6 Tips for Planning Out A Bountiful Garden

I don't know about you, but this latest batch of weather has given me serious GARDEN FEVER! It's hard to believe that just 2 weeks ago we had a couple inches of snow, and that a week ago the high was a mere 35---because the last couple days it has been in the mid-60's with crystal clear skies and fabulous spring breezes! If you are like me, your garden is calling your name loud and clear! Since it is still too wet and too early to do any "real" hands-on gardening, it is a great time to be in the final planning stage for your garden! Here are six tips to help you get everything lined up for your gardening season in the weeks before you can get your hands dirty!

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1. Catalogs, catalogs, catalogs!

I never use just one catalog. This year I have a whopping FIVE different catalogs for organic heirloom seeds which is very awesome! It's very exciting to think that there are more companies out there for those of us who desire better quality seeds. I begin having catalogs arrive the moment the new editions are ready--I'm a bit obsessed with catalogs. LOL. I start marking things I am interested in right away, and see what catalog carries the greatest quantity of my goodies.  I know that I will need to pare down my list later, but for now, I just go through and mark everything of interest. I also ask my boys what vegetable they want to grow this year and let them pick a variety. My favorite companies for seeds are Baker Creek Heirloom Seed, High Mowing Seeds, Annie's Heirloom Seeds, and Seed Savers Exchange.

Some of the things you will order have a limited window for ordering due to the type of plant. Others will sell out quickly. Many seeds you need to have in hand by the middle of March or beginning of April to get them ready to go. It's time to make your list, check it twice, and then get those orders placed!

From Peelings to Potatoes~ A Gardening Cinderella Story

About 2 years ago, we decided to dive into the world of a family garden. One of the crops that Love-of-My-Life was adamant about planting was potatoes. His father, however, told him that we wouldn’t be able to grow them because he himself, had never been able to. Well, we took that as a challenge, and since our property does not have the same soil as his does (ours has far less clay), we were very hopeful that we could successfully grow a potato crop. What we didn’t realize at the time was, we were going to be discovering one of the ultimate forms of vegetable recycling (and a serious money saving tip) in the process.

When you decide want to grow potatoes, the first thing that everyone tells you that you need is…potatoes! It is commonly known that seed potatoes are the way to grow your next years potatoes. But what do you do, if you don’t HAVE seed potatoes? This was our dilemma the year we decided to grow our own potato crop.  We didn't have any, and we really didn't want to spend the money to buy any. So what did we do? 
We looked in our potato bin.

The name says it all! :0)

The previous year, we had purchased a monster bag of potatoes from the wonderful store Costco. And it was a monster bag. I think it was 15 or 20 lbs. We are potato people. I haven't yet met a potato I didn't like. But, it always ends up that by the time you get to the bottom of the bin, there are less than desirable potatoes waiting. Usually they are soft. Really soft. And if they are actually GOOD and untreated potatoes (which MOST of what you buy is NOT--go with organic to make sure), they might even be starting to grow sprouts, or as we commonly refer to them…eyes. Most people will throw out a bin of potatoes that look like this.

You might not want to eat these...but they are perfect for planting!

That year, we discovered that our potatoes at the bottom of the bin had quite a few eyes.

Because the eyes were growing well and since eyes of potatoes are really "potato sprouts", we wondered: "If we planted these, would they grow?"

So rather than throwing out the soon-to-be-rotten potatoes-that-no-one-wanted, we pulled them out and examined them. Each of them had at least 5 or 6 eyes and they were fairly spread apart. So Love-Of-My-Life got out his knife and started slicing them apart. He figured that since it was the eye that was the sprout, he could separate them out and they might grow as individual plants. Much like separating out a cluster of tubers in your flower garden. Now instead of one potato to plant…we had 5 or 6! He continued doing this for the rest of the potatoes in our bin…then got the same quality (or lack there of!) of potatoes out of his dad’s bin and repeated the process. By the time he was done, he had a nice big bucket of sprouted potato chunks to plant.

