Hi All,
I know, I know. It's early but since this has been such an absolutely crappy year for all of us, I couldn't think of a better thing to focus on right now than gardening for next year.
I'm a newbie to high altitude gardening ( 2021 is my second year) but I'm planning my year already and have actually already purchased 95% of my seeds. I've been pouring over my Botanical Interest catalog ( boy, it came early) and then Bakers Creek as well as TomatoFest web sites. I'm glad I got myself settled down enough to look through my leftover seeds from last season ( lots left) and did a good evaluatiom of what I wanted to use again and what not. I realize I didn't need to order quite as much as I thought.
So, my drumroll on what my orders are as follows:
Botanical Interest order:
1. Costata Romanesca squash (zucchini variety)
2. Red Warty Thing pumpkin
3. Italian Genovese Basil
4. Scarlet Nantes carrots

Baker Creek Order:
1. Crookneck Yellow Squash ( I grew up on this)
2. Rapini- my numero uno favorite vegetable with the exception of Butternut Squash
3. And my new vegetable addition to tinker and try: Ding Tung variety of Eggplant. Probably wishful thinking but I'm going to give it a whirl.

Tomato Fest Order:
Black Cherry
Bloody Butcher
Stupice
Shenghuang Cherry

I have a variety of seeds left over from last year that I do not wish to go to waste. Butternut, Arugula ( grew like crazy), Spinach, mixed lettuce varieties, radish, small amount of carrots, Delicata. I'm going to try and finish those out in my garden and donate some if anybody needs any. PM me if you need some seeds.

I have my starter seed mix, my containers, plan on adding indoor grow lights to expand my good sun/light to 12 hours per day minimum, going to augment my garden soil and rotate spots where I will plant things.

I can't thank CookinThyme enough for all the time she has spent coaching mentoring me and my daughter on tomatoes. I have learned so much. We are going to make some changes in regards to tomatoes for SURE, including adding 24 inch by 24 inch wood frames to set on top of our raised beds in order to allow for root growth for the tomatoes. We are also going to augment the soil
( missed that window of opportunity last week. Just ran out of time) in the spring with sheep and peat AND, most important, we/I are going to start doing some serious review on this forum for extending the gardening season plant covers. That project is now on the very front burner.

I know the Christmas holiday hasn't even come/gone yet but I am already looking forward to late January/February to get the garden ball rolling!
Woo hoo!

You crack me up! Your eargerness to get started is amusing (and a bit infectious)! Buying seeds early for next season makes sense as there was a shortage last year. I suspect the home gardening revival will continue for awhile, so there may be some seed shortages this year too.

You're welcome regarding the tomato "class". I'm glad it was helpful for you and your daughter. As you learned, there are a few key factors to being able to grow tomatoes in this environment without a greenhouse. The most important one is choosing the right varieties.

The 4 that you selected are good ones. I have sucessfully grown all 4 in my outdoor beds up here.

I hope you find some good season extending set-ups that work for you. There are many methods. It's certainly not too early to start planning for that.

Gardening is starting to occupy my mind these days. I have been planning out my garden and am cleaning pots. Also thinking about new things I may try this year. I have a couple of question for folks...

1) Using grow bags, I have never used these but am wondering if I should try them. I usually wash and sterilize my pots every year. Can you do this with grow bags? I would like to know what other folks think of these and how they clean them.

2) Winter sowing, I have never tried it before but am curious about it. Here are a couple links to what it is. Have any of you tried this? Many of the resources I looked at on this topic are based in more mild climates. So I question how useful it would be up here. However, I think this could be very good for sowing native wild flowers since many of them need cold stratification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=Nh6IDg7Dn7k
https://joegardener.com/podcast/130-winter-sowing/

I've used two types of grow bags.

I use "tater bags" with good sucess. They are made out of something similar to heavy duty plastic tarps. They are easy to clean. I wash with soap & water then do a final wipe down with vinegar. They don't last as long as pots, but are much, much cheaper than pots of equivalent volume. Mine are ~6-7 yrs old and I might get one more season out of them. Critters can chew through them however which is an issue for me.

The black nonwoven fabric (almost like a thick/dense felt) type of grow bags were a complete bust for me. They dried out so quickly I had to water twice a day and sometimes 3x/day if it was windy (much worse than teracotta pots). They were "just okay" in the greenhouse where the humidity was much higher and protected from the wind. I do not recommend them for outdoor use.

But there are many types of grow bags using various other types of fabric. Some may work well.

I watched the video on winter sowing. Looks interesting! Let us know how that works out for you. Sure could save on seed starting space indoors.

Thanks for the info on growing bags CookNThyme. I may try a couple of the woven plastic types of bags.

I have my pots all washed and a preliminary garden plan put together. My seed order arrived this week. Still need to clean all the non-garden junk off my indoor starting rack.

