New Seeds for 2011

I order my seeds a month ago, but I'm running a bit late this year and only just planted them last week. This evening I checked the soil in the garden and, even after a snow on Monday, the temperature registered nearly 60F. So it would appear that spring is nearly upon us, hinting at the harvest to come.

This evening was actually my first harvest of the year, though I must admit I cheated. I pulled this cup or so of lettuce from the cold frame:



Yes, the lettuce survived throughout the entire winter in the cold frame. Through the snow and ice and 0F temperatures. Some minor burning from the frost (and heat, as the temperature has warmed), but the cold frame continues to be one of the best investments we've made into this garden.

Speaking of investment, I bought quite a lot of seeds this year, due in part to all the expired seed packets in my stash. I was unable to keep to my $50 minimum, but I didn't go too far over.

Here's this year's haul:

From Pinetree Garden Seeds
Arugula (Roquette)
Beet, "Detroit Red"
Cauliflower, "Amazing"
Cucumber, "Miniature White"
Melon, "True Charenais"
Parsley, "Prezzmelo Gigante d'Italia"
Pumpkin, "Musquee de Provence"
Rutabaga, "Wilhelmsburger"
Spinach, "Bloomsdale Long Standing"
Summer Squash, "Striata d'Italia"
Sweet Pepper, "California Wonder"
Swiss Chard, "Fordhook"

From Seed Savers Exchange
Foxglove, "Giant Spotted"
Leek, "Giant Musselburgh"
Hot Pepper, "Fish"

From Territorial Seed Company
Basil, "Aroma"
Broccoli, "Purple Peacock" (actually a sprouting broccoli/kale cross)
Hot Pepper, "Mulato Isleno"
Lettuce, "Jericho"
Shell Peas, "Canoe"

As usual, I stuck with my favorite mail order seed companies, Territorial and Pinetree. A couple of years ago, I tried some seeds from John Scheeper's, which are beautifully packaged and of good quality, but much like Burpee their prices tend to run a bit high for my taste. I looked into a few other companies and finally decided to try some seeds from Seed Savers Exchange, who do much to support plant diversity, a cause that interests me a great deal. Not only that, they're currently selling the "Fish" variety of hot pepper I've been itching to get my hands on for a few years now.

I believe the "Aroma" basil is an F1 hybrid, but otherwise I stuck with open-pollinated varieties, from which I can collect seed and grow more plants that will remain true to type.

The melons and pumpkins are not something I'll be able to grow in my boxes, but I believe they'll work out nicely in the border among the flowers and herbs. Another of my goals this year was to try interesting/exotic varieties I've not yet tried, along with certain plants that I've yet to grow, such as leeks and rutabaga. Additionally, I looked for multi-purpose plants (like the rutabaga or the "Purple Peacock" sprouting broccoli) and plants with long production seasons (such as the heat-tolerant "Jericho" lettuce or Swiss chard).

The soil outside appears to be warm enough that I can start the peas this weekend. With the right planning, I should be able to harvest from my vegetable garden in another month or so. Without the cold frame, of course.

What will you be growing this year?

New Seeds for 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyknit/ / CC BY 2.0

It’s February and just about time to start seeds for spring crops. I’ve already purchased my seeds for 2010, fewer than last year, since I’ve been thrifty and managed to save quite a few packets. But I am trying out three new tomato varieties and testing a couple of varieties of spinach. As with last year, I am focusing primarily on open pollinated varieties in order to achieve my long-term goal of self-sufficiency.

Here’s what I got this year:

From Pinetree Garden Seeds
Parsnip, "Harris Model"
Radish, "French Breakfast" (heirloom)
Spinach, "Giant Noble" (heirloom)
Spinach, "Viroflay" (French heirloom)
Swiss Chard, "Bright Lights"
Tomato, "Country Taste" (F1 hybrid)

From Territorial Seed Company
Fennel, "Perfection"
Rhubarb, "Victoria"
Tomato, "Chocolate Cherry" (cherry tomato)
Tomato, "Cuore Di Blue" (oxheart sauce tomato)
Tomato, "Japanese Trifele Black" (Russian heirloom)

Territorial is currently throwing in a packet of "Nantes" carrots for you to plant and donate to a food bank or soup kitchen, which is a neat idea. Hopefully I’ll get a decent return this year and have enough to give away. I highly recommend ordering through Territorial. Their seeds are high quality but not too expensive, and they sell a lot of heirlooms and open-pollinated seeds, in addition to organically grown seeds that can sometimes be hard to find elsewhere.

