Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Urban Gardening and my new tomato seedlings

I'm not the only one planting some random food in San Francisco. There is a (very) small movement to organize all these people with a couple of plants into a de facto collective. It's called Garden Registry . This one is only for San Francisco and the Chron did a story on it. The comments pointed out Veggie Trader which provides the same service without the San Francisco Values.

I don't think I'm going to end up with any surplus Cilantro but this might end up being good for one or two batches of scrambled eggs or something.



I'm also trying to grow some seedlings for tomatoes, peppers, and basil. The tomatoes germinated and are loving the heat wave in San Francisco - in theory they should be getting "hardened" with increasing amounts of sunshine daily, but I don't think I can really convince my wife to put the plants in and out on a timer - so I've basically decided each morning whether to put them out.



I put a few seeds per planting starter in the hopes I would get one - but I had a pretty high success rate, germinating them indoors under a light bulb. I've thinned them a bit, if I get time I am going to try to prick a few out and put them into other bins I have lying around to see if I can get more total seedlings. We have room for a lot of tomatoes in Healdsburg, but if I can get a lot of seedlings to grow I might even tempt fate and try to grow a plant in SF. There really isn't the same sort of sun in SF that you get in Sonoma County though. If I do really well I'll give some away.

The heat also brought out the Jalepenos (foreground). Bell Peppers not so much. I also have several basil seedlings that I will try to transplant into separate containers so I can keep one or two here, and put some up in Healdsburg where that stuff goes nuts. And maybe some more freebies for the SF gardeners.

1 comment:

Noe Farm Report said...

Our tomato seeds just sprouted in the past two days as well - I think the sunshine is helping. The 4" tomato plants we bought have already doubled in size so fingers crossed that they can make it through the cold summer.