But then we REALLY took a chance. Love-of-My-Life’s mother came out with a big bowl and asked us if we wanted “it”. What was it? It was a bowl full of PEELINGS!!!

Peelings? Why on earth would we want peelings, right? We thought the same thing at first.

But wait…you see when she peels a potato, she actually pares it. Meaning she uses her KNIFE and does more of a slicing than a peeling. This meant she had chunks of peel with eyes attached! Yep, in her effort to use up the last of the potatoes, she had carefully pared them leaving the eyes intact, then used the rest for her mashed potatoes. (If that isn't making your potato go the distance, I don't know what is!) So she was giving us a bowl of peelings with eyes.

Could THESE actually be planted and produce something?

The peelings with eyes. No smaller than a quarter.

We decided it was worth a try, because we had nothing to lose and everything to gain! So we planted it all—the sliced apart potato chunks with eyes and the peelings with eyes. It was most definitely a gardening adventure.

Baby Britches helping plant the potatoes

Love-of-My-Life sorting through our box of peelings and chunks

Carrying the next batch to plant

So what happened? Well…we waited. And waited. and then....

They grew!

Rows of big beautiful lush potato plants!

We wouldn’t believe it at first, but everything we planted grew to be big beautiful potato plants! They grew phenomenally where we had them planted. Our cat used the patch as a jungle of sorts to explore and snooze in. And at the end of the season (when all the plants lie down), we all eagerly waited to see what we could turn up underneath…for that is where the treasure of the potato hides. 

Treasure hunting under the plants for potatoes

And low and behold…our peelings had become…POTATOES! 

So excited about the potatoes he found!

That first year, we harvested 75 lbs of potatoes. Yes, you read that right. From maybe 30-50 almost rotten potatoes that we sliced or pared to keep the eyes (instead of throwing them out like most people do), we harvested 75 lbs of NEW potatoes! It was a definite success and we’ve been using the same process ever since with the same fabulous results! And the cool thing...now the potatoes we are using for our plantings each spring, can all trace their "roots" back to those first few peelings...

Some of our harvest from last year

So please—before you go and invest in seed potatoes—look in your potato bin! It’s the real Cinderella story for gardening…for who would have thought you could turn rotten peelings into next years big rugged potato crop?!

Fresh from the Garden: 5 Reasons to Love Gardening

As soon as the snows take over my farm, I start longing for spring. I feed that spring fever by ordering seed catalogs. I love to garden and ordering seed catalogs helps me get through the cold days and look forward to spring. There are many reasons that people like to garden…but I've narrowed it down to the five main ones that cause me to eagerly await it every year.

Click here to read my guest post over at Jebbica's World!

Adventures in Gardening: Seeds and Soil!

It's been a little while since I last posted about our garden, so I'm going to take a moment to see if I can catch up...the previous posts talked about timing, planning and choosing what you want in your garden.

Today I'm going to talk about the seeds but mostly the soil we use.

As I said before, we choose to use Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for our garden. They offer an incredibly diverse collection (THOUSANDS!) of non-GMO seeds and so we had a blast picking out what we wanted for our garden. I've had them set aside and sorted so that I could know what I had and how soon I could plant it.

When we finally got the right weather, my husband came through and got our soil ready. Last year we didn't clean up our garden before the end of the fall, nor did we plant a cover crop to keep the soil in good condition. We also decided we were going to move it around a little bit and totally change our corn location--so we gave up part of our pasture to be the corn patch this year.

This was part of our pasture--but now it's the new corn patch! We had to move our corn so that it will be able to blow with the winds--instead of getting blown over! We lost a bunch because of a bad windstorm last season!

We choose to follow the guidance that is given in the fabulous--simply amazing video--Back to Eden. If you garden, and have not watched this video yet, I wholeheartedly encourage you to! We watched it last year before we did our garden and put into practice what was suggested and we were stunned at how well our garden did through the horrible drought our area suffered last year.

