what i’m growing

so i always like to put my garden plan in writing.  helps me keep track of things and learn from year to year.  it also tends to overwhelm me with just how much i’m attempting to grow.  below are all the seeds i’m hoping to get in the ground this year.  everything in green is a new seed for 2K10.

garden::aug ’09

key:  BC- baker creek; PT – pinetree seeds; SSE – seed saver’s exchange; B – burpee; G – gurney’s

asparagus:

Mary Washington – BC

root vegetables:

Muscade carrot – BC

Tendersweet carrot – PT

Fingerling potatoes – PT

Yukon Gold potatoes – PT

brassicas:

Romanesco Italia broccoli – BC

Belstar broccoli – PT

alliums:

Carentan leek  – BC

Giant Flag leek – B

Flat of Italy onion – BC

Garlic

lettuces:

Little Gem – BC

Rocky Top Mix – BC

Black Seeded Simpson – BC

Buttercrunch – PT

Tom Thumb – BC

greens:

Bright Lights swiss chard – BC

Space spinach – PT

Bloomsdale Longstanding – BC

tomatoes:

Roma – G

Moneymaker – BC

German Red Strawberry – BC

Amish Paste – SSE

Green Sausage – BC

Green Zebra – BC

Carbon – BC

Sungold – PT

Wes – BC

Black Cherry – BC

Henderson’s Pink Ponderosa – BC

Roman Candle – BC

other nightshades:

Thai Yellow Egg eggplant – BC

peppers:

Patio Red Marconi – BC

Early Jalapeno – annie kay’s

Kaleidoscope Mix – PT

Orange Bell – BC

Red Belgian – BC

Golden Treasure – BC

herbs:

Chives – B

Sage – SSE

Stevia – SSE

French Thyme – PT

Oregano – PT

Cilantro – SSE and PT

English Lavender – SSE

Dill – BC

Genovese Basil – BC

Purple Dark Opal Basil – SSE

Lime Basil – BC and PT

legumes:

Lynx Bush Bean – PT

Bush Romano Green Bush Bean – PT

Pencil Pod Yellow Bush Bean – PT

Contender Bush Bean – BC

Greasy Grits – BC

cucurbits:

Diva cucumber – PT

Horn of Plenty summer squash – PT

Costada Romanesco zucchini – BC

Spaghetti squash – PT

Lemon squash – BC

Early Golden Summer Crookneck squash – BC

White Sugar Lump watermelon – BC

White Bush Scallop – BC

Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin – BC

also:

strawberries

startin to itch

guys, the weather’s in the 60′s, it’s sunny but still cool and i’m just itching to get out in the dirt.  we’ve done it a little – bought a load of compost from an acquaintance of ross’s who has their own composting business.  dark, rich, soil in our boxes makes them look ready to plant – right now.  we’ve been faithfully adding to the compost pile (i’ve actually started my office composting – mainly coffee grounds, banana peels and the like, but every little bit helps!).  just yesterday we covered the pile in a tarp and secured it with bricks – should heat up nicely now.  all the first round seedlings are doing OK – i just thinned out my broccoli yesterday; this is the first year for broccoli and i’m very excited.  i also planted a flat of lettuce – people, grow lettuce!  it’s by far the easiest, most near-instant gratification plant to grow – so do it.

i keep looking at the planting dates on the back of my seed packets – is it time, is it time?  not yet, but it’s getting closer. and this year:  flowers.  i’m going to make up for lost time on flower planting.  in the meantime i have to catch up on

a) how we made our seed shelves this year

b) how all the seedlings are doing so far

c) what we’re growing the year

so behind!!!  what else is new

lettuce and herb harvest from last summer’s garden.

start your garden engines: 2K10

If truth be told, even the insane amounts of gardening posts that I end up writing in a given year don’t fully do justice to the extent of my gardening obsession.  For example, while I logged in a lot of blog hours during my week of Thanksgiving break, I spared you the fact that my sister-in-law and I spent a rainy afternoon poring over seed catalogs and choosing next year’s crop.  I also didn’t mention that back in October, one of my anniversary presents from ross was a tall metal shelf and three flourescent lights – people, this is my kind of romantic – all for my seed shelf/grow lights setup that he knew i wanted.  and finally, i didn’t tell you that we have since set up the shelves, ordered the final selection of seeds (and they’ve come in!), and constructued heating boxes (more on that in a separate post) all in time to plant my first round of seeds this past weekend (2/20).

