Garden Update - Mid-May

We finally finished planting in the garden today. Whew!

Some of the earliest stuff we put in is getting big and beautiful, but so far, we haven't harvested anything yet with the exception of a few pounds of rhubarb. Our pea and onion plot is looking lovely, but the pea plants, for all their vigor, have yet to set a single flower. It seems to me like we should have had our first peas by now.

Clarke's Beltony Blue Shelling peas and Yellow Rock onions

The Watermelon radishes were also a disappointment. They started to bolt before they ever even began to form a bulb! I pulled a few and found that they were all scraggly and sad looking, so I pulled the lot. We have another succession planting of them already about 2 weeks in, so we'll let those grow and see if they come out right, and if not, I guess the bunnies will have a second feast. At least they get to enjoy them!

The carrots are starting to worry me too. No signs of life from that bed yet. :( I'll be hugely bummed if our carrots don't work out, since they are one of the veggies that we go through tons of year-round.

The potatoes finally seem to have gotten a foothold. The Purple Majesty are clearly the front-runners, with Rose Finn Apple and Yukon Gold well behind, in terms of foliage. Weird, since the Purple Majesty's are a mid-season variety, but whatever - progress is progress - I'll take it.

Seeded/Planted out today -

*Cucumbers - Addis Pickle

*Pumpkins/Squash - Small Sugar, Oregon Sweet Meat

*Corn - Dakota Black (popcorn)

*Beans - Robert's Royalty (bush)

*Sunflowers - Giant Greystripe, Honey Bear

*Peppers - Pimento

*Melons - Minnesota Midget Melons (cantaloupe)

*Ground Cherries - Aunt Molly's

*Flowers/Herbs/Botanicals - Hungarian Blue Breadseed poppies, Resina Calendula, Hyssop, Bachelor Buttons, Bouquet Dill

I had planned on putting in a bed of just cutting flowers, but food plants come first, so they didn't end up fitting in. I think we're going to try to find some room somewhere to shimmy in some borage though, since the bees go absolutely nuts for it. Besides that, I daresay we're about done planting stuff, with the exception of a few succession plantings (cilantro and radishes).

Done with the seeding! Now begins the watering/weeding/cursing-at-hungry-bugs phase of the garden. 

Mother's Day Weekend in the Garden - Sunday

After a good, late wake-up and a lovely Mother's Day breakfast prepared by my youngest kiddo, Bill and I managed to get back out to the garden today to chip away at the nightmare that is reed canary grass, and weed and put in another bed's worth of plants.

What we accomplished today -

*Weeded and re-seeded empty spots in the beet and radish plots
*Thinned out and cleaned up the rhubarb
*Planted out 18 Bodegold chamomile cells (started indoors back in March), one 4" Flora Plena chamomile, one 4" spearmint, and about a half a packet of Resina Calendula seeds.
*Sowed about 1/4 of a packet of Bear Necessities kale in the greens bed, amongst the volunteer Russian Red kale babies from last year.

Ok - writing that down makes it seem like I/we didn't get much done. I tell you though, trying to rid the raised beds of the canary grass roots and rhizomes is a battle without end. If the goats didn't enjoy eating that grass (and it didn't make such nice free hay), I'd hate the stuff altogether.

Regardless of how much I managed to get done -or not- in the garden today, it was a nice way to have spent my special day with some of my most favorite people and critters. And eventually, maybe, I'll get some tea and salad out of the bargain as well. :)

Penny, aka Princess Pickle-butt, sampling some of our pasture.

Mother's Day Weekend in the Garden - Saturday

We had a very productive day in the garden today, planting out a few starts that we got from Spring Creek Nursery, as well as some of our seed stash. Started today -

*Cabbage - Copenhagen Market, Mammoth Red Rock
*Lettuces - Red Leaf (romaine type), Buttercrunch (bibb type)
*Cilantro - Standby (the fist of several sowings)
*Basil - Thai, Genovese, Sweet
*Thyme - Lemon, standard
*Tomatoes - Sungold, Roma, Black Prince
*Peppers - Anaheim, Purple Jalapeno

If I'm not too achy tomorrow from today's exertions, I plan on planting out my German chamomile, hyssop, spearmint, calendula, breadseed poppies, borage and assorted cutting flowers. We have only just passed our average last frost date, but I'm feeling pretty under the gun about getting everything in and started ASAP.

