GARDEN SEASON

About a month ago, I started garden planning.  (BTW, have you tried workflowy.com yet?  It's great for list makers) 

It still blows my mind how excited I get when the seed catalog arrives.  It's pretty much the same excitement I used to feel walking into Express. sigh, a lifetime ago.

This year I decided to keep the Juliet tomatoes, the Marketmore '76 cucumbers, the Early Golden Summer Crookneck squash, and the Black Beauty Zucchini Squash from last year.  And I'm adding Amarillo carrots (a longer thinner carrot than last year), Fledderjohn soybean (an edamame variety that Daughter is ecstatic to grow. Thanks to a dinner with the McEggs, edamame is one of her favorite foods.) AND Grandma Oliver's Green Tomato.  Plus, whatever varieties of red tomatoes I find next week at Marvin's that will be good for canning.

Back to the Grandma Oliver's Green Tomato.  Husband was shocked to learn that there's an actual variety of green tomatoes.  He thought all those times we bought green tomatoes in the grocery store or ate them somewhere we were buying/eating unripe tomatoes.  sigh.  (and he's the country boy and I'm the city girl)  He loves fried green tomatoes and he loves my vegetable hash recipe so if I can grow our own, that's super.

If you've followed my gardening adventures for the past couple of years, you know what trouble I have starting plants from seeds.  Either, I kill them with too much or too little water.  Or I kill them in some other way I have no clue about.  Or the cat digs them up or knocks them over.  Or a kids digs them up.  Something.  every year, something happens that stresses me out about SEEDS.  crazytown.  This year was different.

I got my miracle grow potting mix, my cup with good drainage (yogurt container with holes in the bottom), and I even dug in the flowerbed for a worm for every container.  This year  I actually read the bag of miracle grow that suggests mixing miracle grow with your dirt in a 50/50 mix.  LIGHT BULB, this may have been what killed last year's batch -- too much food, too soon.

It pays to read the directions. 

So, even though my technique had improved, I still doubted whether I could make two seeds survive until they were big enough for the garden.  So, I planted 15 seeds.  yes.  15. hedging my bets.  surely, out of 15, 2 could live!

this is what they looked like about a week after the first one  sprouted.

I did a little pruning between the first picture and the second one.  There were a couple of seedlings that didn't have strong stems so I just plucked them.  And almost felt zero guilt about it.

This is what they looked like last week.  

I think it's safe to say I finally broke my bad luck seedling streak!  ALSO, I have way more Grandma Oliver's Green tomato plants than I need.  I am only planting 2 or maybe 3.  I told my parents I'm giving them 2.  So if anyone relatively local wants a couple, let me know.  Fried green tomatoes all summer.  yum

I'm also excited about basil and mint plants!  Plus our blackberry bushes (even though they are small) have lots of blooms.  It's a good year for the garden.