If you’re looking to spend less money for something unique, Pinetree is another great company. They sell smaller packets of seeds than most companies, about all you need for most kitchen gardens, and they specialize in heirlooms and ethnic vegetables and herbs. I always have a good experience when I order from them and spend about half as much.

Before I begin seed-starting, I need to assess my equipment and see if anything needs to be replaced. I also desperately need to get my gardening area in the basement in order and buy a proper bench or table to store my collection of odds & ends. I’m pretty methodical about seed-starting in that I try not to plant more than I can use. This happened a couple years ago; I planted 2-3 times more tomatoes than I actually needed and was never able to find homes for several plants. What I do now is figure out how many plants properly space will fit in each square plot and throw in a few more in case some seedlings don’t make it.

I’d be curious what methods any of my wayward readers use to start seeds. Do you reuse containers or make your own? Or do you, like me, have better luck with seed-starting systems (like the ones Gardener’s sells)? Cowpots, perhaps? What other methods have you tried?

Seed-Starting Begins

I've been wanting to write a new post for over 2 weeks now, but alas, I was waiting for all my seeds to arrive before blogging and one company was running a bit slower than usual it seems. I finally got all my seeds in last Friday and then spent the weekend out of town to celebrate my nephew's first birthday.

This year I'm trying to improve on my planning and get as much out of the garden for as long as I can. I'm also maintaining my crop rotation design (based roughly on suggestions in Rodale's Illustrated Encylopedia of Organic Gardening). Already I've got lots of plants sprouting, some of which will be ready to plant once the soil dries.

Here are the varieties I ordered this year:

Territorial Seed Company
Fava Bean, "Broad Windsor"
Potato, "Caribé" (Organic)
Dwarf Pac Choi, "Ching-Chiang"
Shelling Peads, "Dakota"
Buttercup Squash, "Discus Bush"
Romaine/Cos Lettuce, "Flashy Trout's Back" (Organic)
Kale, "Improved Dwarf Siberian"
Bush Beans, "Jade"
Crisphead Lettuce, "Reine Des Glaces" (Organic)
Broccoli Raab, "Sorrento"
Sugar Snap Peas, "Sugar Sprint"
Romaine/Cos Lettuce, "Winter Density"

John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds
Shelling Beans, "Black Turtle"
Romanesco Broccoli, "Shannon"
Collard Greens, "Morris Heading"
Tomatoes, "Enchantment" (F1 Hybrid)
Cilantro, "Caribe"

Pinetree Garden Seeds
Bronze Fennel
Nasturtium, "King Theodore"
Flat Leaf Parsley
Dill, "Dukat Strain"
Basil, "Italian Large Leaf"
Broccoli, "Waltham 29"
Broccoli, "Nutri-Bud"
Cabbage, "Early Jersey Wakefield"
Cabbage, "Danish Ballhead"
Cauliflower, "Early Snowball"
Yellow Wax Bush Beans, "Gold Crop"
Summer Squash, "Ronde De Nice"
Tomatoes, "Black Krim"

That's a lot more than last year. One of my big shifts in strategy was to focus attention primarily on open-pollinated strains in order to eventually achieve a level of self-sufficiency. I've also invested in early and late season brassica varieties, so I will ideally be able to harvest in late spring and autumn. I'll see how this works out as the season progresses.

Spring 2008 Update

Has already been a month since my return to the states? It feels like hardly any time has passed, but I have kept busy, so time has not been completely wasted. I decided I would take the time to catalog all the goings-on in the last month.

The Vegetable Garden and Backyard

When we got back from Europe, I found all my seeds had finished sprouting and were taking over the basement. There was still a light frost that week, so planting them wasn't feasible. I transplanted as much as I could into every pot I owned, but it wasn't enough. I didn't even have enough window ledges to set them on. It was crazy.

After week or so, it warmed up, and I planted carrot seeds, which are doing quite well and will hopefully produce some carrots by the end of the summer. I planned ahead this year, in a very detailed fashion, and purchased a few pounds of sand to break up the soil some. They'll be sharing the space with the onions, which are supposedly good companions and require roughly the same conditions. I also planted some spinach and a mix of lettuce in another plot.

At this point, nearly all the spaces have been filled in, all seeds planted, including the beans, squash, and nasturtium. It's nice to have the satisfaction of most everything accounted for. There are just a plants that need to bulk up before planting.