I really need to get the corn, beans and squash in the ground as soon as can be managed as well, but I feel less guilty about putting them off by a few days in favor of crops that are either less heat tolerant (and more cold/cool/generally-crappy-weather friendly) and those that have a longer growing season (90 days and up). I suspect that we will have an Indian Summer this year, but if living and gardening in Western Washington for 40 years has taught me anything, it's that the weather and seasons defy logic and predictability the vast majority of the time.

There isn't much to do except wait and see, and so I will. :)

Playing Catch-up

Birthday season, for the most part, has come and gone, allowing us to focus a slightly larger portion of our time and money on gettin' 'er done around the house and farm. A few developments since I've last posted -

I think she thinks she's invisible.

*Blueberry, a Muscovy hen, has made the executive decision to go bat-crap broody, and sit on a fairly-well hidden clutch of eggs. She's rarely off the nest, but based on the few quick glances that I've had of the clutch, I'd say she's got at least 15 or 20 eggs in there. If you happen to be one of our egg customers, this may help explain why the duck eggs have been fewer and farther between these past few weeks. But...

*We have another half-dozen layers just around the corner! The Khaki Campbell girls are now almost 8 weeks old, and have been integrated into the main flock. They seem to have unanimously chosen Kiki, our black Swedish hen, as their mama. "Keeks" seems mostly indifferent to her new brood, but to her credit, does not seem to mind overly much that they follow her every move. Kiki's fella, Tombo, thought he hit the jackpot when his harem grew by six laydies overnight. Alas, he was too... er... vigorous in his attentions and traumatized the heck out of the Khaki girls. And so, Tommy-boy is living in the ducky bachelor pad chicken tractor for now, where he can see, hear and chat with his gals, but not have direct "encounters" with them. He'll stay there until - a) the Khakis are fully mature, b) he learns how to be a gentleman, or c) we re-home him. We'll play it by ear.

Kiki and her little 'uns.

*Our eleven 8-week old chicks have also transitioned into living with the main flock. So far, so good.

*We've been averaging about 10 chicken eggs, and 1 or 2 duck eggs per day from the laydies.

*I planted a whole bed of carrots this past weekend. Half are Cosmic Purples and half are Red-cored Chantenay. I also started a second plot of Watermelon Radishes.

*The new beehives are doing pretty well. The Langstroth hive started to build a bit of cross-comb, which Billy cleaned up, but other than that, everybody appears to be settling in nicely.

*We're gearing up to make our first batch of soap of the season - Dandelion & Honey, provided that the bees don't begrudge us a little of the sweet stuff. The next batch on deck is Sugar Pumpkin & Spice, with homegrown pumpkin. :)

*We've had some fun and different bird sightings over the past few weeks - male and female Rufous Hummingbirds, California Quail, and a very vocal Raven.

And that's about it, I think. I need to get crackin' in the garden this coming weekend - cilantro, spearmint and kale are on deck fo' sho', with chamomile, thyme, calendula, breadseed poppies and borage to follow soon after.

Today's Take - 4/12/2015

For the record -
Duck eggs - 4
Chicken eggs - 9 (10 if you count the one that was eaten/smashed by the hens)

In the garden -
Weeded the peas/onions/radish bed, and plugged in a few more onions in the empty spots where onions failed to come up. Planted half a bed of Lutz Tall Top Beets. The carrots, kale and rat-tail radishes are hopefully going in sometime this week.

The seeds started under the grow lights are doing well. They're finally starting to all get their first set of true leaves.

Today's Take - 3/29/2015

Just a quickie, since I'm crazy whooped tonight.

For the record:

Duck Eggs - 4
Chicken Eggs - 11 (5 more and we'll be running at full capacity! Yay!)

In the garden:

Planted another 20 Yellow Rock onion sets in the same bed as the first lot, since the first planting have come up a bit spottily.

Bill planted a bed full of strawberries, a mixture of Benton, Quinault and TriStar, I believe. Some of them were already beginning to bloom.

