Seeds Have Been Planted: Garden 2014

A few days ago we had a snow storm.  I had the terrible task of walking to the dentist in the storm, what a exercise for my thighs!  Surprisingly enough even though it’s snowy outside, a Spring garden is starting to come up inside.   Garden planning always happens as soon as the new year starts.  It’s cold out, you’re wearing your winter coat,  cats are huddled by the heater (with me asking them to all lay on my lap at once to keep me warm) but you have to think about broccoli, peas, carrots and more.  It’s a bit weird.

The process starts out with Matthew and I sitting down and discussing the past garden year. What did we really like growing? What didn’t do that great?   What do we want to grow that we haven’t?   This always ends up in at least one small argument, usually with me declaring my love for pumpkins and corn and Matthew saying he doesn’t think they’re worth the space.  Then I huff and puff.   We settled on pumpkins (of course) but this year we’re not growing corn.   Some years it grows great, some years it’s lack luster, it’s just not worth the box space for a few months if we’re unsure of the outcome.   So in it’s place we’re trying a few new plants, ones that I’m pretty excited about (really excited).  

Here’s the tentative growing list:

Spinach: New Zealand -this will grow through Summer
Kale: Trying a new kind that we will harvest the entire plant at once, instead of leaves here or there
Onions
Carrots: These are pretty much grown throughout the entire year
Lettuce: Heat tolerant to last into Summer
Radishes
Joi Choi: Trying new this year
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Sugar Snap Peas

  
Bell Peppers
Watermelons
Cherry Tomatoes
Roma Tomatoes
Brandywine Beef Tomatoes: New variety, supposedly are huge
Pie Pumpkins: We grow these in the Summer and Fall
Yard Long Green Beans: We grew the red variety before and they grew great but we didn’t like the nutty test.  I bought the green ones at the Supermarket to taste test them and we love them, so hoping these heat resistant beans are successful.
Soy Beans: We usually do 2 batches of these back to back
Jalapeno Peppers: New to the garden, pretty excited for these.
Cantaloupe: New to the garden, thought it would be a good switch on the usual only watermelons we grow.
Cucumbers: For pickles
Tomatillos: New to the garden, probably most excited to try to grow these.
Yellow Eye Beans: New to the garden, baked beans.
Midnight Black Beans: New to the garden,  will be a learning experience with drying beans.

Here is the link if you want to follow the garden calendar. I update this when we plant seeds and transplant the seedlings.  Every year it stays approximately the same, so if you are in a relatively similar climate feel free to use this calendar to assist your planting schedule.

 All of our seeds come from Johnny Seeds, with a few occasional special packs sent from friends in far away locations or a few seed packs from Burpee if we need something right away and can’t wait for it to ship.  I would highly recommend Johnny Seeds  if you can order online, we’ve always had a good experience with them and their seeds.

Like I mentioned up above we are trying a few new vegetables this year but I am extremely excited for the tomatillos because I’m crazy about salsa verde.  Also I’m interested to see how the dry beans go and if 1) they will work 2) how many we have to plant to make it worth while.   None the less, I’m excited to try something new and if it actually does work I’ll be smiling for weeks because I love me some black beans.

Most of the seeds we planted have started to come up. So far the broccoli, cauliflower, kale and onion seeds have been planted.

Give them a few days to come up, sometimes they take longer so don’t panic.  Once they come up, we give them a few days and then turn on a box fan that stays on all during the day.  The grow lights and fan are set up to a timer so they turn on automatically in the morning and off at night.    Why a fan?  It acts like the wind.  You want your plants even from the beginning to grow strong, so the fan will prepare them to build strength for the wind outside.   This will help the whole transplanting to the real world process much easier on your seedlings.

So lets garden talk.
Have you started planning for your garden yet?
Have you started planting seeds?
What are you growing, or what do you plan on growing? Anything super exciting?

 Have a good weekend!