The 2011 Garden Line Up

Whats one of the funnest things about gardening? Picking out what your going to grow in it!

Normally my garden is grown entirely from seeds I've started indoors or directly outdoors, with the exception of tomatoes and peppers in the past. One of the many benefits about seed starting your plants is that there is such a greater choice of what you can grow. If you depend on seedlings grown for you by a nursery, your pretty much stuck with whatever they thought would be a good seller at the time. But one glance through a seed catalog or a stroll along the seed section of your local garden store will show you that there are so so many possibilities.


One thing I'm going to try this year (again) is growing my own tomato and pepper seedlings. I've tried this for several years and something always seems to go awry... seedlings are too spindly, loose their leaves or just don't thrive and/or die. But after growing eggplant and tomatillo seedlings successfully last spring- I have renewed hope that I can actually do this. I mean, if I could grow eggplant surely I can grow pepper and tomato seedlings, after all they are from the same family and have similar growing needs.

For tomatoes I picked out seeds of 'italian roma' and 'sugar lump' (which is a cherry tomato variety). For peppers I selected 'california wonder' and 'chinese giant sweet' as bell peppers and for hot pepper varieties- poblano, jalapeno, anaheim and hungarian wax. Uh... and I might have over done it now. Normally I grow three pepper varieties... what makes me think I can handle six!? In the end I will probably not grow a large crop of the hot peppers, but they are very useful in my household. Making salsa uses up a lot of peppers and I hate buying ingredients from the grocery store for something I'm going to be canning. Poblano and anaheim peppers can be preserved by drying them on a string which I've learned are called ristas. These chilies can then be used in numerous ways throughout the year.

Other new ventures for this year will be some new (for me) varieties of squash. Last years successes with cucumber and zucchini has given me some encouragement. I'm going to try growing more winter squash. Winter squash may take longer to mature, but you can store them indoors for months. There is nothing like eating produce from the garden in January and February. So this year I'm going to try these winter squashes: 'sweet dumpling', 'hubbard', and 'musquee de provence' or french pumpkin. In addition, I have some seeds from last year that allow me to grow pie pumpkin and butternut squash plus some saved seeds from an attractive green pumpkin called jarrahdale I got this past fall from a pumpkin patch.

For herbs I'm going to try starting some thyme and sage seedlings. I already have thyme and sage in my perennial herb garden, but alas it is just overrun with oregano. The sage and other herbs that shared he bed are out competed for growing space. Lesson learned. My boyfriend plans on putting up a fence around our 'orchard'. If we can get this project completed in the spring it will open up A LOT more space for perennial plants such as herbs, strawberries or maybe even flowers. Basil and parsley will again be something I start indoors as last year proved this was necessary if one desired a harvest of either herb.

If you look closely you may see why fencing in the orchard would be pretty necessary if we wanted to grow other things there. The place a is criss-cross highway of rabbit and deer paths. If it were not for the individual fences made for the apple trees the deer would have devoured them long ago. But you can also see all the unused space in between the trees right now. I could easily fit in many additional vegetables there and shade would certainly be a non issue for awhile since the trees are still small.

Lastly, two new vegetables for me to grow this year are endive and parsnip. I've actually grown endive before when I was in a community garden, but back then I didn't actually know what to do with it let alone understand that most people blanch it. Aha. So I'm going to give endive another go. I'm also going to try parsnip... never have grown it... and now that I think of it, I don't know anyone personally who has. But from what I understand its a good root cellar veggie like carrots.

Although I had some difficulties with the cabbage family last year due to pests I'm going to try another round of red cabbage and brussels sprouts, but will emit growing green cabbage since I had a hard time figuring out how to fit it into meals. Kale and collards will still be important greens, but this year I will take advantage of preserving them by freezing. My boyfriend bought a stand up freezer this winter and boy will this appliance help us take advantage of the garden bounty! Kohlrabi will again be partnered up with the beets.

Beans might be more of a presence this year. Thanks to saving a bounty of been seeds from last year, including royal burgundy, yellow and pole beans, I could potentially plant all the beans I'd ever want. Of course growing any sort of legume such as beans or peas will improve your soil, because they actually ADD nitrogen to the soil. So if I end up having empty space someplace I could just utilize the beans as a cover crop.

Lastly, I will fit in my usuals of spinach, lettuces, carrots, onions and a bed of leeks.

My next challenge will be to figure out my crop rotation and where in the garden I'm going to plant all these goodies.