The other major project for the backyard will be taking place this weekend. Just yesterday I got five 'Carolin' fall-bearing raspberry plants, which are currently soaking out back. We just need posts which with to build the trellis. I'm really excited about this. One of my goals with my garden has been to provide as much as my own food as possible. While we're quite a ways from self-sufficient urban homesteading, finding fruit to work with our space & light requirements is an important step.

It'll be a while until the garden is producing anything of note, though I have been able to add some fresh greens to salads and picked plenty of herbs for dinner and tea.

The South Garden

We never got around to completing our cold frame over the winter. Though we have glass windows to serve as the topper, there's still the matter of figuring out the design and dimensions, how much and what kind of wood we'll need, etc.

But I have been able to plant some chives, and I just planted another creeping thyme that I grew from seed. My hyssop is thriving, at least 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. Only two of the 4-5 hollyhock I planted have returned, and while they're growing pretty tall, there an infestation of boll weevils I'll have to deal with soon. I just hope they bloom.

The Front Garden

Last year I did some major cleanup on the strip of irises, and this year it really paid off! Most of the irises are in bloom or about to. The peony suffered from last year's last frost, but as this year is turning out to be fairly "normal" (for the Midwest), I have buds and am waiting expectantly. Also, the rose is actually showing a few buds, which means my intensive pruning last year did some good. This strip of plants was fairly neglected when we bought the house, so it's niceto know that just a teensy bit of attention did some good.

As for the other plot in the front that I've been working on the last year and a half now, all the tulips I planted last fall came up and looked gorgeous. All but the 'Negrita' now have faded, but they put on a lovely show of violet and lavender. The tulips planted in '06, however, fared less well, no doubt due to the squirrels that infest our block. Only one 'Cum Laude' showed up, along with three each of the 'Blueberry Ripple' and 'Queen of Night.'

I'm still brainstorming and adding plants where needed. I rethought the scheme beside the front steps and am planning on setting a viburnum or hydrangea in that spot and placing the foxgloves more upfront. The only difficulty is that it's a tight spot, only about 3 feet wide and 6 feet tall to the window.

I wish I had some photos to go along with my text, but I broke my new camera in Berlin and am waiting on a repair, and a friend swiped the batteries to my old digital camera. So words will have to suffice for now.

Preparing for Spring

It's been over a month since my last entry. I guess there just hasn't been much gardening going on. There are potted herbs to water, catalogs to look through, nothing to start planting yet.

Right now is the time to start seeds for spring, but as I will be out of the country during early planting season, I don't plan on starting anything for another week or two. I'll be starting beets, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes indoors, and before I leave for Paris, I'm hoping it will be warm enough to plant potatoes, spinach, and mesclun outside. Last year, I bought a two tier light garden from Gardener's and have been using the APS systems they sell. It works pretty efficiently, and I'm thinking this year of purchasing a couple more systems.

After our vacation, in mid-April, I'll be planting carrots, onions, scallions, and shallots outdoors. The seeds I start indoors will be transplanted after frost, which hits around that point here in Kansas City.

So mostly I'm looking forward to what's coming, not what's currently here.

What are your current garden tasks at the moment? What are you most looking forward to this spring? What vegetables and herbs will you be planting this year?

The Coming Year

It's almost time to order seeds again. Last year I waited too long to start seeds and didn't time plantings as well as I should have, but this year arrives with knowledge from lessons learned last year and some new ideas.

Carol at May Dreams Garden has written a couple of blogs on the subject of ordering seeds from catalogs that I found insightful and interesting:
How to Read Seed Catalogs Without Going Mad
Understanding Seed Catalogs

I see of few of the same catalogs in my stack in those photos. Pinetree is a wonderful company. I find their catalogs a bit odd to navigate, but their prices are amazing and they have some really unique ethnic varieties and heirlooms.

Since this is the time of year for setting goals, one of the major goals in my vegetable garden is to produce higher yields and a more regular supply of fruits and vegetables throughout the growing season. In the front garden, I would like to add more perennials and find some interesting (yet still cottage-y and not too exotic) sun/shade annuals to fill the dead spaces. The south garden needs to be filled out as well, and I've already got a few herbs that can be transplanted once the frost fades in April.
Other goals include:
The planting of blackberry or raspberry bushes (since we don't have the space and light conditions for fruit trees);
The building of a coldframe from old windows and wood;
The building of our grotto from salvaged cement, stone, and glass;
Laying stone along the border of irises on the northside.

Lots to do. I can't wait!