Thursday, February 12, 2009

Seed starting time


The last of the seeds I ordered this year arrived today. This was a last minute order brought about when Baker Creek was out of the Black Cherry tomatoes. A Googlesearch led me to Trade Winds Fruit, in Chula Vista CA. They had a terrific offering of things I can't grow here in Pennsylvania and I daydreamed and drooled for a while, then ordered Georgia Southern Collard Greens, Ancho and Anaheim peppers, and Cumin, along with the tomatoes.

I'm participating in One Green Generation's Growing Challenge: from seed to seed, and I am very excited. We've almost always had a garden, but I have only started from seed once-in 2005 or 2006. (I can't believe I don't remember!) Most of my starts were successful. In fact, I had a veritable sea of leeks that year. Sadly, since I couldn't bring myself to thin them out, none were larger than pencil sized at harvest, but they tasted great. I had planned to continue starting from seeds, (and of course had bought supplies to do so!) but job pressure strangled me.

Besides starting so many seeds, there's another thing I am very excited about: I will be "co-gardening" with a friend here in town, and also starting some plants for my son in St. Louis. He lives in an urban area, and will be trying some rooftop gardening in pots. Because of the location of his rooftop garden there is a greater than normal potential for the plants to dry out in the containers, so he will be using an irrigation system based on an aquarium pump and some plastic tubing.

My co-gardening friend and I had split a CSA share a year or so ago, but since we have both been separated from the same organization, and money is tight, we decided that we would just grow our own. I'm looking forward to this!

1 comment:

Melinda said...

Hooray - I'm so glad you're excited! What a wonderful thing, to start seeds for your son, too. I must say I'm really enjoying gardening with my mother. It has been 15 years since we've even lived in the same city, and now we garden together. : ) And fabulous to be gardening with a friend, too - what a great idea!