Spring 2009
This is our third Spring to try a garden, and so far things are going better than ever. We're committed to growing a totally organic garden from seeds this year, and got most of our seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They sell heirloom varieties of vegetable and flower seeds, meaning that they haven't been hybridized like the varieties you find in most gardening centers, and we'll be able to save the seeds from the plants we grow and plant them again next year.
In the ground so far we have garlic, which is doing incredibly well and has been super easy to grow, at least up until now. We planted the garlic bulbs in October, and they will be ready to harvest in June.
Our lettuce has really taken off also. We planted two different varieties so far: black seeded simpson and ruby red. We're going to try harder this year to remember to do successive plantings, meaning we'll plant new seed every three weeks or so in order to have lettuce that will last us several months.
We've also planted several varieties of potatoes (fingerling, new, and purple), three sets of onions, carrots, beets, and broccoli and cabbage seedings. Now that the frost date is almost upon us, it will be time to put our tomato (Porter and Improved Porter), pepper, and eggplant seedlings in the ground, and direct seed our warm weather veggies like squash and melons.
Some of our seed packets:
We're also growing two different annual "fruits"--Huckleberries and Ground Cherries. When sweetened, huckleberries taste a lot like blueberries, and are good for baking into pies and cobblers. They are much hardier than blueberries here in the south. Ground cherries have a citrus flavor and can be used for baking and also eaten raw. They have a papery outer shell kind of like a tomatillo. We're also growing Crane Melons and a neat variety of watermelon called "moon and stars."
We are also growing several flower varieties from seed this year, including Chinese Lanterns (neat because they look like paper lanterns and can be dried), Purple Coneflowers, Sunflowers, Marigolds, Johnny Jump Ups, Delphiniums, and Four o'Clocks.
We got a great deal ($7 each) on these seed starter kits from Home Depot. They come with little peat pellets that expand when you add water, so it makes it super easy to get all of the seeds started.
Here are the seeds just after they were started:
And here they are on day 7 (these are cabbage seeds):
