It’s that time of the year again!
So many are saying winter is lasting too long and they can’t wait until it’s over. I say it’s going by much too fast! There’s so much to do before spring arrives!
First and foremost on the agenda is planning and preparing for the garden!
The garden today. Snowy but still providing corn stalks for the pigs and sunflower heads for the egg layers.
This past weekend hubby got to work putting together our new tiller. This is the first time we won’t have to borrow or rent a tiller to break ground in our garden. He managed to get it all done, and ready to go! So nice to know that once the snow melts, we can start turning dirt! Ahhh… I just love the thought of it. We’ve been tossing our ash into the garden all winter, and come spring we’ll add in some compost that’s been brewing from our kitchen and all our animals for the past 2 years, we’ll till it all in, and away we go for another gardening season!
Garden plot planning has begun.
On my agenda, is picking out a second tiller, a small one for keeping on top of the weeds between aisles this year. It’s my birthday wish, (last year I asked for, and received, a seeder! It’s wonderful, especially for planting all the little seeds like carrots, beets, corn, etc.) and hubby asked me to research which tiller I think I’ll like best. I’ve narrowed it down to two, and I’ve asked him to research them a little further and decide which he feels is the best and will last the longest. These are the two we are researching so far.
One of my favourite garden preps to do is order THE SEEDS!
Last year I ordered my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, also known as rareseeds.com
Last year I ordered my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, also known as rareseeds.com
Their catalogue is my favourite magazine. Seriously! The photos are fantastic, as you can see on their website, and I love reading all about the different varieties and dreaming up what I’ll plant this year! And dream about things I’ll plant in future years, once I get a little better at this gardening thing.
I thought I’d share with you what I’ve ordered, and add in some notes about why I’m re-ordering some of these, and how they grew for me last year.
First off, this year I decided NOT to order any of the following seeds that I would have to start indoors:
Tomatoes, peppers, and onions.
Last year I attempted to grow each of those from seed and since I do not have a proper set up with natural light, it just wasn’t worth the effort. My pepper plants we ‘ok’ but didn’t transfer well, but since they looked promising, I ended up not buying many new plants and thus had no peppers to speak of last year.
My tomato plants were all VERY leggy, so they really didn’t do well at all and I ended up replacing any and all plants with starts from the nursery. So that was a pretty good waste of my time. Something I don’t have an extra abundance of here between the homestead, homeschooling and the business!
Onions, again, they started our promising, but since I was using heat lamps and not proper grow lamps, none grew enough to amount to anything, and again, simply a waste of my time. We ended up buying 200 starter bulbs, and they grew fantastic, so we’ll go that route from the start and forget about the seeds.
Last years bounty.
Here’s what I DID order again this year:
Golden Bantam 12-Row Corn
- Item No: CN143
This corn was HUGE and very impressive, the plants that is. However, we didn’t actually end up with any corn cobs that matured well enough for us to eat them. I am replanting this corn though, in hopes that perhaps it was just an off year AND, because even though WE didn’t eat the corn, our pigs are STILL enjoying the stalks well into winter. It’s near the end of Jan now and today I picked some stalks again just for the pigs. So as a treat for the animals, even if we never taste this corn ourselves, it’s worth a few rows of space in our garden. And, as I mentioned, the plants grew so big that it really was very impressive!
The stalks on the left are from baker creek seeds.
Detroit Dark Red Beet
- Item No: BT110
These grew exceptionally well for us. The tops were tasty too. These beets are also very hardy keepers. It’s near the end of Jan and we are still eating them every week from our cold cellar. We have so many, that every time I cook some, I cook extra so that I can give all the left overs to the chickens/ducks/guineas. Our horses also like them raw! It’s like bonus vitamins for the whole homestead, all winter long!
Big Beet!
Golden Beet
- Item No: BT102
Again, like the beets above, these also grew really really well! I absolutely LOVE the golden colour of these beets! They look so beautiful steamed alongside their red counterparts!
Chioggia (Bassano) Beet
- Item No: BT104
I’m trying these beets out for the first time this year. I was so happy with my decision to try out golden beets that I decided even more variety in colour would be even more fun!
Cantare Bean
- Item No: BN153
These beans did not do well for us this past year, but I’m going to blame user error and not the seeds. There were part of our garden we stayed on top of the weeds really well last year, but our bean section was not one of those parts. I fear the weeds took over before we could salvage these bean plants. We have plans to mulch with straw this year, so we’re hoping that will help keep the weeds down, and I’ve read it also helps the bean plants root better.
Broad Windsor Fava Bean
- Item No: FB101
Broad beans always seem to grow well for me. They grow straight, tall, and faster than our weeds seem to grow so it’s easy for the kids and I to keep the weeds away. They freeze real well too and taste great boiled in a bit of salt water, and then fried in some bacon grease. Home grown bacon grease is even better. Yum!
Sugar Ann Snap Pea 1/2 LB
- Item No: SN107F
Even though, as I mentioned above, the weeds go ahead of us in the bean/pea section of our garden last year, these Sugar Ann Snap Peas still seemed to fair out quite well despite fighting for air among weeds as tall as me! We still ate as much as we possibly could straight from the garden, and froze extras for stir fry too! I can’t even imagine how well they will do with our plans to mulch straw around them this year! If all goes well, we should have peas coming out of our ears. lol
Royalty Purple Pod Bush Bean
- Item No: BN101
Again, as with the Cantare beans, we didn’t actually see much of anything with these last year. I will try again, because I believe it was user error and weeds, and not the seeds.
