Looking Ahead: The Garden to Come

On Sunday night, we received a fresh 6 inches of snow. It hasn't been an especially snowy winter around here, but it seems the more the snow stacks up, the more a little green sprout of an idea that it's time to start thinking of spring and gardens grows inside of me.

 Somewhere, underneath all of that are a couple raised beds.

Although we're nearly two months away from starting seeds, the seed catalogs have been piling up in the mailbox since just after Christmas. Those early bird seed catalogs have been destined for the recycling bin where I toss them without even rifling through their pages a single time. When a neighbor called last month to ask when he should start his seeds, I realized I hadn't thought about this coming summer's gardens at all.

To be honest, last September kind of kicked the stuffing out of me -- what with the working 6-7 days a week and dealing with a seemingly endless green bean harvest -- and I've been taking the gardening off-season very seriously this year. As much as I enjoy using last summer's produce in the kitchen all winter long, including the aforementioned  3+ gallons of blanched green beans (so good when sauteed in olive oil with onions, lots of pepper and a splash of vinegar), it'll be a few weeks before I'm ready to meticulously plan out the vegetable gardens and place my seed order.   

For now I'm content with grabbling over the big garden decisions in my mind. Should we expand the gardens yet again this summer or we content ourselves with the existing infrastructure, which would make the gardening a much more economical endeavor? Is it time to throw the towel in on growing onions? What about potatoes? Andy swears he lost sleep over the potatoes last year and although growing potatoes in straw did result in a delicious (if not paltry) harvest, I have to admit poking through the straw to check on the potatoes and finding salamanders living in the potato bed was not my most favorite experience.  (I may be woodsy, but a girl has her limits.) 

As these February days pass, I know I'll greet the seed catalogs in the mailbox with increasing enthusiasm. Soon I'll fill notebook pages with garden diagrams and lists of seeds to order. They say hope is for fools, but we gardeners are always rewarded for our patience and perseverance during the winter with that first little sprout poking through the cold, spring soil.

Are you thinking spring and gardens yet?

 

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Looking Forward: The Garden

The seed catalogs have been piling up since the new year. Although I'm already anticipating this summer's garden, I haven't paid the seed catalogs too much attention yet. Really, I have enough seeds leftover from last year to take care of most of my seed starting needs and if I want to garden to save money, there's no reason to go all crazy with seed orders when I don't have to.

But now, as February starts fading into March and the sunset lingers farther and farther past 5:30 each evening, it's time to put some serious thought into what this year's seed order will actually entail since I'll be starting the first of the seeds in just over a month. (Oh sweet Hallelujah!)

 

I find I can't really plan out the seed order until I've plotted out a rudimentary plan for where everything's getting planted this year. Crops need to get rotated each year to get the most of soil and each year I learn something new that shapes the next year's garden. This year, I want to use the space in the raised bed we put in last year more effectively. Little things, like training the cucumbers up the fencing and planting spinach in the shady corner, will boost efficiency.


We'll also be moving the garden Andy put in two years ago over to a sunnier spot. While the installation of the garden was by far the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me, after two years of battling an increasingly shady aspen tree, I am awarding victory to the aspen and we'll be using leftover supplies from last year's raised garden to put in a couple small raised beds where hopefully the onions will, at long last, prosper and thrive. (Longest sentence ever.) 

If I'd been a thinker, I would have actually saved seeds from last year's crop. However, this thought did not dawn on me until my friend Sarah visited last week, bringing with her cone flower and marigold seeds saved from one of her acquaintances' garden. Not that buying seeds is such a major expense, but free trumps cheap any day in my book. I'm glad to have such large reserves of seeds from last year; it helps me feel like I didn't totally miss the boat on the seeding saving thing. 

This year's order from the seed catalog (probably Seeds of Change, but I could be persuaded if anyone has a better suggestion) will be teensy tiny compared with last year's:

• Tomatoes (Early Girls or . . . .)
• Jalapenos 
• Beans (bush)
• Chard (Bright Lights)
• Winter Squash (Butternut and Gold Nugget)
• Seed starting mixture

I might throw in a early ripening melon if I'm feeling optimistic and I've thought about an early ripening eggplant too, although neither Andy or I are terribly crazy about the aubergine and its nutritional value is so low it seems like it wouldn't be worth the space.

My mom grew a bountiful crop of butternut squashes last year so I'm anxious to see how the winter squashes fare up here. The squash will be replacing one of the summer squash plants because as much as we all loved the summer squash (And yes we do still have some shredded zucchini in the freezer. Coincidentally, Andy actually just requested some chocolate zucchini bread, so that frozen zucchini is getting put to good use and I don't regret having spent the time shredding that last ginormous zucchini.) we eat (and enjoy) winter squash far more than we do summer squash.

Although I still stand by my belief that those initial zucchinis at least last summer were the most beautiful zucchinis I'd ever seen. . .

The pumpkins will also be giving up their space this year to make room for the winter squash. The pumpkins were great fun to watch grow last year, but they just didn't produce enough to justify their keep this year. 

Are you looking forward to this year's garden? What will you plant? When will you start your seeds?

 

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