Growing a Market Garden from Seeds

I’ve spent the last few months working on the property, demoing old structures, and weeding, a lot of weeding! As spring approaches, I took advantage of a warm day and did some gardening instead! It was a glorious reminder of why I’m doing all the clean-up work around the property. 

Planting for the Market Garden and growing things in our beautiful Palisade setting, to me, feels like my gardening endeavors in Denver only on steroids! Meaning I’ve got so much more space to work with which means I can grow many more things and in larger quantities. It is both exciting and frightening all at the same time. This week I planted seven different varieties of tomatoes and Andy planted six different kinds of peppers. All these we planted from seeds. It will take a bit longer to get going, which is why you start now, but planting from seeds is so much more cost effective, especially when you are going to grow on a larger scale!

We ordered our seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Lake Valley Seed, and Burpee.  Knowing that I would be able to grow tomatoes on a larger scale I decided this year I would experiment and order tomatoes that are mostly heirloom and visually different as well as flavorful. The heirloom tomatoes chose include:

Black Beauty

Large Barred Boar

Orange Accordian

Costoluto Genovese

Spoon (cherry tomato)

White Currant (cherry tomato)

I also planted two other cherry tomato varieties, Super Sweet 100 and Tumbler which is a Hybrid bush that is perfect for containers. If the Super Sweet 100 germinates I thought, I’d try and grow them in hanging baskets again.

The Black Beauty is Heirloom’s darkest tomato turning blue-black on the skin. I’ve never grown it before, but the catalog describes it as “… meat, very rich-fleshed tomato with extreme anthocyanin expressions.” Not being familiar with this term, the catalog goes on to explain that this is the same antioxidant as in blueberries and blackberries, which might explain its dark skin. It is also described as one of the best tasting of all tomatoes. With this kind of description, I thought it would be perfect for the Market Garden! The Black Beauty takes 80 days to reach maturity. In contrast the Large Barred Boar tomato is described as a flattened beefsteak, pink-brown in color with metallic green stripes, meaty and also extremely flavorful. It is one of the first to ripen and should be ready to pick in 65-75 days. 

Another visually contrasting tomato is the Orange Accordion. As the name notes, it is orange in color (high-voltage orange to be specific). It is ruffled in shape and huge! Because it is so visually unique, it is described as a “head-turning tomato” and a must have for market gardeners. It has a sweet, fruity flavor, has few seeds, is meaty so good for sauces and slicing and because of its size it is also a good stuffing tomato! The Orange Accordion ripens in 80 days.

I chose the Costoluto Genovese tomato because in its description it said that it is very popular with chefs in this country. This one is considered an “old Italian favorite” and has been around since the early 19th century. It is intensely flavorful, good for eating fresh off the vine and for preserving. I figure the Italians make incredible sauces so why not experiment with a tomato that is popular with the Italians, and if chefs like it well then… I must give it a try, maybe it will up my game in the kitchen!

The rest of the tomatoes are variations on the cherry tomato. The white currant is a yellowish cherry, and the Spoon tomato is so tiny that a group of them can fit on a single spoon. As I’ve not grown this one before, I will have to take their word for it and go by the picture on the seed packet.

My plan with the tomatoes is once they germinate, I prick them out and get them going in larger pots, assuming I get past the germination stage, I will plant them in the ground in our high tunnel, also known as a hoop house. I’m going to try the Monty Don method of growing them vertically up a jute rope that I will tie to the roof of the high tunnel. We are carving our Market Garden out of a hayfield, roto-tilling our beds. This allows us to use the hay as our cover crop between the beds which is good for the soil overall. I purchased some heavy duty weed barrier that once we till the ground, I will put down to keep both the weeds and hay at bay. 

I will also plant some of the cherry tomatoes in hanging baskets and pots. I’ve grown tomatoes in hanging baskets in the past and have been quite successful so I’m confident that I can pull that experiment off. Growing them in a pot will be a new experiment as will the high tunnel, so fingers crossed there! 

Andy plans on growing his peppers in the ground in one of our beds in the vegetable section of the Market Garden. He too is experimenting with a couple of new varieties as well as returning to many of his old favorites including:

Ozark Giant (a red pepper which he is growing at my request)

Anaheim 

Craig’s Grande Jalapeno

Buena Mulata

Banana (a yellow pepper similar in shape to a banana)

Sweet (a carnival blend pepper)

Serrano Chili (hot)

To plant our seeds, we picked up several seed starter trays that included a doom and bottom so that once we add the soil, seed, and water, it creates a kind of self-watering terrarium. I again took my que from Gardener’s World and created a soil mix of potting soil, manure and perlite. Of course, just after I finished planting the seeds, I attended a workshop at the local library on growing veggies from seeds only to learn that they recommend using a seed starting mix which is made of finer grade soil. Given that I will be planting on a larger scale, I’m hoping that my home-made mix will work as it will be more cost effective given the scale of planting that I will be doing. After all the seeds were planted, I placed them in our makeshift green house on heat mats. The later was also recommended in the workshop. 

So, two types of veggies planted a million more to go! Over the next few weeks, I will continue to purchase more seed trays, research soils to see if I can find perhaps a finer grade to mix in with my manure and perlite and make my own starter mix. As we only have two heat mats and the green house has only so many outlets, I will rotate the seed trays off the mats as the seeds germinate and grow. I might have to get creative with space or just acknowledge that some of my seeds will be sown directly in the ground a few months from now, after the last frost. Over time, I hope to be able to afford another larger high tunnel in which I can start all my seeds for the Market Garden including flowers and herbs. 

This year, I’m not trying to grow herbs from seeds as I’ve never been very successful with them in the past. Instead, I will create a raised bed herb garden for myself and Andy purchasing a few established herb plants from the garden store. Most herbs are perennials, except for Basil, so once I plant them, I should have a cut and come-again herb garden for home.  Once I’ve built out the Market Garden to include the Herb section, I should by then have enough growing from seed experience under my belt that I will give herbs another go.

Gardening is truly a joyful endeavor for me and although the farm chores are many and seem to be never ending, knowing that gardening is the joy at the end of the chore tunnel, makes it all worth it. I’m so looking forward to Spring!