Scatter-sewed a mixture of lettuce seeds over about 6 feet of bed space. The varieties in the mix are - Merveille de Quatre Saisons, Buttercrunch, Red Romaine, Cimmaron and Rouge d'Hiver. I treat them all as cut-and-come-again, so we should have a very interesting, hopefully long-lasting bunch of salad greens this Spring & Summer.

10 Days 'til Spring!

It has been a very strange Winter this year.

Not enough snow has fallen in the mountains to bank up an adequate snowpack to keep the rivers flowing happily come Summer, which theoretically means that a drought is on it's way.

I know that drought is nothing to joke about, but looking at the mud pit that is my bottomland right now... a bit of drought has it's appeal.

At the moment, it's cool but not cold, and wet-but-not-sopping outside - a pretty average day for the second week of March. The thing that keeps throwing a wrench in the works is that it has been still been dipping into the freezing temps overnight.

During the day, I get a wicked case of Spring Fever and want to fiddle in my yard and garden and plant everything in sight. Come nightfall and the steep temperature dip, I find that I'm glad that I didn't.

So far we have only planted out a half bed of peas for fear that the frost will pop back up and clobber them. I have some yellow onion sets that really should have gone in last month, but I'm still apprehensive about putting them out even now, for fear that they will freeze or be gobbled by mice before they have a chance to get themselves established. Oy.

Thankfully, I do have an outlet for my plant-fever in my grow table. We have an unheated back room with a big ol' South-facing sliding glass door that is a near-perfect location for a germination station. This year, I'm really reining myself in by only jump-starting the seeds that truly need the lead time afforded by the seedling heat mats and the grow lights. That means that I only have 4 types of seed started - Ground Cherries, Hyssop, Pimento Peppers and German Chamomile. I have direct-sewn the chamomile in the past with success, the seeds are just so small and light that they make themselves rather hard to distribute evenly, and end up growing in great clumps with large gaps between. This is my attempt at a work around for that little wrinkle.

The seeds were started 4 days ago, and when I checked them this morning, lo and behold, signs of life!

My tea-to-be! 

The Hyssop have also started popping up, and a lone Ground Cherry has sprouted. Nothing from the Pimentos yet.

Our French fry futures :)

Perhaps pushing my luck, I laid my seed potatoes out to sprout today. This year we're growing 3 types of spuds - a short-season variety (Yukon Gold) a mid-season (Purple Majesty) and a late-season variety (Rose Finn Apple fingerlings). If they manage to put on some nice sprouts in the next week or two, I'll next have to chit them and let them cure for a day before biting the bullet and planting the whole lot of them out. 

Pretty please, make up your mind, weather! Farmer Chelle is itching to play in the dirt!

Spring Seeds

Look at what the mailman brought me today!

These are the first of several shipments of seeds that I'm expecting, from no less than four different companies. The trouble with having strong preferences for particular varieties is that it seems that no one seed company carries them all. Add to that that I wanted to grow a few new-to-me varieties recommended by my local Slow Food chapter and you have... a very piecemeal seed shopping experience. ;)

This is my first order from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I'm particularly excited to try growing the Rat's Tail Radish since having tasted them at a few different local foods dinners. They look like a green bean, but taste like a mild radish. Neato! I'm looking forward to using them in a few pickling recipes this Summer.

As for the rest of our chosen varieties, so far we have planned -

*Radishes - Rat's Tail, Purple Plum and Watermelon

*Poppies - Hungarian Blue Breadseed

*Ground Cherries - Aunt Molly's

*Carrots - Atomic Purple, Red Cored Chantenay, Little Fingers

*Sunflowers - Giant Greystripe, Honey Bear

*Peas - He Lan Dou snow peas, Clarke's Beltony Blue-podded shelling peas

*Parsnips - Turga (a short-rooted variety)

*Peppers - Pimento (sweet)

*Pumpkins/Winter Squash - Small Sugar, Oregon Sweet Meat

*Beans - Robert's Royalty Purple Snap (bush-type)

*Corn - Dakota Black Popcorn

*Cucumbers - Addis Pickling

*Greens - Bear Necessities Kale

*Beets - Lutz Tall-Top

*Cilantro - Standby (slow-bolt)

*Chamomile - Bodegold (German-type)

*Calendula - Resina

*Pollinator-friendly and Cutting Flowers - Anise Hyssop, Gloriosa Daisy, Rocket Larkspur, Love in a Mist

We still want/plan/need to lay hands on the following seeds/starts - potatoes, tomatoes, hot peppers, lavender, elderberries, a short-season melon or two, basil, more salad greens, more cutting flowers, Phacelia (for the bees!), maybe wasabi and a few others that I'm probably forgetting.