I’m rounding up some pictures of the whole experience, so those will be coming soon, along with my seed list for this year (+ the addition of some flowers), some handy things we’ve learned along the way, and pictures of my very first sprouts that have already shown up.  yeehaw, let the gardening begin.

on the brain

because it’s so far away…

and because it’s right around the corner…

keeping tabs

as i suspected, i haven’t been that diligent with my garden journal.  and although i intend to remedy that, i thought it couldn’t hurt to jot some notes down in more than one place. 

while it may seem that journaling about what you garden is overkill, i’m already finding that being able to look back to the previous year (or even the previous month) gives a lot of good insight into how to do something again (because it worked well) or to improve upon something (because it didn’t).  so many times just this year, i remember thinking “hmm, need to make a mental note to do that differently”  but because i didn’t write it down, not all of those great aha moments got filed away in my brain.  which means i could potentially have to learn the lesson all over again. 

so bottom line:  write stuff down.  it helps for the next time around.

***

last night, ross and i made a run to Lowe’s and then set out to beat sunset and an evening shower with some outdoor work.  unfortunately i didn’t stop to take any pictures.  will remedy that soon as well.

- checked the seedlings growing in the garage:  nearly all tomatoes have sprouted and are already getting leggy – hopefully they’ll be able to support themselves.  peppers are doing moderately well, but i may plant just a few more to be safe.  almost all the herbs are up and making a go of it.  early basil is doing really well and probably needs to be transplanted soon.  need to plant another round of cilantro and probably some more tomatoes.  onions aren’t doing too hot – good thing i bought onion sets.  small planter of lettuce is growing well.  still need to plant squash, zucchini, beans, pumpkins, watermelon, spinach, swiss chard, and other lettuces.

- while i planted our front window boxes (one cream gerber daisy, two hot pink trailing petunias, and six white/hot pink dianthis), ross constructed the last 4′x8′ box to complete the garden for this year.

- while i planted the window boxes on our garden shed in the back of the yard -the first time we’ve been able to plant back there!  (more dianthis and white trailing petunias), ross filled one of the 4′x4′ boxes with our soil mix (homemade compost, peat moss, vermiculite) so we could plant the onions.

- geared up with headlamps and with the first drops of rain coming down, we planted half the box with red and yellow onion sets, leaving the rest of the space for potatoes, which will go in sometime later this week.  hopefully.

- issues: we don’t have enough compost.  even filling a 4′x4′ box, we used almost a third of the pile.  one 4′x8′ box would use the rest of it and we have 3 more 4′x8′ boxes.  hmm.

pictures to come.

boxed in

we’re slowly making progress on the garden.  ross borrowed a tiller from a coworker and was able to get in and till up all the weeds that had started overtaking the space already.  we were also able to get away with not bagging up any leaves this year by going over them with the lawnmower and turning them into compost.  not bad.

most noticeably, we finally installed all the raised boxes into their permanent spots.  we decided to go with 4′ x 8′ beds this year to save on wood and space.  since we’ve left plenty of space on all four sides, access to the middle will still be really easy.  there’s still one more box to build, but when that goes in it will even up the two rows.

last year’s garden space: 32 square feet

this year’s garden space: 160 square feet.  whoa.

we’ll be borrowing my grandfather’s flatbed trailer this weekend and hopefully by next weekend we can pick up the load of wood chips we need to finish off the pathways.

then all we need is some soil and some warm weather – what’s the deal with these snow flurries?

i’m not gonna lie…

…this blog (whenever i get around to updating it) is probably going to be overtaken by garden posts for the next couple of months.  not that i won’t try to put some other things up here – we’ve been doing some projects around the house I need to post about – and there have also been a few new recipes flying around too – but to be honest, my brain is really going to be in the garden for quite awhile.

