Seeds!

[tesla_aldrich]

We started planting for the vegetable/herb garden today.  It was bitwise's first excursion into starting seeds, which was probably more exciting for me than for him.  (When I first tried this I had a lot of anxiety about doing everything right; now I feel calmly confident that if I use care and sense, the seedlings will do what they need to do.  Not every

Comments

[vgqn]

Wow, that is awesome! Not to mention ambitious!

Boothby's Blonde is a great cuke and Lemon are fun too, but I think you've started them too early. Cukes only take about 4 weeks to be ready to go out. Even here in CA, I'm not going to start my cukes until April.

Federle is a great tomato. I've grown Strawberry Spinach, and the leaves are tasty in salads. The berries, well, it's fun to have grown them, but they're more entertaining than tasty.

Oh, now I'm feeling all guilty that I haven't started anything yet!

[tesla_aldrich]

Thanks for the tip on the cukes - as you can guess, I haven't started cucumbers from seed before. We'll see how creative I have to get about holding them indoors. Moreover, this might be the push that I need to finally build myself some cold frames.

I like Federle a lot too - I grew some last year, and I'm thinking they'll make good catsup and paste as well as salsa.

Eric is a huge fan of spinach, so I got the Strawberry Spinach in the interest of experimenting on him. :)

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the Sunberries are like - have you any experience with them?

I know your climate and growing season are worlds better, but a part of me wishes you were back here so that we could exchange seedlings and experiences!

[vgqn]

For hot weather spinach, have you tried Magentaspreen? It's another Chenopodium, very pretty, with tender leaves, and is much taller and more branching (hence more productive) than the Strawberry Spinach, whose leaves are also a bit stiffer. (But no way does it get 6' tall like that catalog says. 2' is more like it.) Or red amaranth? Gorgeous, looks like coleus but wants full sun. Both of these reseed readily in my garden. I don't know if they'd survive the winter, but you could easily save seed yourself

[skylarker]

Hee. It must be nice to have plenty of thyme. :)

[opheliac_9]

Yum!!! I'd *love* to have a garden, but no lawn at all will just leave me with some windowsill herbs this summer (better than nothing I guess)!

But, I did sign up for a CSA share this summer, and am eagerly awaiting a massive amount of veggies. Waiting for it to start up in May is already driving me crazy!

[tesla_aldrich]

Yum, indeed - we were considering a CSA, but decided to go this route this year. Which one are you using?

[opheliac_9]

Harmony Valley Farm. Looked like they had a good track record and lots of happy consumers, plus nice newsletters with yummy recipes and a great variety of veggies. And, a monthly withdrawal option was definitely a plus for me.

Yeah, I'd totally love growing my own food (especially being able to watch 'em grow from seed to fruition!) but that's just not an option right now, unfortunately. So take lots of pictures and let me live vicariously through your garden! ;-)

[cloudscudding]

Plenty of thyme. ::groan::

[ktig]

Wow, that's ambitious indeed!