Calling All Gardeners! Spring is Sprouting!

[Becca Bonneville]

Hey garden friends!

It’s that time of year again—seed-starting season! I got my little plant babies going, and I swear, there is nothing more magical than seeing those first tiny green sprouts poke through the soil. A few of them popped up almost overnight, and I may or may not have done a happy dance in my kitchen. :wub:

This year, I’m growing a few varieties of tomatoes, several types of hot peppers, green beans, purple hull peas, black eyed peas, cucumbers (for pickles!), melons, delicata squash, potatoes, various herbs, etc. But my biggest things are my pumpkin patch (doing a lot of new varieties this year) and all of my flowers. I am so excited for this season! I love starting from seed because it feels like such a journey from tiny speck to full-grown plant, but I know some folks swear by buying starts instead.

How about you? Do you start seeds indoors, direct sow, or hit up your favorite nursery when it’s time to plant? What’s on your grow list this year? Also, any must-try varieties you’ve had success with? I’m always looking for new favorites!

Let’s talk gardening!

 

[Brendazzle]

Do you start seeds indoors, direct sow, or hit up your favorite nursery when it’s time to plant?
Depends on what I'm growing. I love to impulse purchase plants and my mom loves to take my son and I to the nursery and fill her car but starting from seeds is much less expensive. We live in year-round growing seasons so we either start in a covered seed starter tray outside the sliding glass doors or the double Solo cup method for hot pepper seeds.

What’s on your grow list this year?
This year, the garden is taking a backseat because the 2 hurricanes that came through last year (at tropical storm strength, I may add) took down our fence. Boo!

I'm not starting anything new this year but we have our multi-generational banana family, a quad grow bag of blackberry plants, a quad grow bag of grape vines (which were starting to fruit until something ate them!), a dragonfruit cactus, taro in an old recycling bin, and peanuts (lovingly planted for us by either squirrels or blue jays).

In years past, I've grown a bunch of hot peppers - like, 1M+ Scoville, do not touch your eyes ever again level hot. We've also had varying levels of success with watermelon, cucumbers, yellow squash, strawberries, carrots, kale, eggplant, tomatoes, broccoli, blueberries, basil, key limes, Australian finger limes, sunflowers, sweet potatoes, and lavender. There was also the year we just tossed our Halloween pumpkin onto a pile of compost and observed it for a year for homeschool...

They just recategorized our growing zone from 10B to 11A so it's frequently too hot for things most other people can grow. My most successful crop was monarch caterpillars by far. Up until the HOA-mandated landscapers killed our front bed, it was a pollinator/wildflower garden interspersed with a ridiculous amount of milkweed.

Also, any must-try varieties you’ve had success with?
One of my favorite things is intentionally cross-pollinating my peppers. We had a hot banana pepper plant (so it was also banana crossed with something spicier) that I then pollinated with whatever other peppers I was pollinating that day. Each individual pepper was a different Scoville ranking so when I cut them all up and pickled them, it was a mixed jar. Some were "banana pepper with a kick" and a few were "I know there was a ghost pepper involved in your formation."

I have not grown these yet but they're the top of my plant wishlist: https://pepperjoe.com/products/pink-tiger-x-peach-bhut-chili-pepper-seeds


Which varieties of pumpkins are you growing this year? There are some gorgeous heirloom varieties that I always gazing longingly at in the seed catalogs.

 

[wendyp]

Do you start seeds indoors, direct sow, or hit up your favorite nursery when it’s time to plant?
Tomatoes, belly pepper, cauliflower, watermelon, snack cucumber, courgette and sprouts all seeded indoors. Those I move outside around half may.

Carrots, onions, garlic, spinach, rocket all outside direct sow. I just put my potatoes in the ground as well.

