My ultimate goal for the garden this year is to grow 456 pounds of produce, which is half of what we'll theoretically need for the year. I figure this could produce all of our plant needs during the harvest season.
The finalized seed selection.The Plants
(items with an asterisk won't be planted because they are already in a permanent garden spot)
- Tomatoes
- Amish Paste
- Green Zebra (it's green! and striped!)
- Tigerella
- Black Plum
- Black Krim
- Sunsugar (grown from cuttings)
- Lemon Boy (my big winner from last year!)
- Cukes
- Lemon Cucumber
- Dragon's Egg Cucumber (I love dragons, and eggs, so why not?)
- Squash
- Lemon Squash
- Grey Zucchini
- Lakota (winter squash)
- Maaaaybe Yellow Scallop Bush and Burpee Fordhook, if I come up with more space. Didn't do well at all in a previous year, but I don't want to waste the seed.
- Roots:
- Long black Spanish radish (for keeping cutworms out o' the soil until the tomatoes are in)
- Long scarlet radish
- Cherry radish (see all the packets in the top right of the photo? I have tons!)
- Tokyo cross turnip (harvests in only 35 days)
- Parisienne carrot (was a freebie)
- Greens:
- Red Malabar spinach (heat-loving vine)
- Nasturtium, King Theodore
- Toscano/Dinosaur kale
- Miner's lettuce (a favorite wild green from my childhood)
- Vulcan chard, Scarlet Charlotte chard
- Bull's blood beet (so far, it's my favorite salad green)
- Garlic greens
- Herbs:
- Chervil
- Arugula
- Thyme, creeping (hoping this'll grow down the edges of the beds)
- Parsley
- Cilantro
- Chives
- Sage (if only I can get it to work this year... please please work)
- Basil, Genoveve (was a freebie)
- Basil, Thai (grown from cuttings)
- Ginger*
- Lemongrass*
- Mint*
- Marjoram*
- Other
- Ristra cayenne pepper (to be strung up and dried for chili)
- Mammoth grey striped sunflower (the best type for snack seeds)
- Calendula, Ball's improved orange
- Plum x2*
- Apple*
- Meyer lemon*
- Buddha's hand*
- Fig (I have cuttings from my neighbor's tree rooting on top of the fridge right now)
- Pomegranate
- Blueberry*
- Rosehips*
Yup, no beans or snap peas this year. They just don't really give me that much deliciousness for the space used, and my super-strong 16-foot-long trellis will be busy with cucumber vines. I'm intentionally not doing bell peppers because I just never have luck with them.
I'll only have places for a certain number of the larger plants like tomatoes and squash, but I have a lot of space that can handle smaller shallow plants, so I'll just be putting in as many greens, herbs, and small root plants as possible. It's a good thing I like radishes.
I don't have any Sunsugar seeds, but I do still have a plant from last year! I brought it into the solarium over winter, and it mostly died down, but it has had a burst of growth recently, so it should give me enough cuttings. The Lemon Boy cuttings didn't survive and seeds were hard to come by, so I will have to buy a seedling in spring.
Truly surprised it survived.
I still have a bunch of greens growing from fall, but they look like they're getting close to needing to be plucked and replaced. Next fall, I am planting as much kale, mustard greens, chard, and cilantro as possible once everything else is removed. From what I planted last year, we have been having a big salad about once a week just from picking all the oldest leaves, and I'd rather have a garden salad daily.
In any case, I need to get started on sprouting those tomato and thyme seeds today. But first on the To-Do list is a good fertilization of all the soil, and making a solid spring planting plan.
Have you started on your garden yet? Do you think I can meet my goal?
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