If you have a chance, set aside the time to watch it. It is a good film even if you don't garden!

http://backtoedenfilm.com/#movie

Basically, the primary principle is that soil needs a covering...something to keep it protected from the elements. We choose to use hay/straw for the covering of our garden--simply because we can have it for free! LOL! And we have found we don't need fertilizer when we keep it covered up...because you are helping it stay at it's most optimal state that way! Keeping the nutrition in!

We planted our first seeds at the beginning of the week--two rows of potato starts (from last years crop!), 3 rows of bush beans (3 different kinds), a row of peas, a 1 foot wide x 15 ft long row of various salad greens, 2 rows of carrots, a row of onion sets, a row of chives, a row of beets...that's our first round of garden planting.

In the far upper left is our long potato patch...the stick you see in the ground is where the regular garden starts. In between the potatoes and regular garden will be our "salsa" garden of peppers and tomatoes. This garden is on a creek bank. If you went over by the trees you see here, you'd look down and see our creek. This is why the soil is so incredibly rich!

But---we weren't able to get a covering on the soil right after it was turned over...not until three days later. And the soil changed! It went from being so rich, dark and fertile to being dry, light and hard! Thankfully I was able to get it covered by that third day...and within ONE DAY, the soil went back to what it had been before. Yeah--coverings work THAT good.

So we sprinkled a light covering of hay over the rows themselves and then laid down thick hay between the rows to choke out the weeds. As we need more ground, we simply rake back the hay and plant. The soil will be soft and no hoe-ing will be necessary. In fact, we can dig it with our fingers!

I love learning "easy" gardening tips!

One of the best finds this season, was an old stump that had decomposed creating fabulous "stump soil". Boy. Talk about rich dirt! We used this soil for all the seeds we started in containers...here is a little photo diary of our use of that soil--the boys enjoyed discovering it and helping me.

Little Britches and Baby Britches finding the stump soil

Digging it out with their shovels--and finding worms and bugs along the way!

A container of dirt is the ULTIMATE sensory bin for little hands...especially when there are bugs, snails, worms and sticks included!

Baby Britches filling up his egg carton with soil--see his lips? He's making heavy equipment noises as he dumps.

Both boys hard at work willing up their egg cartons

Poking holes for the seeds

Learning how to use a squirt bottle to water his freshly planted tomato seeds.

We brought these inside to the dining room which gets full morning sun...plants love the windows on that side of the house and it's the perfect spot for newly planted seeds!

The last thing I planted were my flower beds around the house as well as my big planters for the porch. I put my first herb seeds in those as well as turning two of them into lettuce containers. I love lettuce seeds because they grow so fast! See how big they are after just 3 days!

Now to keep little hands and the cat out of the containers on the porch...

So there you have my update--I will have new pictures of our garden to take tomorrow...we have a lot of things popping their heads up now, making them picture worthy for sure!

Adventures in Gardening~ Timing

In this post, I will talk a bit about what I do to plan the planting of my seeds. Let me start by saying that last year, there were only a few things that got started as seedlings. Everything else just got put straight into the ground because we didn't get started early enough and wanted to get it all in ASAP! But this year we have plenty of time for the early planting process.

If you are like me, you are still kind of learning about when to plant what...needless to say I was tickled to find this fabulous Planting Guide on the Baker's Creek website. It goes into a great discussion about what needs to be planted early, what should be started as seedlings and what can go straight in the ground. It also gives a great summary about germination times if you want to plot it so things grow together. I printed it off and have it in a folder for quick reference.

Another great resource is the book The Heirloom Life Gardener

I bought this at the end of the growing season last year---but man, i wish I had it from the beginning because it has soooo much information! Separated out by vegetable, you get a host of information about the whole process from planning to planting to harvesting to seed collecting to preserving!

