start thinking about rain barrels and water storage), and it does have both a nice breeze and late-day partial shading to keep the plants healthy and happy. It is also far enough away from all the trees so that they will not interfere with the growing vegetables or acidify the soil with their leaves/needles.

I started making the raised beds by dragging the straw bales to their desired location. If you don’t want to have to keep moving them around, I’d suggest measuring and marking out the area before you start moving them. I really don’t have that kind of planning capability in me (and apparently I needed the exercise), so I did place half of them once, try a slightly different location with the second half, and then shifted the first batch to match the second. If you are the planning type, do be aware of this one catch: unlike beds made from wood or other materials, straw bales are not an exact science. Any amount of water during the storage process will cause the bales to bend (as you can see in the pictures of the beds), and no two bales will ever be the exact same size and shape. If you are the kind of person who is into exact dimensions or perfect corners, straw bales are probably not the best building material for you. My final beds have one side wall that is shorter than the other due to some bales being rounded, so it lacks square corners on one side.

Once I had my general shape and location finalized, I took an extra bale (i bought 4 extras as they have many uses including mulching and cold weather protection), broke it apart, and laid down a layer of straw mulch on top of the grass. This is not an exact measurement—just spread out the straw in a layer to form the bottom of your beds. I have also seen people use a layer of a grass-suppressing mix of cardboard and newspaper, but straw was what I had so straw is what I went with.

Once the floor was in place, it was time to add in the compost. I picked up a trailer load of goat manure compost from a farmer in Cottage Grove (really nice stuff, aged about 4 years and full of red wigglers), which I had dumped into a pile into my driveway for a lack of a better place to put it when I had to unload the trailer for other things. This had to be wheeled back to the bed a wheelbarrow load at a time, dumped on to the top of the straw, and then pushed around to make a somewhat even layer.

Again, this is not an exact science for me, so I can’t really tell you how many inches of compost you need on top of whatever inches of straw. Just get it in there, using your best judgement, and it should all be fine. I will probably be shooting for alternating layers of clean dirt and manure compost, which is easier than premixing it all before adding it to the beds. I am generally trying to shoot for the most organic matter I can get into the beds while not losing the texture and airspace the plant roots need to grow.

In previous years, I would have worked hard to get the perfect mix of soils, following Steve Solomon’s exact advice and avoiding straw mulch because Oregon hay/straw is not good. (According to him, it is good for grass seed but not for anything else because it’s not balanced enough.) This year, I am working on the principle that if you provide plants with the basics, the exact measurements won’t matter and the plants will do fine. Plants are programmed, by nature, to grow and thrive in whatever conditions they are handed. So if making Napa’s grape vines suffer a bit produces the finest quality of fruit, I will not stress about the exact chemical composition of my soil and will learn to enjoy gardening more instead. If I started worrying about finding "well-drained soil" in this area, I would be starting out the season with a sense of doom that wasn’t warranted. Oregon may not have California’s sandy, fertile soils, but you can still grow a whole lot here in the Willamette Valley and there are many things that I can grow here that did not do well in California’s heat.

This is the bed as of the end of the day yesterday, with the straw layer and the compost layer. This week I will be adding additional compost and dirt to fill the beds before putting my plants in.

Location and setup is the first issue to tackle when you are thinking of seed starts. You will need:

• A nice, sunny location or bright artificial lights. My seed starts are all in a garden window (the picture below is from March, when they were first started) but Oregon doesn’t get a lot of sun in March so additional lighting had to be considered. In each window in the picture, I have placed one 24" lighting fixture (relatively inexpensive at Fred Meyer or a hardware store) with a GE full-spectrum plant light. These lights are on a timer to ensure that all the plants get enough light daily.



• Warmth. If your plants are in a cold window (like mine), they will need additional warmth to signal to the seeds that spring is here. You can accomplish this through heat lighting, through a small circulating heater, or through heating mats placed under your seed starting trays (they are sometimes sold in kits like this). I have been using 2 AGROSUN Daylight Spot Lamps which have worked but … I am really disappointed by the number of times these lamps have burnt out! They say they are guaranteed for one year and yet mine seem to keep burning out after a few weeks.
• Pots. The best kind of seed starting pots can be plants into the ground with the plant, thereby not hurting the roots. They have pots made out of cow manure, peat, coconut husks, or other materials—any of these will work.
• Water catch tray. The "good planting pots" will let water drain right through them, so you will need to put them in some kind of tray.
• A cover. When they first start out, it is best to keep your seed trays covered (as in the picture above). This helps keep them moist and warm. If they are too moist, remove the cover for a bit during the day and recover before night. Once the seedlings hit the inside top of the cover, remove it and allow them to grow freely, like this picture of my tomatoes from early April:

Once you have figured out your setup, you will need to figure out what to put in there. Read the seed packets and do your research to be sure, but in general:

• Plants with strong root bases can be easily started indoors. Examples are tomatoes, peppers, melons, cucumbers, and squash.
• Root vegetables are usually best sowed directly outside.
• Legumes are hit and miss—pole-type beans can have very weak root structures, while bush beans can transplant a bit better. Transplanted peas are hard to get 100% success with unless you have the kind of pots that go directly into the soil and break down.
• Crucifers and cole crops (like cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower) do very well started indoors and transplanted later on.

In an effort to keep it simple this year, and because I’m working with a new setup and a new climate, I only did seed starts this year for 2 kinds of plants: cherry tomatoes, and mini bell peppers. I started the seeds about 7-8 weeks before our last frost date (May 15), which is when charts like these said to do it. I purchased most of my seeds for starting this year from the Territorial Seed Company. I bought 5 varieties of cherry tomatoes (snow white, gold nuggest, cabernet grape, orange paruche hybrid, chocolate cherry) and 3 colors of mini bell peppers (yellow, red and chocolate). I am also using some yellow pear tomatoes and red currant tomatoes from an earlier seed stash. Along with the above mentioned plants, I will be directly sowing seeds from Territorial for lemon cucumbers, marketmore slicing cucumbers, candy hybrid sweet spanish onions, icicle short top radishes, early wonder tall top beets, and golden beets into my raised beds garden. Additionally, I have parisian market carrots and french breakfast radishes from Ed Hume, and nantes coreless carrots from Lilly Miller. They will be a little late for the harvest this year because I need to establish my planting area, but they say they can be sowed through mid-summer so I should be okay.

One of the other great things about seed starts is that your unique varieties can be used as currency to get others. I have traded my cherry tomatoes for brandywine, green zebra, black prince, and other starts that you see in my window garden now. PS – Don’t say that I didn’t warn you! Growing, finding, and trading for new varieties of tomatoes can be addictive!

Windowbox greenhouse as of the end of April, including my herbs:

Planting day is fast approaching, so look for more posts on my raised beds (which I will be making from hay bales) soon!