Welcome to a new planting season.  Wait?  What?  Isn’t it January?  I’m wondering if you have your seeds ordered yet?  I ordered mine last August for fear of my previous encounter with late arriving seeds.

With any luck the 2010 Sprouting Off garden will be bigger and better than ever.  Trick is, we have little money to build the garden with.  In addition, a portion of our garden space might be unusable this year with the addition of a new member of our family.  In December we were gifted (a wanted) 8 week old Boxer-Mastiff puppy.  She is now 3 months old and thinks the raised beds in the back are her personal play area.  We have plans to add a gate to our back arbor, but that may not happen in time for the first planting.

In any case the garden must go in and we must do it on the tightest budget possible.  Instead of putting in the whole garden all at once we are doing it piece by piece.  Hopefully at the beginning of March we can add all of the gravel paths and then just fill in around them as the season gets started.  Next week I’ll share the drawing of what the side garden will look like.  In the mean time, I’ll share my list of seeds for 2010.  Some are the same as last year and some are new to us this year.

Lettuce:
Buttercrunch
Flame
Salad Bowl
Tango
Yugoslavian Red Buttercrunch

Giant Thick Leafed Spinach

Winter Squash:
Sweet Potato
Cheyenne Bush Pumpkin
Rouge Vif d’ Etampes Pumpkin
Amish Pie Pumpkin

Summer Squash:
Straita de Italia
Yellow Crookneck

Giant Musselburg Leek
Early Snowball Cauliflower
Arugula
Yellow Sweet Spanish Onion
Melitopolski Watermelon
Golden Acre Cabbage
American Purple Top Rutabaga
Hollow Crown Parsnip

Cucumbers:
Lemon
Mexican Sour Gherkin
Boston Pickling

Beets:
Ruby Queen
Bull’s Blood

Cilantro

These are just the seeds I’ve ordered. This does not include the lettuce, broccoli, pumpkins, squash, peas, beans, corn or carrots I already have. Nor does it include the few plants I will buy like tomatoes and peppers. In addition, we will be adding a few perennial items to the mix. We have a few, but some need replacing. We will add horseradish, artichokes, raspberries and asparagus and replace strawberries and blueberries. Next year we may add a few fruit trees if the budget will allow. Those will hopefully take the place of the raised beds in the back.

In a nutshell it is an ambitious goal for the season. I know it will keep us busy and full of good food.