It’s been a while since a gardening post. Nothing much happens in wintertime, except planning, plotting and budgeting for the spring planting campaign
Yesterday I placed our order for new seeds packs from Territorial Seed Company. Here’s what does $74.44 buys you:
- Tomatoes – Stupice, Viva Italia, Cuore di Bue, Principe Borghese, Costoluto Genovese, and Golden San Marzano.
- Squash – Eight Ball and Marina di Chioggia
- Peppers – Peperoncini, California Wonder, and Red Ruffled
- Peas – Alderman and Dakota
- Basil – Purple Ruffled, Sweet Basil, and Lemon Balm
- Swiss Chard – Bright Lights
- Pole Beans – Supermarconi and Kentucky Wonder
- Cabbage – Parel, Snow Crown
- Corn – Sugar Dots, Sugar Pearl
- Greens – Devil’s Tongue, Slo Bolt, Italian Saladini, New Zealand Spinach, Rossa di Treviso (radicchio)
All of these seeds except for NZ spinach and the Sweet Basil are new to our garden so I have no idea at all how they’ll do in our micro-climate. You might notice an Italian theme prevalent, especially with the tomatoes. Along with the figs, garlic, Stregonia pole beans and the Nero di Toscana kale, I thought it might be fun to experiment and see how well Mediterranean varieties adapt to Oklahoma weather, which is notoriously fickle.
The budget for the garden this year is a moving target. I’ve planned on planting at least 10 trees at our acreage, along with some berry bushes and grapes. The trees will be at least $250, plus another $100 for berry bushes, $100 for annual seeds and plants, and another $100 or so worth of supplies. Now, $550 seems like a lot, except that trees and bushes are a long-term investment, producing fruit for years to come. As for the annuals, I’ve written before about the incredible returns on investment from seeds and gardening, here, here and here.
I’ve finally convinced Mrs. 101 to let us set up a germinating station in the study/guest room, with the condition that it’ll be gone in a couple months. Seems that wire shelves, grow lights and worm bins clash with the décor. This weekend I’ll be kicking in the seed-starting activities into high gear. We’re still covered up to our ears in snow, so no traveling out to our country acreage, which got 25 inches (!!!) of snow yesterday.
Readers, what are your plans for this spring and summer? Are you thinking about trying anything new and ambitious?
Photo credit: Eleonora Baldwin @ Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino .
I may try my hand at a gardening this year as well. I had a pretty good size garden many years ago, but got rapped up in kids and all their demands and it all slipped away.
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Hi Biz, I never get tired of saying how relaxing and rewarding an activity this is. I hope you get enough time to get one started.
I have never thought of having my own garden, as I don’t really have the time or desire. However, when I read posts like this, it makes me curious and see the possibilities. It sounds like you get a lot of bang for your buck.
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Hi Shawn, lots of reasons to grow something. For years, I was only interested in growing herbs … strictly the culinary kind, that is. I couldn’t imagine summer without fresh pesto and basil/mozzarella/tomato appetizers and sandwiches. But I had absolutely no luck with anything else, until I got semi-serious with a raised bed. I got so many peppers and tomatoes that year that I was giving them away by the sackful. Since then, it’s become a great hobby… besides a heck of a foody return on investment.
My dream is to have a vegetable garden. Unfortunately I live in a very small, few square-foot apartment without even a terrace or balcony!
I would be a wonderful home farmer, planting seasonal and local varieties, and harvesting my own produce, and thus cutting on the weekly shopping basket.
So in the meantime, before my dream comes true, I’m looking into starting a community garden, while supporting my local CSA.
Wonderful post, thank you so much for the precious information.
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Hi Eleonora, thanks for stopping by.
Great stuff that you have a local CSA to belong to. In our area, the one lone CSA is too far away, but we try to support local producers through the food Co-op and farmer’s markets. The taste and quality of home-grown produce just can’t be beat.
I am so excited for my garden 101! I have strawberries and raspberries on the side of the house, blueberries in the front, and I will have tomatoes, cukes and green beans in the back.
I think the amount you plan to spend is incredibly reasonable.
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Wow, Kris, sounds like a great plan. You’ll have to post pictures on progress. I have two blue berry bushes in large pots. Come this spring, we’re going to transplant them into a permanent spot.
My husband and I are sitting down this weekend to make a list of the seeds we need to get. We seed swap with friends and family which make it a bit cheaper.
This is our first year setting up an indoor seed station. I’ll email you the link to what we did once Michael gets it posted on his blog. He’s out right now at the Restore picking up florescent light fixtures so we can expand. It’s been lots of fun with the seed station. We’ve done mostly sunflower sprouts for salads.
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Molly, Look forward to seeing pictures of the seed station. I haven’t tried sunflower sprouts, sticking mostly to broccoli, alfalfa and wheat berries. There’s a Restore here, but unfortunately it’s at the other side of town. Very cool place.
A fig tree? That’s going to be tough with all the snow. We had a small fig tree at our rental home and I loved it. Nothing beat fresh figs from the tree.
Our condo has a community garden. We probably are going to start it next month. Last year we put down a bunch of tomatoes, but most of them didn’t ripen.
I’m going to ask for more sugar snap peas this year. Those are good in stir fries.