i posted the pictures of my tiny onion seedlings trying to make a go of it.  but since then i’ve planted 3 kinds of bell peppers, 8 kinds of tomatoes, a whole bunch of herbs, an eggplant (was a free gift with my order, so why not try it out), leeks, and several types of lettuce. 

then this past saturday, ross and i went down to our local southern states and came away with 2 rosemary seedlings, dill, chives, another type of lettuce, two types of onion sets,  two orange tomato seedlings, and two flats of colorful pansies to plant out front.  over the next couple of weeks, i’ll finish out all the planting: squash, zucchini, beans, watermelon, and a pumpkin.

and finally, ross and i made time to turn all those pieces of lumber into our raised beds and stapled weed blocker to the bottom to keep out unwanted plant life.  we’ll lay them out in the garden in the next week or so – after we give the ground a nice tilling and remove as many of the weeds that are already growing.  the plan is to fill in the extra space with wood chips from the local landfill to create walking paths.

so with perhaps the exception of my father, i may not have any visitors until growing season is over.  if so, i hope you’ll at least rejoin me in the fall.   or for the occasional time i’ll talk about something that doesn’t have to do with dirt.

sprouts

finally some pictures of what’s growing right now.  it’s still a bit early for most of the other veggies, but here’s what i have so far.

the onions are sprouting!

condensation on the “greenhouse” roof.  the plant lights really heat things up.

tiny basil sprouts

i’ve been marking what’s planted where on this sheet of paper – learned the hard way last year.

a small space heater turns on at night to keep the seedlings warm

this is the plant lights set up we’ve been using – not the most elaborate. but i think it’ll be effective.

once more seeds get planted, we’ll use this side too

and just because they’re cute, here are a couple pics of the four legged children.

seed planting month is upon us

while big fluffy flakes of snow fell all afternoon on sunday, ross and i holed up in the garage, with the wood stove cranking and the pups curled up in front of it, some tunes playing, and got to work on our new seed starting arrangement. 

by mid-march, seed starting will really pick up, so we needed to have all the set up down well before then.  our arrangement is really simple right now:  we have a series of plant lights hanging from the rafters so as to give the veggies-to-be a good dose of light (about 12 hours).  we also purchased a space heater to keep the seeds warm at night and help speed germination along.  right now we have four seed trays with 100 cells each.

planted so far are some red onions, leeks, and basil.  i might also add some other herbs this week, just to see if i can get them going early.

finally, i just finished a tentative layout for what plants are going where and how many.  our garden is significantly bigger this year – as in 5x bigger – so i wanted to make sure i was organized.  it sure looks great on paper – the real test will come in may and june when i’m actually planting and tending all those plants.  if i can make it work, i’ll try to post the layout.

still left to do is figure out how in the world we’re going to come up with enough compost, peat moss, and vermiculite (the three ingredients that make up our soil) to fill up four 4′x8′ boxes and two 4′x4′ boxes.   We’ve been composting all year, but two people just don’t generate enough compost for that much space.  Guess we’ll be hitting up some local farms? yum.

pictures of the seedlings soon!

they’re here!

i’m torn.

the weather around here has really been teasing us.  bitterly cold and no precipitation, or unseasonably mild and buckets of rain.  then there are the fluke times when all the weather patterns line up correctly and give us snow.  but usually only enough to get our hopes up before tuckering out.  all of this wishy washy, pansy snow has just made me want to be done with winter all together.  yes, i’ve definitely enjoyed snuggling up under blankets, making a batch of soup for dinner, and that cool icy light that only comes with winter – but my definition of winter also includes a couple of days of snow.  of the real deal, more than a dusting, build a snow ramp and sled down it kind of snow.  and since that hasn’t happened, well, if its all the same to you, i’d rather just skip the season and move on to spring.  when all the growing and planting and green stuff happens.

but now the weather’s toying with my emotions again; threatening more than a dusting – threatening even a snow day maybe – and well – like i said, i’m torn.

i’m torn because today the second half of my garden seeds came in and i’m having to make a decision between loving the snow and wanting to get outside in shorts and flip flops and roll around in the dirt.  it’s quite a conundrum.

so while i try to sort out my little dilemma some more, i’ll share the bounty of my mailbox.