Start small? No thanks.

When we first started talking about growing squash, Mike asked me repeatedly if I also wanted to try starting a small veggie garden. No, no, I said. Squash is already pretty ambitious given the number of varieties we want to grow. A vegetable garden would really be pushing it.

That was before I started looking at seed catalogs. If you've never read a seed catalog, well, don't unless you want to start a garden. The way that the text described different vegetables was incredibly seductive. How could I resist "over the rainbow" carrots praised for color and taste? Or purple bell peppers? What about apple green eggplant? Yes, please. And so it went, until I'd planned out quite a large "beginners" vegetable garden.

All of the gardening books that I read, and there were many, began with the same instruction. Start small. You can always plant more next year. I read this, and promptly ignored it. I've decided that I'm really in a different category than most beginning vegetable gardeners. While it's true, yes, that I lack any type of vegetable garden experience, what I do have is time. I'm leaving my big girl city jobs and taking the summer off. So this huge garden is something that I'm expecting, and wanting, to take a considerable amount of time and attention. My garden is going to be my summer job, and hopefully during my time out planting, weeding, watching, and harvesting I'll be able to figure out what I'm going to do next with my life. Also, I have some truly wonderful neighbors who've agreed to help me.

Lastly, I'm just not the kind of girl who starts small with anything.

So, as of now, the plan for the garden includes:

Provider Bush Green Beans
Cascadia Sugar Snap Peas
Sugarsnap Snap Peas (at the time I ordered them, there was a reason why I had to have two varieties. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what that reason is)
Patty Pan Summer Squash
8 Ball Zucchini Squash
Purple Beauty Sweet Pepper
Garden Peach Tomato
Heirloom Tomato Mix
Applegreen Eggplant
Mesclun mix lettuce
Arugula
Bright Lights Chard
Over the Rainbow Carrot Mix
Chioggia Beet
Watermelon Radish
Evergreen Hardy White Scallion
Parsley
Genovese Basil
Thai Basil
Chives

Sweet Dumpling Winter Squash
Spaghetti Squash
Uncle David's Dakota Dessert Winter Squash
Nutty Delica Winter Squash
Lumina Pumpkin
Rouge d'tampes Pumpkin
Candy Roaster Winter Squash
Giant Pumpkin (because at this point, why not?)