We intend to really make a real go of our little farmstand this year. Let's hope that the weather and our backs hold up to our ambition!

Garden Update - 6/18/13

Well, things are finally getting going out there!

The radishes are ready to harvest, in fact we had a few in our salad this past weekend. The flavor difference from a packaged salad radish (or for that matter, any grocery store radish) is insane. They are crispy and sweet, and even the greens are good in salad. Hooray for tasty veg that grows in just 3 weeks!

Our lettuces and red kale also are really filling out. It's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago I was fretting pretty hard that we wouldn't get much of anything this year. I'm very glad to have been wrong.

The corn and sunflowers are both about 6 inches high, and still need to be thinned. Same goes for the tomato bed, I need to reduce the plants in there by about half. The zucchini also need spacing out. Somebody went a little nuts and planted like 20 plants. I sure hope the pigs like zucchini!

Several of the purchased tomato plants have started setting fruit, but none are ripe yet. I'm drooling over those Sungolds though - can't wait for them to color up.

Our beets - golden, bulls blood, cylindra and sugar (fodder) - have all grown exponentially in the past week. Which means that I'm going to have to make some goat cheese soon so that we can enjoy a whole lotta beet salad this Summer.

The cantaloupes are still on the fence. They may make it, they may not. I still don't know why they took the transition so badly, but oh well. Maybe next year I'll just wait and direct sow them.

Anyway - overall, things are looking really good! Man, have I missed having a proper garden. Thanks to my boo for busting his booty to build us one this year. xoxo

How Does My Garden Grow? Organic & Slow!

Being under-experienced and a little slow on the draw in terms of getting the garden infrastructure in has pushed back our garden progress a bit this year. Nonetheless - we do indeed have some progress to report!

New in the garden this week -

*Everbearing Raspberries - 2 (The deer always eat these, so I don't know why I bother. They were an impulse buy at the school plant sale.)
*Scarlet Runner Beans - 6

Just popped up/now in bloom -

*Pumpkins, Zukes, Cukes, Carrots & Sweet Corn
*All 4 apple trees have teeny baby fruits on them, as do the pear, the plum and the sour cherry trees. Yay!
*Marion berries are just now blooming.
*Roses are all in bloom.
*Columbines

About to bloom -

*Blackberries
*Hidcote (English) Lavender

Still need to plant -

*Rhubarb - 2
*Sea Holly - 2
*Bald Hip Rose - 1
*Lemon Balm - 1

It remains to be seen if any of those will get into the garden before the houseguests arrive. We have a crap ton of cleaning to focus our energy on first!

New in the Garden - 6/2/13

After a long day spent up in Puyallup at the Mother Earth News Fair learning about farming and gardening, we came home and... farmed and gardened. Here's what we got in the ground today -

Cantaloupes, Minnesota Midget Melons - 14
Borage - 1 seedling, plus 1 pack of seeds
Hungarian Blue Bread Poppies - 1 pack of seeds
Yarrow - 1
Coneflower - 2
Calendula - 1/2 packet of seeds
German Chamomile - 1/2 packet of seeds

Planted last week-

Yukon Chief Corn - 2 beds
Assorted Carrots (Atomic Purple, Nantes Scarlet, Little Fingers, etc,) - 1 bed
Assorted Squash (zucchini, Burgess Buttercup, Yellow Crookneck, Lemon Cucumbers) - 2 beds
Assorted Pumpkins (Small Sugar, Cinderella, Williams Naked Seeded) - 1 bed

Just popped up -

Sunflowers, cylindrical beets & sugar beets.