Russian Black Seeded Sunflower
- Item No: JS140
I have not grown these yet. I’m really aiming to grow enough large sunflowers with edible seeds for our chickens/ducks/guineas to eat all winter. We’ll see how it goes, and I need to figure out how to save the seeds. This past fall I attempted to hang them in the cold cellar to save the heads, and they rotted. Not good! I’m thinking the slight dampness and cool climate of the cold cellar was a mistake. I need to research further.
Teddy Bear – Sunflower
- Item No: FL724
We grew these last year and they were so CUTE! I loved being able to pick some on my way out of the garden, and keep them in a vase in the house. I don’t have flower beds yet, so these are wonderful in the meantime. I look forward to their brightness again this year!
Titan Sunflower
- Item No: FL749
As the website says, these are impressive, massive sunflowers. Since I first began gardening with the kids we’ve been growing the largest sunflowers we can possibly find. these do not disappoint! An added bonus, the bees around here LOVE them! Anything that attracts bees to our property is promised a spot in my garden year after year!
Alaska Garden Pea
- Item No: GP101
These grew a little better than the beans did last year, but again, the weeds got the better of them. I look forward to trying again this year, with straw mulched around the plants in hopes of a better outcome. I REALLY want to dry peas for my peasoup, which we all love here in our home. Especially with our home grown ham!
Little Marvel Garden Pea 1/2 LB
- Item No: GP102F
Same with these, didn’t stand much of a chance last year and I’m hoping for better results this year.
Blacktail Mountain Watermelon
- Item No: WM129|
So… this is the third, and final year, I will be attempting to grow melons. I ordered all three of these melon varieties last year and they all started out quite promising… but then came the HUGE weeds, and we kind of lost them for a bit, and by the time we dug the weeds away from the plants I think it was too late for them to mature fully in our shorter growing season. I choose only short growing season varieties, but I’m pretty sure that means they’ll grow in a short season WITHOUT being drowned out by weeds. lol We have a plan to mulch around these dainty little plants as they grow too. WEEDS be gone! (we still refuse to use any weed killers though! We WILL figure this out, naturally!)
Collective Farm Woman Melon
- Item No: OML110
Same as above.
Minnesota Midget Melon
- Item No: AML140
Same again, as above.
Echinacea Purpurea
- Item No: HB119
I decided each year I should attempt to add a new herb to my garden. Last year was mint. This year it will be echinacea. I’d like to make my own tincture. I need to decide if I’m going to plant it right into the garden, or into a half barrel. I’m thinking a barrel to keep it contained, but I’m concerned that may not be the best for the winters out here. We’ll see what I can find when I research further while awaiting springs arrival.
Straight Eight Cucumber
- Item No: CU168
So far since starting our homestead garden two years ago I have yet to truly successfully grow cucumbers. I’m really not sure why. I think the weeds are partly to blame again, so this year we are going to plant them in hills rather than rows, and mulch straw heavily around those hills. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m hoping straw will be our saving grace against weeds this year. I also did hills last year, and found it so much easier to weed than rows. With rows, it’s quite hard to find your little tiny starts between weeds and weeding them gets scary for fear of pulling the good with the bad. The straw & hills should help to define where the plants are.
Muncher Cucumber
- Item No: CU174
Again, see above. Both the above variety and this variety I haven’t tried before, but they require shorter growing seasons than the cucs I’ve attempted to grow in the past, so I’m hoping this will help me to have more success along with the hills and mulch.Another thing I grew from Baker Creek Seeds last year was carrots. Lots and lots of carrots! I only planted HALF the seeds I bought, so I won’t need to buy them again this year, but we ended up with probably a few hundred pounds of carrots. lol
I’d like to point out the wonderful variety they have, because we had success with all the colours of carrots we planted! Here’s their entire selection:
http://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/carrots/
Gorgeous colour!
These are the ones we planted. The colour was superb and went very well with our golden and red beets! I was sure I purchased another coloured variety, but I can’t find it at the moment.
http://www.rareseeds.com/cosmic-purple-carrot/Next year when I need to purchase carrot seeds again, I’ll also be adding in these:
http://www.rareseeds.com/pusa-rudhira-red-carrot/
and these: http://www.rareseeds.com/amarillo-carrot/Just like in my home busines, I love colour everywhere!
Colour on the Homestead
So there you have my seed order for this year.
There’s a few things we’ll be purchasing from the nursery. Our Roma Tomatoes. We had great success with them last year.
Plenty of tomatoes!
We will be trying something a little different this year in hopes of having them ripen earlier, but last summer was a little more wet than usual, so that could be completely different this summer and ripening may not be an issue. We still ended up eating these tomatoes well into November! With plenty of tomato paste and sauces made too.
Peaches and Cream Corn.
We’ll also grow the peaches and cream variety of corn again. We’ve been able to eat corn all winter from what we pulled from the garden and froze. 🙂
I think that’s just about everything to do with our garden so far!
How about you? What are your garden plans for this year?
Whether you’re in the country, or the city, planning a garden, or filling some containers with a few tomato plants and some salad greens, I’d love to hear about it!