Here is another great resource-Free Vegetable Planting Guide. This guide gives you a basic list of the main vegetables and has a way for you to calculate when to sow your seeds based on the last frost and a place for you to write it down. Quite handy. I printed one off for myself.

Between these resources, I can now go through my seed list and figure out which things I can start the soonest and which things to plant where. I want to rotate my crops a little this year--it won't need a lot since it was our first year.

Now I'm having to squirrel away egg cartons from my husband...he saves all our cartons to give back to our egg man (we get farm fresh eggs) but I'm going to need some for my seedings...although I am considering this method:

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or this one:

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We always have newspapers or toilet paper rolls, so either of them would work--and are biodegradable so I can just plant the whole thing. I think Little Britches would enjoy these methods. He picked a few seed packs for himself and he enjoyed watching his seedlings grow last year.

So that is how I plot out my timing for the planting. We have late frosts...so I can't get very much actually INTO the ground until late April or early May unless it is supposed to go in before the final frost. But I have a lot of porch containers for my herbs and flowers that I CAN do earlier. I love that first day of getting my hands dirty!

The next post will be about some ideas I am thinking of for planting the actual seeds...to keep the plants under control---mostly a lot of Pinterest ideas!

Adventures in Gardening~ Planning

I decided that this year I would document my adventures in gardening! Last year was our first year of cultivating our own garden and I shared some pictures of the process...but not from start to finish. So this year, I thought it would be fun to start from the get-go noting what we do.

As you would imagine, in January nothing is growing in my garden except weeds! But just because it's January doesn't mean you don't do ANYTHING...for it will be time to start seedlings indoors in just a few weeks! Especially for the early crops! So I've been chomping at the bit and pouring over my most favorite catalog marking and planning out what our garden will grow this year.

 Here is my BEAUTIFUL seed catalog! It's the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog---they only sell pure seeds. Nothing altered. Nothing GMO. Absolutely nothing touched by Monsanto. They travel around the world to find new heirloom seeds to share. We ordered from them last year and were more than satisfied with our produce so we went with them again. Even if you don't order anything, their catalog is a 211 pages of visual delight! Gorgeous color photos of all kinds of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers!

 As you can see, my list was rather long...in fact, I filled up half the other side too! LOL! I basically choose 1-4 varieties of each fruit/vegetable that my family likes. I love trying new varieties--like the "Sweet Chocolate Pepper" that you can see on my list above. I call this list my "Wish List"! From here I then go to all my left over seed packs from the previous year.

I had a lot of random things left over from last year--either I didn't get to plant them, or we had already planted some and saved the extra. Most of these seed packs are flowers and herbs. But I go through and cross of anything I have on my list so I don't buy more than I need.

Then I just go to the website and start filling up my shopping cart. This year we are spending much more than last year, but that is because we want to double the size of our garden, as well as replace more of the "store bought" plants from last year with good heirloom seeds this year. This fall, we are going to really try to do as much seed saving as possible, to start our OWN heirloom collection. I have all kinds of little baby food jars ready to go for that! I saved a few from last year (peas, watermelon, beans, lettuce) and I'm eager to see if they will come up this year.

I also placed an order through Mountain Rose Herbs for some organic herb seeds that I plan on harvesting and saving for medicinal use. That company specializes in carrying organic or wild harvested plants. They are a great source for supplies if you make your own soaps, lotions, etc. I went ahead and added a bunch of dried herbs/flowers to my order for some teas I've been wanting to make or at least have on hand. Especially the dried elderberries for my Cough Syrup recipe I found.

But back to the garden...so I went ahead and plugged in my finalized lists and sent them off into cyberspace! I can't wait to get my seed packages!! It helps the winter days go by faster as I get everything ready for the spring planting!

The next step is figuring out when to start each plant: whether to go with seedlings, or just in the ground---I will go into my process for that next time. 

Do you have any vegetables or fruits that are favorites in your family garden?? Anything new you want to try this year?