What’s on your grow list this year?
carrots, belly peppers, spinach, meaty tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, snack cucumber, courgette, white beans, green beans, rocket salad, pick lettuce, strawberry, cauliflower, potatoes, onion, garlic, mini watermelon (maybe I forgot some)

I do have a new grapes bush, small balcony cherry tree and raspberry, but those all only give fruits in their 3th year cos nothing form there yet.

Also, any must-try varieties you’ve had success with?
It is just my second year home gardening in a small garden and all in pots, My only success so far are tomatoes and green beans.

Last year was a bad year with snails, butterflies and caterpillars and very very much rain. So I learned some lessons out of that and try to do it better this year.

 

[Becca Bonneville]

Do you start seeds indoors, direct sow, or hit up your favorite nursery when it’s time to plant?
Depends on what I'm growing. I love to impulse purchase plants and my mom loves to take my son and I to the nursery and fill her car but starting from seeds is much less expensive. We live in year-round growing seasons so we either start in a covered seed starter tray outside the sliding glass doors or the double Solo cup method for hot pepper seeds.

What’s on your grow list this year?
This year, the garden is taking a backseat because the 2 hurricanes that came through last year (at tropical storm strength, I may add) took down our fence. Boo!

I'm not starting anything new this year but we have our multi-generational banana family, a quad grow bag of blackberry plants, a quad grow bag of grape vines (which were starting to fruit until something ate them!), a dragonfruit cactus, taro in an old recycling bin, and peanuts (lovingly planted for us by either squirrels or blue jays).

In years past, I've grown a bunch of hot peppers - like, 1M+ Scoville, do not touch your eyes ever again level hot. We've also had varying levels of success with watermelon, cucumbers, yellow squash, strawberries, carrots, kale, eggplant, tomatoes, broccoli, blueberries, basil, key limes, Australian finger limes, sunflowers, sweet potatoes, and lavender. There was also the year we just tossed our Halloween pumpkin onto a pile of compost and observed it for a year for homeschool...

They just recategorized our growing zone from 10B to 11A so it's frequently too hot for things most other people can grow. My most successful crop was monarch caterpillars by far. Up until the HOA-mandated landscapers killed our front bed, it was a pollinator/wildflower garden interspersed with a ridiculous amount of milkweed.

Also, any must-try varieties you’ve had success with?
One of my favorite things is intentionally cross-pollinating my peppers. We had a hot banana pepper plant (so it was also banana crossed with something spicier) that I then pollinated with whatever other peppers I was pollinating that day. Each individual pepper was a different Scoville ranking so when I cut them all up and pickled them, it was a mixed jar. Some were "banana pepper with a kick" and a few were "I know there was a ghost pepper involved in your formation."

I have not grown these yet but they're the top of my plant wishlist: https://pepperjoe.com/products/pink-tiger-x-peach-bhut-chili-pepper-seeds


Which varieties of pumpkins are you growing this year? There are some gorgeous heirloom varieties that I always gazing longingly at in the seed catalogs.

It is always so much FUN to look at all the plants and shop! I do love to do that, too! I agree that starting from seed can help reduce the costs.

I am sorry about the hurricane damage! That definitely makes things hard!

Like you, I start certain things inside and then direct seed the rest. I am in Southern IL, so we aren't the warmest but not the coldest either haha. (Zone 7A) So I like to start things like my tomatoes, peppers and other things I want to give a head start (like some marigolds and other flowers right now).

I LOVE growing a variety of peppers. We love to make sauces and seasonings with them plus pickle some. This season we are growing Jalapeno, Black Hungarian, Tabasco, Paprika, Cayenne, Trinidad Chocolate Scorpion, Carolina Reaper, Cheiro Roxa and Banana pepper. Love the idea of crossing them! That would be a fun experiment! That Pink Tiger Peach looks like a good one to try out!

