I love looking at seed catalogs. Poring over the descriptions of seemingly endless varieties of beans, tomatoes, squash, carrots, beets, lettuce....it's just very exciting. And now that I have a year of gardening under my belt, the selection process is at least marginally less intimidating. I have a better handle on the amount of seeds that I need, and what plants work for me, and which ones don't. So last night, Mike and I sat down with the Fedco catalog and chose our 2012 crop. It's not the complete farming plan, as I'll be buying pepper, eggplant, and cauliflower seedlings at the farmer's market come spring, but it's a pretty comprehensive blueprint of what the 2012 garden will look like. Even more exciting, since Taperman gave me the fantastic Christmas gift of a Fedco gift certificate, we aren't spending much on the seeds! And farming does truly bring out your frugal side, so saving money on seeds is just delightful. At any rate, here's the 2012 lineup:
Potatoes - we're trying out four different types this year, and for a twist from last year, we plan on actually labeling the beds so we know what's what. I put Mike in charge of potato selection, and he chose the Rose Finn Apple fingerling, Sangre (red-skinned) early harvest, Adirondack Red (mid-season harvest, red skins and pink(!) flesh), and German Butterball (yellow) late harvest. Hopefully with this group, we'll have a nice long harvest of a variety of potatoes. And again, we're going to label the beds. And I'm going to try to attack the potato bug eggs early in the season so that I don't have to deal with so many nasty potato bugs this year.
Green beans - we both loved having fresh green beans last year, so I'm branching out our bean options this year. Since we now have a good sized chest freezer, I'm hopefull that we can freeze a good portion of the harvest to use through the fall and winter. Once again, we're growing the Provider green beans that produced so well last year, and we're also adding a haricot verts crop, and a pole bean multi-colored mix, to see if pole beans truly are tastier than bush beans.
Sugar snap peas - we loved these so much last year, and this year we are going to try to make a better effort to actually get two plantings in the ground so that we can enjoy more.
Cucumbers - after giving me a hard time for picking a fancy cucumber instead of a regular cucumber, Mike made the bold choice of Poona Kheera cukes, a brown cucumber from India. Hmmm. We're also going to try a pickling cucumber.
Zucchini - I'm just growing one type of summer squash this year, the Costata Romanesca zucchini, which is supposed to have a sweet almost nutty flavor and prolific blossoms (even though I did say that the squash blossoms were overrated last year).
Winter Squash - I had to put a lot of thought into the winter squash selection. Last year was disapointing for squash, and I do have the squash lady down the street so growing a wide variety of squash isn't really necessary. But I just couldn't face not growing any squash, so after much internal debate, I chose two varieties for next year. The first is sweet mama, a buttercup variety with dense, sweet, dry flesh that I mostly chose for the name, and the second is uncle david's dakota dessert squash - that was one that I tried this past year without success, but my one surviving seedling tried so very hard to grow that I want to give it another chance. This year the winter squash will be in the main garden, so I hope that will help me be a more attentive squash farmer.
Carrots - two kinds this year, and I'm actually resisting the multicolor carrots in favor of two varieties that are supposed to be tastier. I'm taking this as a sign I may be maturing as a gardener. But if they aren't significantly better than the multicolored carrots, I'm going back to the colors for 2013.
Beets - the Chioggia beets were a huge hit last year, so we're doing those again along with a crop of golden beets.
Scallions - I was less bad at growing scallions than I was at onions, and it is very handy to have scallions always on hand, so they made the cut again this year. I'm still on the fence about onion sets - I think I'll make that decision after I start doing out the garden plan, to see if I'll have space for them.
Lettuce - we're going with three different kinds this year, a mesclun mix, a greens mix, and arugula. But this year, lettuce won't have a dedicated bed; instead, I'll interplant them early in other beds, to harvest before they bolt.
Broccoli - I ordered a broccoli blend that should mature over the season. I'm planning on direct seeding these guys, so I don't have terribly high hopes. I may buy some broccoli seedlings come spring to hedge my bets a bit.
Tomatoes - last year, the heirloom mix as kind of fun, but it was confusing not to know what we were working with. So this year, I chose a paste variety for canning/sauce, sun gold cherry tomatoes for snacking, salads, and oven drying, and a slicing variety for sandwiches. We should be able to keep these straight. These I will start from seed in April (when the baby arrives), so cross your fingers for the tomato crop.
Herbs - the only herb seed I ordered was basil, since last year the basil that I started from seed did just as well as the basil from seedlings. The mints and chives should come back, and I'll buy seedlings for parsley, oregano, and thyme. NO catnip for 2012.
So there we have it! I still have to do up the garden plan to figure out where everything will go, but since I used the mother earth news planner last year, it should be fairly straightforward to determine how the crops should rotate. The garlic, asparagus, rhubarb and perennial herbs are already in the ground, and of course, we don't need to construct the garden, so I do have a bit of a leg up from last year. Now this baby just needs to be a good farmer, and we'll be in business!
I knew you wouldn't be able to not grow squash....
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