2025 gardens

[Sonny580]

Welcome! Time to start the 2025 season thread. Post your gardens AND small acres here. Ideas, equipment, methods that work for you, varieties and whatever else you like! Thanks!!

 

[Oaktree]

Way too early to even start thinking about it for another couple months. Maybe start pepper and tomato plants inside end of Feb, cukes & squash mid-late March. Nothing planted before mid-May at the earliest, and that would just be peas, lettuce, spinach, etc. Anything beyond that would be Memorial Day weekend into early June.
Last year tried putting down black plastic for most of May to pre-warm the soil and maybe discourage weeds. Didn't really make much of a difference.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Haven't even thought about next years garden yet but 2024 garden is still providing. We have some arugula and broccoli still rocking. We have a good cold snap coming that might knock it out. Some years I get kale or brussels to over winter and by the spring they are HUGE. I usually harvest them before I plant the spring babies and freeze them.

Thanks for the reminder to start looking at my 2025 stuff. If I do my own starts I usually get that going in early February for an early March planting of spring crops.

 

[flyerdan]

I had a couple of late tomatoes that I brought inside before the frost as they had a couple of green to ripen. When they ripened and died, I put some seeds in as a test since last year's starts were so abysmal. So far looking better than the seed start mix/potting soil that I usually do.

 

[DJ54]

Stopped at the Southern States farm store in Paris, KY. today on the way home from Sis's house. They normally have left over 2024 seeds marked down. Hit the jackpot today on sweetcorn, snap peas, Rutgers tomatoes, Buttercrunch lettuce, mix of gourds, straight neck gourds, all marked 50% off of already marked down prices. This is $15 worth, and had a lot left. LOTS of Blue Lake green beans, a full box, plus about half a box of 1,000 seed packets. Just checked other places and the amount of sweetcorn here alone other places is more than I paid for all of these.

It's been years since I've planted Rutger's, and not my favorite but couldn't pass them up for the price. 1,000 seeds for $1.20. If anyone has a Southern States store in your area, might be worth stopping in.

 

[Sonny580]

savin seeds and drying them. Started on the canners the other day and got a bunch of nice seeds out of this one. It was a 32 pounder.

 

[DJ54]

Hybrid..?? With an F1 hybrid there's a good chance you'll get something pretty close to what you've got. Seeds from a second generation may be more like one parent or the other they were developed from.

I saved some (trying anyway) second generation cabbage plants, to grow seeds. Just curious as to what I'll get out of them. It may be next year before I find out though, the second generation did great, and 75% of them made heads like to parent plants, the rest were smaller but could be because of the drought. I watered them enough to keep them alive, but rains from Helene saved them.

 

[Sonny580]

Libby's save seed from their crop every year. They gmo their seed every year, These were from 42 years ago when most everything was straight. I have over the years gotten them to the over 100 pound size and excellent quality still remaining so I continue to plant them. Best pie pumpkin around!

 

[DJ54]

Getting off to a meager start here with approx. 150 yellow sweet Spanish onions and 50+ Zebrune shallots in the germination chamber.

Apparently, the slow cooker and grow light still working after a couple years along with the digital grow mat thermostat, temp is up to 71º from 37º when I turned it on a while ago. With any luck they should be germinated by Sunday at noon.