Planning & Preparing

This blog marks a couple of firsts for me... It's my first ever attempt at maintaining a blog, with the "higher" purpose of journaling my first ever attempt at growing vegetables all from seed!

I've had a little experience with growing veggies, but always from nursery starts that I bought at a farmer's market or garden center. However, I find my addiction to growing my own food increasing every year, and I now have three times the garden space that I did last year, and of course I want to grow more veggies! Always looking for the most economical route, I decided that this year I would try my hand at starting my veggie garden from seed. So for Christmas my folks took me on a shopping trip to get all of the necessary items for setting up a system for getting my seeds going inside the house. We got an inexpensive 5-shelf unit to set the trays on & some flourescent lights to provide, well... light!

My next step was to begin the process of deciding which plants to grow, in which varieties, and from where to order the seeds. I mapped out my garden space and began planning according to planting times, space needed, days to harvest, etc. Being the lover of "heritage" that I am, I decided I would go with heirloom seeds as much as possible. I ended up ordering from three different companies: Backyard Heirloom Seeds & Herbs in the Tacoma, WA area (http://backyardheirloomseeds.net/default.aspx), Amishland Heirloom Seeds in Lancaster County, PA (http://www.amishlandseeds.com/), and Victory Seed Company from Mollala, OR (http://www.victoryseeds.com/). From Backyard, I ordered their "75 Veggie Full Garden Seed Set (you can check it out on their site); from Amishland, I ordered a bunch of different tomato varieties representing my Mennonite heritage as well as my three years of living in the Black Sea region of Southern Russia; and from Victory, I ordered some herbs to round out what I already have growing in my herb garden.

All in all, here are the general categories of what I will be growing over the course of this year:
Greens - lettuce, cabbage, kale, collards, spinach, swiss chard
Broccoli & Cauliflower
Root crops - beets, radishes, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, kohlrabi
Peppers - bell & hot
Onions, leeks, shallots, garlic
Beans & peas
Celery
Artichokes
Squashes, melons, cucumbers, pumpkins
Strawberries & blueberries
Lemons (just planted my Meyer Lemon tree a couple weeks ago!)
...and way too many tomato varieties!

(I'll post all of the specific varieties as I get them planted...)

Yes, I am aware that pretty much every weekend from mid-March through October will consist of some combination of planting, transplanting, pruning, weeding, harvesting and preserving... And I wouldn't have it any other way!

On that note, it's time for me to hit the sack!

Til next time...