Starting from Seed

seeds from baker creek

I know it's still February and all, but I think the nice string of 50-60 degree days we had is making me dread our impending winter storm this weekend even more. I like to read a little about the weather even though I don't understand much of the in depth stuff. But from what I can tell, I guess the question in our area is whether we will get sleet or snow, and if we do happen to get all snow we could potentially have another foot of snow on the ground. Yikes! On the plus side, we are growing our own starters this year which means I get to start growing things in February...so it almost feels like Spring! Yesterday our seeds came in the mail so we got started planting. Now we have one hundred and forty four (yes, you read that right) seeds planted and I am hoping most if not all of them germinate. This is actually more plants than we need, but we figured we had the dirt, the seeds, and the space, so why not? Hopefully I can share some starter plants with family and friends, and if we still have extra I will be able to pick the healthiest looking plants to go in the garden! For now they will grow in the seed flats, and once they get their first true leaves, in three or four weeks, we will transplant them to small 3 inch " jiffy pots" so they can grow their roots larger. Once we do that I will have to find a new place for them because they will take up quite a bit more room!

What We Are Planting - Part 2

Click here for Part One!

My birthday was in early February and my mom mentioned she was sending me a book as a present. Not only did I get a book (about gardening!) but I also got a subscription to a quarterly gardening magazine and a packet of seeds as well. The book was written by Jere & Emilee Gettle and is called The Heirloom Life Gardener. They own Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which is actually located here in Missouri. He gives some history of heirlooms and talks about how when he was about 13 years old he noticed that a lot of once popular heirloom varieties started disappearing from the seed catalogs he loved to look through, so he did what any responsible 13 year old would do and started saving seeds! A lot of those seeds they still sell today. Reading his book gave me a bit of an "ah-ha" moment: why buy regular seeds from a big box store when they offer over a thousand of amazing varieties for the same price? Did you know there are red, yellow, orange, purple, green and striped tomatoes? Or orange fleshed watermelon and spicy red carrots? There are SO many varieties that we've lost touch with by shopping at grocery stores, and we unfortunately end up with bland, lower quality food. No wonder so many people aren't vegetable fans.

fun read, great resource and beautiful photography

So this year we bought seeds from Baker Creek and I am anxiously awaiting
their arrival in the mail. I wanted to buy starters for our tomatoes and peppers again because if anything produces well I want it to be those, and I wasn't sure how well growing my own would go as they require some extra effort and attention. But after seeing all their lovely varieties I decided

What We Are Planting - Part 1

I mentioned earlier that my mom always had a garden when I was a kid. I remember eating something akin to salad (I can't remember what we called it) in the summer when her garden was in full swing. It was essentially a giant bowl of veggies, minus lettuce, that had salad dressing on top. I thought, and still do, that it tasted so much better coming out of the garden than from the store. We are planting quite a bit this year, a lot more than last year, but if you think my garden is large you should check out my parents set up. I will have to get a photo of how big their garden is (they own about 5 acres so they have some extra room, lucky them!), but for now here is some of what they harvest in the summer:

eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers, onion,
cabbage, lettuce, potatoes and of course tomatoes!

Can you see where I get my love of gardening? Like I mentioned earlier we are adding onto our garden this year. Our tomatoes went crazy last year, I did not at all expect them to get that large. They vined so much that they

Waiting for Spring

Anyone who knows me well (or who endures my complaining on Facebook) likely knows my feelings about winter. I love to spend time outside. Camping, hanging out on our deck, swimming...whatever. Winter makes those things next to impossible, so by the time Spring rolls around I am beyond ready for warmer weather. Another reason I look forward to warmer weather is, no surprise, my garden.

Last year we bought the house we now live in, and one of the biggest reasons we decided it was the one was the yard. I remember walking up to the glass doors that look out over the deck and immediately falling in love with the huge trees, all the space and the fact that it backed up to a wooded area. After years of living in duplexes with tiny, shared patches of grass Nathan and I both agreed that we wanted a lot of outside space. We bought our house in February and in April we started building our raised beds. And by the end of May we had a nice little garden going!

 

  we (aka Nathan) built 4 raised
beds from cedar fence posts

our garden at the end of May

Since I post quite a bit on Facebook I have a pretty good timeline for anyone who is curious. Of course it's neat to watch your garden grow, but the best part is