Today is roughly 8 weeks before our last frost date, which means the seeding crush is about to begin!
Several kinds of vegetables and flowers need 6-8 weeks to mature into healthy seedlings; you simply wouldn’t have time to get a big harvest from them otherwise. Or in the case of some melons and winter squash, you might not get ANY harvest at all. Others, you just want a strong seedling that can out-compete weeds. And in still other cases, you can avoid a particular pest by planting out at a certain time. Whew! Lots to keep track of, huh?
Well, to start the seedling crush, I now have several kinds of flowers germinating under the lights: asters, bupleurum, blanket flowers and pearl achillea. Then I also have 3 kinds of eggplant: orient charm, orient express and big beauty.
The two ‘oriental’ kinds of eggplant are my favorite – charm is pink, express is purple. To my taste, they have a little more flavor than traditional Italian types of eggplant. They’re also small and very productive, which means you can expect several fruits from each plant. Since we use them for stir-fry or baba ghanoush mostly, that’s perfect. We’re still growing an Italian type though, there’s nothing that can compete when you want eggplant parm!
Next up: a full tray of peppers and lots of tomatoes. LOTS of tomatoes.
Beane Hill Farm 