For pumpkins this year I may have gone a little nuts. Some are heirloom and some are hybrids (crosses). The full list is Pink Porcelain Princess, Big Max, Dragon Fire, Jarrahdale, Sweet Dumpling, Itty Bitty, Jack Be Little, Popcorn, Polar Bear, Mac N Cheese, Moranga, Marina de Chiogga, Flat Boer White, Black Bear, Dark Knight, Winter Luxury Pie, Connecticut Field, Blue Hubbard, Long Island Cheese, Rouge Vif d'Etampes, Buen Gusto de Horno, Glass Slipper (stackers), One Too Many, Igor, Zombie, Mr. Fugly, White Gold, and Blaze. I shop from Baker Creek and Blue Pumpkin for all of my seeds. We will also toss Halloween pumpkins out to a certain area o see what crosses we get.

That is too bad about your Monarchs! I have to watch things where I am at. I am rural but surrounded by corn fields. I try to make sure where I put my stuff to best avoid drift when they spray their fields.

I love to load the whole garden and property with flowers to bring in the pollinators. I like to grow LOADS of zinnias, sunflowers, bachelor buttons/cornflowers, and marigolds. This year I am attempting some strawflowers, rudbeckia, and some other varieties. My family thinks I am crazy but I make sure to give the spiders and mantids their home to help with the bugs I would rather not have in my garden. Then I encourage the bees and butterflies to make their way in. I take pictures all season long of the different ones out in the garden. I have no love for the squash bugs or my nemesis, Chip (crazy chipmunk who is the bane of my existence haha).

 

[Becca Bonneville]

Do you start seeds indoors, direct sow, or hit up your favorite nursery when it’s time to plant?
Tomatoes, belly pepper, cauliflower, watermelon, snack cucumber, courgette and sprouts all seeded indoors. Those I move outside around half may.

Carrots, onions, garlic, spinach, rocket all outside direct sow. I just put my potatoes in the ground as well.

What’s on your grow list this year?
carrots, belly peppers, spinach, meaty tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, snack cucumber, courgette, white beans, green beans, rocket salad, pick lettuce, strawberry, cauliflower, potatoes, onion, garlic, mini watermelon (maybe I forgot some)

I do have a new grapes bush, small balcony cherry tree and raspberry, but those all only give fruits in their 3th year cos nothing form there yet.

Also, any must-try varieties you’ve had success with?
It is just my second year home gardening in a small garden and all in pots, My only success so far are tomatoes and green beans.

Last year was a bad year with snails, butterflies and caterpillars and very very much rain. So I learned some lessons out of that and try to do it better this year.

That sounds like a wonderful grow list! It is so nice to have a variety that you can eat along the way or can/store.

I keep thinking I want to add some fruit trees but haven't done that yet. I can't decide what I want to put out there.

Growing in pots is fun! We do a variety of ways. I have some things in-ground, some growing up trellises and we put some in buckets. I grew some of my pepper plants in buckets last year because I got carried away and pepper land (what I call the patch where my peppers grow) was quite full haha. The pepper plants did very well in the 5 gallon buckets (food safe). I know many have a lot of success growing in pots, grow bags, etc.

Oh yes, the never ending lessons from the garden. Each year, I learn something new and apply that to the next one. Last season I had the usual suspects... critters, bugs, drought and then too much rain. But we also had a new one for us. One of my pumpkin plants had the mosaic virus. It freaked me right out. I was worried my entire garden was a goner. Luckily, we removed and bagged that plant. I removed some of the dirt where it was planted as well. And watched the rest with bated breath. We were so happy when none of the others got it. I love gardening, though!

 

[Sherly]

It sounds so exciting to read about how many varieties of seedlings and plants you three are planting! I hope it all goes well and healthy for the plants.

I don't do anything of that scale as I only put little plants on our tiny balcony, but I really really enjoy repotting them and observing how they grow bigger each day. Some little blooms that grow successfully to flowers are such a satisfying reward that my hubby could never understand

 

[Brendazzle]

I LOVE growing a variety of peppers. We love to make sauces and seasonings with them plus pickle some. This season we are growing Jalapeno, Black Hungarian, Tabasco, Paprika, Cayenne, Trinidad Chocolate Scorpion, Carolina Reaper, Cheiro Roxa and Banana pepper. Love the idea of crossing them! That would be a fun experiment! That Pink Tiger Peach looks like a good one to try out!