I am trying a new seed starting mix this year. My go-to commercial mix has been Ferti-lome Seed and Cutting mix, works great. But I found I could order the Black Gold Seedling mix through Ace Hardware and have it delivered to the store for free, saves a trip to town! If you buy the 1.5 ft3 bag it ends up being about 1/3 the price of Ferti-lome with very similar ingredients. We will see how well it works.
https://www.acehardware.com/departments ... rs/7264898

I was thumbing through my journal from last year to remind me of what new things I tried. It was my first year to try interplanting with garlic. I interplanted parsnips in part of the garlic bed and beets in the rest. Worked quite well. The beets did a good job of shading the soil but the area did get a bit crowded before I harvested the garlic. Parsnips worked great since they are slower growing. Will definitely do it again this year with a few other crops.

Added some 8" homemade Olla pots for use around my tomatoes, previously I tested 6" pots. Both worked great at keeping even moisture deep around the roots. The 8"pots worked better than the 6" since they are a bit deeper, but both worked well, just needed to fill the smaller ones more often. Still needed to surface water them but not as often.

New to the garden was an 275 gallon IBC tote. Ended up buying two so we could use one in the pickup to purchase water. One previously had some type of protein mix in it which washed out easily. The other had canola oil, never could get it all out. Won't make that mistake again.

My wife started a YouTube channel as last year she was not able to do the free gardening classes and not letting Covid slow her down she is taking everything virtual.

Our Internet has her frustrated many videos standing on the sidelines she actually said dealing with our Internet is harder than gardening up here.

So if you want to watch it is best to subscribe to the channel and click on the "Bell" icon so you know when she adds new content.

She is looking into the library in Bailey to see if on days she does not work if heading there she can download many videos in a fraction of the time it takes at home.

My job is home-based so she will not do anything during the day here as I need the Internet but we think Century Link does something around 1 to 2 am as we lose connection and things do not startup where they left off.

She is really committed to this and calls it her "grow as I grow" channel. Peppers will be started Mid-February and she is doing her best to get information leading up to that posted.

So follow along if you want she has a passion for gardening this is growing season 28 for her here in the mountains. Please ask her questions she loves to help people and if she does not know the answer she belongs to a Master Gardening group that meets weekly and can ask there.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTsH4K ... QXLn7kGLBg

I'm getting all revved to start my tomato seeds, amongst maybe another item or two. I went to buy some starter trays this last week but ACE did not have any. I DO have some of the small cardboard type ones so unless somebody screams NO, don't use those, I will start with those.
I also bought 5 20 gallon trash containers for the "final home" for the tomato plants. Actually took some looking to find round ones but I did. Using these buckets end up giving me more raised bed space for other plants.
I have reread through last year's threads about early planting, hoop houses, etc. My husband is more than willing to build some hoop house options. I tried finding a good photo or two that I believe Conifer 4 has posted in the past but couldn't seem to find them. If somebody could send me the link, or repost, that would be helpful. I know I saw the little brackets that could be installed/added to the raised bed wall. That's easy enough.What hubby is thinking is that the actual hoop loop is made out of underground watering hose. Is that correct? Also, once everything is well established and there is virtually no chance of a freeze, I assume we can remove the hoop house loops and then possibly put them back up in the fall to extend the late part of the growing season OR do you folks leave them up all summer? I would rather not do that but will keep them up, if advised.

I am going to purchase some Agribond and then keep in mind that a layer of plastic would possibly go over that on a night when there might be moisture that lands on plant leaves and might freeze.

Anyway, seeds are going in the little pods on Sunday or Monday. Next big project is buying bags of sheep and peat and grading the soil, when weather permits.

My big venture is trying to grow some eggplant this year, which I know many don't have luck with, as I recall. Snowman, I think, posted some pics of eggplant so I will remain hopeful the will work out down the road.
Thanks all.

We do grow eggplants but the wife will not start the tomatoes until mid to late March eggplant first of April. She has peppers and rosemary going on now she said when the peppers come out of the cells she will start a few more herbs before the tomatoes.

Thanks, Snowman. I'm toying with doing herbs this year as well. Trying not to overload myself. Appreciate it.

Here is the post from last year where I described what I did.

FanTASTIC and thanks so much. Not losing it this time. Printing this . This was the pic I was thinking of. Love the set up being flexible in terms of where it can be moved.

Last spring my French tarragon did not come back, it wintered over for the previous 2-3 years just fine. I read somewhere that French tarragon needs to be replaced after 3 or so years, so perhaps this is why mine died. You can't buy seeds for French tarragon, at least that I have found, and last year I couldn't find any plants. Haven't found any this year yet either.

You can propagate it from cuttings. So I am wondering if anyone has a healthy French tarragon plant that needs a bit of a haircut and would be willing to give or sell some cuttings?