Newly murdered -

3 radishes, 1 pea plant and one red kale, courtesy of Blue, the pigheaded goat. Grrrr...! : (

Our Garden Grows

Today, between rain showers, I planted:

Tomatillos - 2
Tomatoes - 20 +/- (It was A LOT)
Sweet Basil - 7
Russian Red Kale - 6
Buttercrunch Lettuce - 6
Red (something?) Lettuce - 6

I also noticed that a few of the lettuces and kale that I planted from starts were bouncing back a bit - thank goodness. I feel like the mistake I made was to plant them on too sunny a day, near mid-day, and the poor little buggers just couldn't hang in there until the sun was low enough for me to give them a hearty watering. Hence the replacements/supplements that were shoehorned in today.

I also noticed today that some of my radishes are starting to pop up. Hooray for near-instant gratification!

Yesterday I planted a bed full of sunflowers - half Miriam Edibles and half Giant Greystripe. That makes 4 1/2 beds planted, 11 1/2 left to go. OY.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we'll get the bean teepee in (Scarlet runners and blue lakes), and possibly the cantaloupe as well.

Today's Take & Seeds Started Indoors - 4/27/13

The first three flats of veggies that I started on the seedling heat mats (tomatoes/tomatillos, peas and lettuces/kale) have graduated off of the mats and are now under the grow lights without any supplemental heat.

In their place on the mats I just started one flat each of German Chamomile, Calendula and Minnesota Midget Melons (cantaloupes). The melons are a big experiment. We've never had much luck with the traditionally Southern, sun-loving crops like melons and peppers, but decided to gamble a whole three bucks on this short-season variety. They're supposed to take just 70 days from seed to fruit, and I figure that if folks in Minnesota can get these badboys to grow, I stand a decent enough chance at having at least a few make it.

As for the flowers - those are primarily for tea and soapmaking. I hope that they both make it, but I'm especially excited about the Calendula. Orange is my absolute favorite color for flowers. I challenge you to look out on a patch of verdant, colorful veggies, surrounded by sunny orange flowers and not feel happy. Can't be done. ;)

On a completely separate note, today was the day that we said goodbye to sweet misses Hop & Hope, Chardonnay's two "big girls".

Liberty & Hope, February 2012

Hop & Barley, February 2011

The girls went together, to a wonderful little family in a home on some acreage. They will provide companionship, entertainment, weed eating services and delicious fresh milk, hopefully for many years to come. 

The gals' leaving us means that we have just two more kids who will be moving on before too much longer, leaving us with our new, lean and mean herd - Blue, Chardonnay, one of Chardy's doelings who is not yet named, Sidney, Sophie and Buckley. We were hoping to sell Buckley, but we've had no interest yet. Maybe in the Fall?

This Spring has been a real doozy, full of goat-centric drama, so as much as we'll miss the sweet faces of our babies that have moved on, we are also pretty relieved to have scaled the herd (and the feed costs) back to a manageable number.

As if all that weren't enough excitement for a single day on the farm, today is also the day that we finally picked up our honeybees!

We now have two hives of Italian honeybees in our waaaaay back forty. Upon installing the bees in their hives, Bill discovered that one of the queens (you get one per colony) had died. Not good. 

We were fortunate that the folks who sold us our bees are good, honest people who stand behind the critters they sell, and had no qualms at all about giving us a replacement queen, which Bill picked up this evening and will install in the morning. The reason that the queen died is unclear, but it isn't a super uncommon occurrence, so we're not going to sweat it. 

So - minus two goats, plus 40,000 (give or take) honeybees and plus three flats sewn of future fruits and flowers. That, my friends, is one heck of a productive day in these parts. Time for farmer Chelle to kick back with a well-earned (in my humble opinion) bowl of ice cream and a Netflix. ;)

First (Late) Veggie Starts of 2013

What can I say? The fact that anything got started at all is pretty close to miraculous at this point. ;)

Germinating away on the seedling heat mats -

*One flat of mixed greens - Mervielle d'Quatre Saisons lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, Cimmaron lettuce and Russian Red kale

*One flat of assorted tomatoes/tomatillos - Tomatillos Verde, Black Cherry tomatoes, Roman Speckled Paste, Silvery Fir Tree

*One flat of peas - 12 of Mammoth Melting. 12 of Lincoln Homesteader.

...and that's it, so far. I'll have to start a lot more inside if we don't get a break in the rain soon. Urggg...

