We didn’t plant these (thanks to the birds or squirrels!) - but we are certainly enjoying them!

All of a sudden I am incredibly busy - blogging much more frequently (I hope you are enjoying the trip through my seed collection, and the republishing of Off the Vine!), weekly office hours (live Zoom) for the Growing Epic Tomatoes course with Joe Lamp’l, answering a lot of emails, starting seeds, mowing the lawn, cleaning up the garden, writing some articles, and preparing for some Zoom garden workshops. We are also finding time to hike in Pisgah or DuPont 3 times a week with our dogs.

I’ve gotten an idea of what will be in my garden, based on germination results. Most will be in straw bales, some in grow bags.

Eggplants - Mardi Gras, Skinny Twilight, Twilight Lightning, Midnight Lightning, Green Ghost

Peppers - Pinata, White Gold, Royal Purple, Carolina Amethyst, Fire Opal, Chocolate Bell, and hopefully (because they were just seeded - no germination data yet), Shishito and Padron.

Tomatoes - Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Green, Cherokee Chocolate, Lucky Cross, Polish, Captain Lucky, Estler’s Mortgage Lifter, three new family heirlooms sent to me, a new dwarf X indeterminate hybrid - Glory (Dester X Dwarf Gloria’s Treat), some mysteries that are F2 generation from a few of the hybrids I created a few years ago, Coastal Pride, Irma’s Highland Cherry (a new chocolate colored dwarf out of Teensy that we hope is ready for release), and various other experiments and mysteries.

There will be squash and beans and sugar snap peas and some spinach and chard and lettuce, perhaps cucumbers (though they really do struggle with disease here), basils and flowers. The weather looks quite iffy over the coming weeks, with one really deep freeze possible. We hope that it doesn’t bite the buds on the flowering shrubs and trees, something that occurred last spring.

I won’t be selling seedlings this year, but sharing a few extras locally. I won’t be shipping plants any longer. I’ve completed fulfilling seed requests. What comes next is purchasing and prepping the straw bales. My target plant out date is around May 1, depending upon the night time temperatures. I expect to be doing transplanting - separating and bumping up seedlings into separate containers - in early April.

For those events that are open more broadly, I will post links here, and on Instagram (I am @nctomatoman there). I will be on the WPTF (Raleigh, NC) weekend gardener on April 16, as well as Niki Jabbour’s Weekend Gardener radio show out of Nova Scotia, Canada on May 8. You will be able to listen live to each - watch for more news as the dates approach.