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RB40, fig trees are surprisingly hardy. The variety I have is “Petit Negri”, it’s able to die back to ground level, and come back with new growth ever year. I covered the pot with several layers of straw and hay to insulate the roots, and it seems to be doing OK, even covered in snow. My parent’s place back in the old country is up in the hills, with occasional snow and sub-zero weather. There’s an old fig tree that we think is more than 60 years old, and it’s survived just fine.
That’s great that you have a community garden. I and another person started one last year back of our subdivision, in a little green belt. We started a little too late, but built several raised beds and planted one plum tree. This year I think we’ll get a better response.
Sugar snap peas are awesome. They’re sometimes so sweet it’s like eating candy.
Surprised she let you get away with the germinating station.
There’s something I like about the idea of having one own’s garden, but living in a condo there’s not much place to do it. I was sad at having to toss out our small avocado tree grown from an avocado seed we planted… it couldn’t take the flaky heat of our old apartment and withered away.
Hopefully we have some more success in the future.
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Kevin, I was too. I think the “compromise” just means that I’ll have to part with a couple pounds of flesh come Valentine’s Day. I’ll probably have to accompany the Mrs. to a fabric store — gaaack!
I intend to do *something* this spring (I’m an absolute newbie!) so these tips are very useful, especially the links!
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Hi MC – lots of luck in the spring.
My big gardening activities for this spring will be pumpkins. Just a few though as we don’t have much land. Maybe I’ll even sneak a few seeds to my partents house (they have plenty of land…).
Say, whatever you have in the bowl in the picture looks like a cross between a tomato (or a red pepper) and a pumpkin! Very distinct look!
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Hi MR – we’re going to try some pumpkins too. A couple of years ago I planted some under the rose arbor, and they went nuts, climbing all over Mrs. 101′s roses. I don’t think I’ve heard the end of that one yet. In fact, vegetables are permanently banned from the Mrs’ flower beds, except for pretty flowering herbs.
The tomatoes in the photo are Costoluto Genovese. Costoluto translates into “ribbed” (costola = rib)
Anything involving a garden is an experiment over at my house
I’d love to see how you set up your grow room. There’s no place here to get heirloom seedlings, so we’ll need to learn to sprout our own if we’re ever going to have them.
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Hi LG – as soon as the setup is done I’ll post a few pictures. There’s a nursery around here that will stock unusual and heirloom varieties, but it’s a pricey way to go. We splurged on a couple of occasions there last year, enough to not want to do it again. Much cheaper to do it from seed.
I’m hoping to set up a patio garden this spring and summer – but I’m going to focus on herbs since our patio is fairly small and my container will have to follow suit. At our old rental house, we had many fig trees abut didn’t really appreciate them as much as we should have – the figs just ended up getting smooshed into the ground. Thankfully, our climate is more Mediterranean and temperate all year long which gives us a long growing season. Good luck with your new varieties.
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Hi Little House, thanks for stopping by. A patio garden of herbs is a great idea — basil, basil, and more basil, rosemary, thyme and oregano…. Nasturtiums are also great to grown on a patio, its flowers and leaves excellent and peppery in a salad….
I generally like Oklahoma weather, but all this snow is getting on our nerves. Time for spring, already!
I miss my garden. We used to rent a house with a big yard that we used for our square foot gardening, now we live in an apartment. I could have a patio garden, but last year everything was destroyed by the squirrels. So I am not spending any money now. Have you looked at any local seed exchanges? Those societies/places a lot of heirloom seeds for free/very cheap. I still get those catalogs, love them.
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Evil squirrels! I can empathize with missing a garden.
We got some free plants last year from the county extension. This year I’m going to try and organize a plant swap with the other community gardens.
Very cool post 101 Centavos! I’ll be excited to follow along with your economic analysis of how the gardening investments pay off in decreasing expenses for food in the long run!
Also – do you have email subscriptions enabled on your feed? I’d like to follow you that way, but couldn’t find that option on the link.
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Hi Jake, thanks for stopping by. I haven’t enabled an email button (yet), but I do have an RSS feed. Drop me an email if it doesn’t work.
What a great mixture that looks like!! I tried starting seedlings once and did not do so good. Most likely because apartment living is not conducive to such an endeavor
Looking forward to hearing how the garden grows !!
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Hi Deidre – I understand about apartment living. It’s easy to say “window box!”, but not so easy to do, for example, on the 30th floor of a high rise with plate glass windows.
Hi from Italy 101,
your going Italian in your vegetable garden is really fantastic.
Beside from tomatoes, also italian zucchini are very easy to grow and wanderfull to taste. May I suggest tondo di Piacenza, an early courgette which is almost perfectly spherical. Very productive, with pretty fruits which look good on the plant and on the plate. And for another formely Italian, now French try Tondo di Nizza, a heirloom zucchini, grown for generations. The succulent, tender flesh is at its peak while the fruits are still less than 7.5cm (3″) in diameter.
Have fun,
Mallo2011
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Hi Mallo,
Tondo di Piacenza looks like the “eight ball” squash variety form Territorial Seed. I’ve got it on my list for the second order, but I’m afraid I’ll have the same lousy luck with squash that I had last year. My back yard is infested with squash vine borers, terrible little grubs from hell. But, since gardeners are supposed to be eternal optimists, I’m going to try it. Thanks for the tip on the Tondo di Nizza, I’m going to try and see if I can find some seeds. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.