Update 4/15/13 - Peas & greens are starting to pop up! We only spotted one lonely little tomatillo sprout so far though,. Hopefully we'll see more sprouts tomorrow, and by this weekend we'll be able to move them off the seedling heat mats and put them under the lights. Yay for homegrown! :)

Seeds for 2013

...or seed candidates, anyway. We'll have to see how many of these badboys make the final cut, since, regrettably, we do not have infinite garden space.

Tomatoes - Paw Paw, Speckled Roman Paste, Silvery Fir Tree, Black Cherry

Tomatillos - Toma Verde

Melons - Minnesota Midget Melon

Flowers - Calendula, Rocket Larkspur, Borage, Hungarian Blue Bread Poppies

Herbs - German Chamomile, Mammoth Dill, Bouquet Dill, Thai Holy Basil, Slow Bolt Cilantro

Carrots - Nantes Scarlet (guess who picked that one!), Royal Chantenay, Atomic Red, Red-Cored Chantenay, Little Fingers

Peas - Mammoth Melting, Lincoln,

Radish - Cherry Belle, French Breakfast

Beets - Cylindra, organic sugar

Cucumbers- Delikatesse, Homemade Pickles, Lemon

Fennel - Sweet Florence

Beans - Golden Wax improved, Kentucky Wonder, Cannellini

Corn - Yukon Chief

Summer Squash - Early White Bush Scallop, Cocozelle (zucchini), Early Prolific Straightneck

Winter Squash/Pumpkins - Small Sugar Pumpkin, Cinderella, Burgess Buttercup, Williams Naked Seeded, Hokkaido Stella Blue

Sunflowers - Giant Greystripe, Miriam Edible

Salad Greens - Arugula (rocket), Cimmaron, Buttercrunch, Merveille de Quatre Saisons, Rouge d'hiver, Red Romaine

Hardy Greens - Russian Red Kale, Chinese Kale, Pak Choi


These are all of the seed packets that I could dig up, yet this seems like not quite enough to be my whole stash. Hmmmm.....

In addition to all of these, it is pretty much guaranteed that I will pick up a few starts from the Farmer's Market, once it's open. I guess I can't control myself. :\

My Germination & Propagation Situation

On behalf of my own little self, and my daughter's elementary school, I have planted/set to root:

*5 Forsythia cuttings (Which incidentally look really gorgeous just sitting there doing their thing in one of my old mason jars.)
*5 Japanese Willow cuttings
*3 Naked Seed Pumpkins
*16 Libby's Pride Tomatoes
*1 Burgess Buttercup Squash (so far - it just popped up today)
*Innumerable Buttercrunch and Cimmaron lettuce starts, a dozen or so Red Russian Kale starts.

My lofty, highly unlikely goal is to be able to grow/root/divide 100 plants for our school plants sale, in addition to starting many of the veggies and herbs that I will eventually plant out for myself, with my deadline being mid-May or thereabouts. Can I do it? Well, as of this morning, I'm about 30+ little starts closer to my goal. :)

The seeds that I started a week ago tomorrow have finally begun popping up! Well, some of them have. About 50% of the tomatoes have sprouted, and a handful of each of the red kale and buttercrunch lettuce. The Cimmaron lettuce and naked-seed pumpkins have yet to do a thing.

I've also been underwhelmed by the progress of my eggs in the incubator. Having lost the incubator's thermometer, I feel like I may have erred too far on the side of caution in keeping the eggs from being overheated. I keep nudging the temp up in tiny increments, lest I go to far and kill the potentially developing embryos. Uhg! I popped an unused kitchen thermometer in the incubator today and am checking it every few hours to see if I can get the eggs up to their magic number of 99.5 degrees. Still not quite there yet. I'm wondering then, if these eggs are still viable? I guess I'll keep candling them and keep my fingers crossed for any signs of progress.

Once the 'maters and lettuces are sprouted and no longer in need of the seedling heat mat, I think that I'll be starting more pumpkins and possibly some beans as well. I'm shooting for a very lofty goal of donating 100 plants to our school plant sale! Only time will tell if I can pull it off.