For pumpkins this year I may have gone a little nuts. Some are heirloom and some are hybrids (crosses). The full list is Pink Porcelain Princess, Big Max, Dragon Fire, Jarrahdale, Sweet Dumpling, Itty Bitty, Jack Be Little, Popcorn, Polar Bear, Mac N Cheese, Moranga, Marina de Chiogga, Flat Boer White, Black Bear, Dark Knight, Winter Luxury Pie, Connecticut Field, Blue Hubbard, Long Island Cheese, Rouge Vif d'Etampes, Buen Gusto de Horno, Glass Slipper (stackers), One Too Many, Igor, Zombie, Mr. Fugly, White Gold, and Blaze. I shop from Baker Creek and Blue Pumpkin for all of my seeds. We will also toss Halloween pumpkins out to a certain area o see what crosses we get.

I love to load the whole garden and property with flowers to bring in the pollinators. I like to grow LOADS of zinnias, sunflowers, bachelor buttons/cornflowers, and marigolds. This year I am attempting some strawflowers, rudbeckia, and some other varieties. My family thinks I am crazy but I make sure to give the spiders and mantids their home to help with the bugs I would rather not have in my garden. Then I encourage the bees and butterflies to make their way in. I take pictures all season long of the different ones out in the garden. I have no love for the squash bugs or my nemesis, Chip (crazy chipmunk who is the bane of my existence haha).

I was just eyeing some Cheiro Roxa peppers and thinking those might be fun. Next year, maybe. You're growing an amazing range of heat levels and I'm so excited you have a chocolate scorpion. My brother keeps asking for me to grow some for making BBQ sauce. (My husband vetoed that after we accidentally pepper sprayed our house with ghost peppers trying to make hot sauce.)

I love how many different pumpkins you're growing. I recognized a few from my wish list and got to Google so many more wonderful ones. I hope you'll post a million photos so I can live vicariously though you.

We're team pollinator here forever. We once got a blue bee pollinating my purple tomatoes and it was all I talked about to my friends for a week. I am so lucky that said friends were as into it as I was. When we can finally escape suburbia, my husband promised me that we could have a beehive. I almost got one (and free beekeeping classes) during my college internship but I had no place to put it so I feel long overdue When we got aphids (because every single milkweed plant at the nursery was infested), my mom threatened to buy us ladybugs too. She probably would have if the nursery wasn't sold out. We settled for a monarch-safe spray and me checking the caterpillars constantly.

The squirrels are a mixed blessing for me. They dug under my key lime to hide peanuts in the pot, leading to an accidental peanut crop. It was okay until the key lime plant died but now I'm sad about it. I'm glad we don't have chipmunks to truly wreck things. My husband made fun of me because we had a tomato hornworm once and I asked to keep it as a pet. Far away from my tomatoes though.

I miss our full garden but it's just too hot and too much work right now. We usually start in January and I settled for only bringing home produce from the U-pick at the local farm. We picked more things but I didn't come home with any strawberry plants, pepper plants, or herbs.

The last thing we grew were lion's mane mushrooms in the windowsill. That was kind of cool.

 

[Natascha]

I luvvv gardening, but I don't like the dirty hands you get with it hahaha yeah you can call me a princess when it comes to dirty
hands LOL plus I don't have a garden or balcony at my own place, but........my boyfriend does have a small garden!!!
*doing a happy dance* Can't do anything in it though as of yet, cause they (he and my little brother)
are planning some landscaping next month!

I still need to buy my seeds and things for some indoor growing, think I will do that next week! I do have some
advocado seeds in some small vases with water. One is having a root and one other just opened up.

