Not a fan of poring over seed packets? Just want to grow the easy basics while you focus on breeding livestock or beekeeping?
Or do you want to be just like the First Family? I just found this seed assortment from High Mowing Seeds, that contains many of the same varieties used in the
If you haven't started your seeds yet, it's definitely time to get going, but don't despair. Some seeds, like squash and cukes, should only be started four weeks before transplanting. If you live in the far north (zone 3) like I do, that's still more than two months away. (The traditional planting day in Vermont is Memorial Day, but since I'm atop a mountain, sometimes I have to push that back a week!)
I always plant too much. It's some kind of sickness. I plant like I'm feeding my entire town of 170 people. Of course, my soil still needs improvement, so my yields are not great - and that is part of why I plant so much. Still, I often wonder why I think 40 tomato plants is a good number when we don't eat a lot of tomato sauce, or what I'm going to do with 150 pie pumpkins. I answer myself in fall when I spend many hours canning, freezing and otherwise preserving the harvest.
Still, it's nice to figure out how much you really need - not just for eating during the season, but how much you might want to grow if you plan to preserve food for the winter and eat from the garden for the entire year. Start
Ah, January - time to paw through seed catalogs while sipping green tea or hot cocoa.
Wordless Wednesday originally appeared on About.com Small Farms on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 19:42:24.
Vegetables are sometimes referred to as "heirloom" or "heirloom variety." This basically means that it is a variety of vegetable that was grown before large-scale agriculture became commonplace. These days, most crops grown on a large scale are hybrids - combinations of various traits that lead to vigorous growth and disease resistance.
That isn't to say that heirloom varieties are hard to grow, although sometimes they can be. One way to ensure that you are pick...
I wrote a little bit last week about how much I enjoy growing sprouts. It gives me something besides houseplants to grow indoors while I'm waiting for seed starting time (soon, soon!) And there is no easier way to grow fresh food indoors.
A close second to sprouts is growing microgreens. You know how you always hear advice to toss your thinnings from the vegetable garden into salads? Well, this is taking that to a whole new level: you're basically growing greens, he...