Spring does seem to be creeping in, as the chorus frogs and woolly bears foretold last week. The temps are slightly up, no hard frosts overnight, but still a fair bit of rain. C'mon sunshine - we need you bad right about now.

Better late than Never

I finally started some seeds, about 2 weeks later than I'd planned. I'm starting some for us, of course, and as is becoming my norm, starting some to donate to our school plant sale as well.

As I only have three seedling heat mats, I was only able to start three flats today, one of lettuces & kale, one of tomatoes and one of "naked seeded" pumpkins. Next week I'll start some beans and squashes, I think.

It's been a little frustrating figuring out what to start now and what to wait on. I started the lettuce & kale now because I can set it out just as soon as it becomes established. The 'maters and pumpkins are supposed to take 3-4 months from sowing to harvest, which would put them at the blooming phase when the May plant sale rolls around, if I manage to keep them alive in the ensuing 12 weeks.

Tomorrow's Agenda 2-2-12

Even as we are still recovering from this Winters big snow and ice storm, my mind has already made the leap to Springtime things. I saw a planning guide for zone 7 gardeners today that said that this month I should be setting out my lettuces and cabbage. WHAT?!? When was I supposed to have started these things if they're supposed to be going out already?

So I'll just roll with the punches and pretend that starting my seeds tomorrow was my plan all along.

As the raised beds have not yet been built, the only place that I can plant my seeds is indoors, on heat mats and under grow lights. This is how I start the majority of my garden plants anyway, but the option of direct-sowing would've been nice. Next year...

As for tomorrow, the plan is-

*Locate and collect as many seedling trays/flats as possible
*Wash the holy bejeebus out of them
*Locate my seedling heat mats
*Sow seeds in trays and flats, as many as I can find heat mats for
*Document the whole shebang, so I remember what the heck is what 3 months from now.

That's about it! I really look forward to getting my hands good and dirty again, and to see those tender little sprouts push their way up through the soil. My fingers are crossed and my hopes are high, as ever, that we'll get our dream garden started this Spring. :)

Seeds for 2012

Things are running a little lean for us this year, with so many high-priority (and high cost) projects pressing down on us, we're trying to minimize costs in other areas as much as we can. This includes our seed purchases for the new (and hopefully VASTLY improved) garden.

We had quite a few leftover seeds from last year, which I know aren't exactly an ideal way to go, but have rarely failed me in the past, and so we pin this Spring's hopes on their continued fertility and vigor. Here is what we have on hand from last year-

*Lettuces - Gourmet Blend, Rouge d'hiver, Red Romaine, Mervielle de Quatre Saisons, Buttercrunch & Cimmaron
*Kale - Russian Red & Chinese
*Arugula
*Pak Choy (Chinese cabbage)
*Peas - Lincoln Homesteader & Mammoth Melting
*Celery - Golden Self Blanching
*Cilantro/Coriander
*Beans - Kentucky Wonder & Golden Wax
*Dill - Mammoth & Bouquet
*Cauliflower - Romanesco
*Basil - Thai Holy
*Radishes - French Breakfast & Cherry Belle
*Carrots - Red-Cored Chantenay & Little Fingers
*Beets - Cylindrical & Sugar
*Zucchini - Lemon & Cocozelle
*Squash - Yellow Striaghtneck & Burgess Buttercup
*Pumpkins - Small Sugar & Cinderella
*Cucumbers - Homemade Pickles
*Sunflowers - Giant Greystripe
*Sweet Corn - Yukon Chief
*Job's Tears

Stuff that my limited means allowed me to purchase to round out our little Eden -
*Carrots - Atomic Red (The girls go bananas for the colorful carrots!)
*Pumpkin - Williams Naked Seeded
*Tomato - Libby's Pride (a sauce tomato)
*Beans - Cannellini Bush Dry Bean
*Squash - Early White Bush Scallop Summer Squash

It sure was hard narrowing it down to just a few choices! I opted to order the "odder" varieties and can hopefully get the more mundane stuff (lemon balm, basil, cherry tomatoes, etc.) as starts at our Farmer's Market when it opens in April.

I really hope that we can make a go of the garden this year. It sure would be nice to actually get to make all of the lovely meals and preserves that I envisioned when ordering these seeds. Fingers firmly crossed that this year we nail it. ;)