 

[DawnMarch]

Gardening in the Phoenix metro area tends to be frustrating. You have to grow mostly in the fall and winter and you have to be diligent about watering everything. And the soil is terrible -- mostly rock, sand and clay. Because we're off-season, the big box stores tend not to have the right plants at the right times. I do a very little bit of gardening in pots -- tomatoes, peppers and herbs (and rosemary grows as a perennal shrub in our front yeard). Hornworms tend to get the peppers and birds and lizzards eat the tomatoes. I do love watching things grow, though, so I usually have a few plants year-round muddling along. In the spring, I'll plant zinnias and mini-sunflowers from seed (just seed straight into the pots) because they do well in the summer heat.

 

[wendyp]

I luvvv gardening, but I don't like the dirty hands you get with it hahaha yeah you can call me a princess when it comes to dirty
hands LOL plus I don't have a garden or balcony at my own place, but........my boyfriend does have a small garden!!!
*doing a happy dance* Can't do anything in it though as of yet, cause they (he and my little brother)
are planning some landscaping next month!

I still need to buy my seeds and things for some indoor growing, think I will do that next week! I do have some
advocado seeds in some small vases with water. One is having a root and one other just opened up.

I don;t like dirty hands either. Plus my hands get dry faster, so that's why I use garden gloves

 

[Natascha]

I don;t like dirty hands either. Plus my hands get dry faster, so that's why I use garden gloves

Haha yeah I bought them at the action yesterday, but...how silly as it sounds...I love to feel the plants and seeds with my hands. Just not the dirt hahaha

 

[allyanne]

Yep, I have dirty hands. I have nearly 100 snapdragons sitting here under lights in my sun room, along with 40 dahlias that I started too early, but I'm not sorry. My onions are in the ground, I have peas and spinach sowed, and I'm gloating over the spinach, collards and lettuces I planted last fall and grew under cover in my raised beds! I started my peppers and eggplants just over a week ago, and they're starting to pop up. I am trying Sugar Rush Peach peppers this year, along with jalapenos, poblanos, and my husband's favorite Chinese 5-color peppers. Monday, I started my tomatoes, and I planted too many, but that is a problem for later, haha. I've been known to sneak them onto porches and into friends' cars when they visit. I will be starting lots of other flowers and herbs indoors in the next few weeks, and I'll probably be direct sowing carrots, more lettuce and a second planting of peas soon. I wish I could grow pumpkins, but those dumb squash vine borers are vicious around here! I can only grow pumpkins and other winter squash if I toss the seeds in my compost pile. For some reason, they can weather the bugs over there! I have a strawberry/asparagus bed, too, and I'm out there daily checking to see if any asparagus has started to pop up, but so far it's too early. The fruit trees all made it through the winter, and I keep whispering to them to hold off on blooming for at least another month, because Ohio.

I'm dying to add beehives to our little homestead, but it feels like a heavy lift with everything else that is already going on. Maybe in a few years! Meanwhile, I have 11 noisy little chickens kicking dust over everything in my sun room. With all the plants I've got going, it's a mess. We are hoping to move them out to the big chicken yard later this week, to their own enclosure with their heating plate.

This is my favorite time to year! START ALL THE SEEDS, HAHAHAA!

 

[wendyp]

One thing I really really wish to have is an apple tree, because I grew up with on a apple tree farm I have a weakness for them

Since we have a city garden my hubby was against it. But I almost convinced him that we take a smaller variety and self productive, also I showed him the perfect place to plant it so hopefully lol

 

[jk703]

I'm envious of you all! DH does the gardening, and I water - but only when he asks. If I touch it without the ok, bad luck will happen. Truly. I've tried for years - plants, cacti, veggies, flowers, all of it, lol!

ETA: Oh, we are in the suburbs, but we have loads of deer. TOO many! My dog thinks he is one of them and just stares (he looks like one). They all hang out in the yard together - far apart. We have to watch for them near our garden, so we raised them, and put a wire fence and closer to our house.