Anyway, about the garden.
When I went to the garden with our 100 red onion sets and 100 yellow onion sets, and 8 shallot sets, I found two leeks I missed when I was cleaning up the garden last fall, very much alive and growing, a very nice surprise. I'm making beer can chicken for dinner tonight, then chicken broth from the carcass, and probably some cockaleeky soup with that and the leeks. But I digress...
So, I planted our onion sets. Lots of earthworms this year, and nice loose fluffy soil this year. I was then very inspired to hunt for seeds online.
I checked out the seeds in the garden center at Lowe's and Farm and Fleet, and didn't see much variety. This year I'm really interested in planting heirlooms, so I went to two heirloom seed stores: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (http://rareseeds.com/), and Reimer Seeds (http://www.reimerseeds.com). Both had great selections, excellent descriptions, and as it turns out, quick shipping, even in what I would call peak season. I ordered tomatoes (Bloody Butcher, Black Krim, First Pik, and Silvery Fir Tree), peppers (Giant Marconi, Sheepnose Pimiento, and Sunbright), cucumbers (Parisian Picklers, and Double Yield), and Melons (Green Nutmeg, and Honey Rock). Baker Creek sent a packet of carrot seed free with my order, a very nice surprise!
I picked up my usual Jiffy Pot tray, with 72 peat swelling discs and green house lid. Yesterday morning after coffee, I poured water over the discs and put them aside to swell, then turned my attention to sauerkraut.
Yes, sauerkraut, right after coffee on a Saturday morning. This would be my first shot at stuffing the crock (from my old crockpot) with cabbage and salt. I've only had homemade sauerkraut once and found it to be delicious. Since that experience, I also learned how nutritious fermented foods can be, so I decided to give it a try. While I was waiting for the peat discs to swell like sponge dinasaurs, I shredded the cabbage. One head turned out to be just about right for the 4 quart crock. I read about how to salt and layer the cabbage at www.wildfermentation.com, and I plan to get a book by Sandor Ellix Katz, (aka Sandorkraut), Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods. More about the sauerkraut in another post...
With the kraut in the crock, I began to lay out the seed tray on paper. If I don't do this, and also mark the orientation of the tray (TOP), then I forget what I've planted where. I have 12 plants each of tomato, and 24 pepper plants. I selected varieties that are reputed to have a LOT of tomato flavor, some determinate, some not. I want to can tomatoes and tomato sauce this year.
Another aside: Last year I said I wasn't going to plant tomatoes because of the blight the year before, but somebody gave me tomato plants. Not planting them would have been like not eating when invited to dinner. So I found a spot away from the other tomato plot, and they grew tomatoes. We got a few red ones, then had a frost a little early, and I picked the green ones before nightfall. They ripened nicely, and when enough were red, I made tomato sauce and let it cook very slowly. It tasted wonderful when it was done. I covered it and took it off the heat so it could cool awhile before I put it in bags to freeze. Next time I'll just hot pack it into canning jars right away. I forgot about it (yeah, I did that alot last summer, so I use sticky notes...), and we went to bed. Sometime during the night, our faithful Labrador Retriever felt it shouldn't have been there and probably tried to make a little noise to remind me to put it away, but apparently when she was (I'm sure of this) tapping lightly on the pot, it fell to the floor. She did her best to clean up the mess (read: conceal the evidence of counter surfing), but 2 gallons of tomato sauce goes a long way...
Yeah.
I'm planting more tomatoes this year so I can make more sauce.
My bags of chopped and frozen peppers held up well over the winter, and may even last until the first peppers are big enough to use this summer, if I don't use more than I really need. I'm hoping the varieties I planted this year will be more meaty. We had good flavor last year, but not very thick pepper walls.
While I'm waiting for my seeds to grow and onions to sprout, I'll be buying a few bags of composted manure and peat moss to further amend the soil in the garden. I'm also going to expand the garden along the side of the house closer to the property line. I don't have a truck anymore, so loading up dirt all at once isn't really an option. We'll find a way around that...
The melons and cucumbers will get planted closer to Memorial Day indoors, then transplanted on Memorial Day weekend. I've always just directly seeded these in the past, and apparently the critters think I'm leaving them a treat, so I decided to plant indoors this year and maybe get a little better start. We want to make garlic dill pickles this year, as well as sweets, which is why I got the Parisian Picklers--they are tiny.
I have extra seed of all the varieties mentioned above, and I would love to trade for hardy lavender plants or seed.
