Adventures in tomato grafting

So, here's what I've learned so far about tomato grafting.

1) Make sure you start a lot of seedlings, both of the root stock and the scions. I only succeeded with half the attempts at grafting tomato seedlings. No surprise I didn't go to medical school. There's a lot of planning (and luck?) involved in timing the rootstock to match the stems of the scions, so it's a good idea to have a lot of candidates for a match of the stem sizes.

2) Start the root stock about 10 days after you sow the

The best (garden) plans of mice and men...

"Everyone has a plan ... until they get punched in the face."

-- Mike Tyson

I was cleaning off my very messy desk today and found the planting schedule I had laid out back in February. It said I should be sowing lettuce, spinach, radishes and bok choy in the hoop house later this week. That's the same hoop house that was bending under the weight of a foot of snow earlier just a few days ago. 

Temperatures has warmed significantly and we haven't had more than a trace of snow the last few

Hoop house crushed under 13 inches of 'spring'

After braving a particularly hard winter here in northern Minnesota, our hoop house finally buckled under the weight of 13 inches of wet, heavy snow in a major mid-April storm.

An early (too early?) seed starting

Because this is my first try at grafting tomatoes, I got an early jump on starting my tomatoes. Normally, in Zone 3 I wouldn't do this until the middle of April. I did this mainly because I don't know how fast the rootstock will develop and to provide a cushion of time, in case I have to start another flight of seeds. Wish me luck.

Frankenplanting: pushing the envelope in Zone 3 with grafting

I just learned a bit about grafting tomatoes (and other plants), and I'm thinking it could be a tremendous tool for growing in Zone 3. I'll be writing more about it as I go along, but here are two very informative videos about it ...

Gardening resolutions for 2013

The beginning of the year is a good time to do forward thinking about your life, your finances, and — maybe even more appropriate — your garden. Since there's very little most of us in Zone 3 can do right now to screw up a frozen garden, a little planning now can pay off when spring comes. Can't say the same about other life decisions.

Squeezing out a few more weeks of gardening in Zone 3

There's a definite feel of fall in the air, and tonight's forecast is a reminder that winter comes early to Northern Minnesota. Some parts of Duluth had snow last night and it's supposed to go down to the 20s tonight.

So, I harvested the remaining tomatoes and delicata squash I had left in our outside garden bed. Removing the vines revealed several more squash fruit that might be developed enough to ripen indoors, along with a re-seeded crop of claytonia.

How does the Zone 3 garden grow?

Since we're approaching the midpoint of the growing season here, I thought this would be a good time to take stock of where our Zone 3 garden stands now.

We've been doing so much "construction" this year (hoop house, new raised beds, new fence) that I haven't spent as much time on actual gardening as I hoped I would. As a result ...

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