Getting Ready For Spring

Well, I went online today and order two seed catalogs. Even though I'm just going to have a container garden with three or four containers, I want to look at what I can reasonably plant. A friend posted a picture on Facebook last week showing someone growing tomatoes and the plants were growing up a trellis, now that's an idea. I may seriously consider that idea along with my containers. With my backyard being almost entirely sun during the day in the summer, hopefully the container garden will do well, plus I can put a couple on my deck. I also want to grow my own herbs and I was thinking that I have a couple of flower boxes in my basement so maybe I can plant herbs in them and buy some kind of brace so they will hang on the side of the deck.

I ordered one catalog from Seed Savers Exchange, a company whose website declares their mission to be "Our mission is to conserve and promote America's culturally diverse but endangered food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing and sharing heirloom seeds and plants". They also proclaim that all seeds in their store and catalog are untreated and non-GMO. I am looking forward to getting their catalog because that is just the type of fruits and vegetables I would like to plant. Hopefully there will be things I can plant in containers.

I also ordered a catalag from Gurney's Seed and Nursery Co. which will probably be more conventional seeds and plants, probably some genetically modified plants. But I wanted to take a look at what they had and be able to compare the two catalogs. I don't want to spend a lot of money buying seeds this year because I'm not sure what will grow, what won't, it will be trial and error this first season. I would like to have tomatoes, some kind of greens, maybe swiss chard. I'm looking at some blueberry bushes. I also want herbs. I'll have to see what the catalogs have to offer.

Luckily my mom plants cherry tomatoes and she only eats a few so I get bags and bags of them from her every summer and I eat every one. I absolutely love tomatoes. She also plants some green onions and shares them with me. There is nothing like homegrown green onions, the ones in the grocery have no taste compared to these.

Around here the last frost is usually towards the end of April and most people plant their flowers and gardens at the end of April, first part of May. I am so anxious to do it that May seems like a long way away. I know that some things can be planted before the last frost so I will really have to study up on what to plant, when.

I'm going shopping later this week to get a couple more of containers, some dirt and maybe some gardening tools. I'm starting from scratch here. Hopefully by mid summer I will be eating some food that I've grown myself.


Kathy