One of my favorite times of year has arrived – spring seed and plant catalogs have started arriving in the mail. Two that I prefer, Johnny’s Seeds and Raintree Nursery are here. We have ordered from Johnny’s before and have been very pleased with the results. Raintree is more or less local to us, located in Morton, WA. They have test growers in our climate zone so we can pick varieties that we know have done well in our area. It will be nice to add some other types of fruit to our orchard.
I have a huge list of seeds I want to order, but I guess I can’t have it all, so will have to narrow it down. We’re certainly ordering more of Johnny’s mid-sized ‘Racer’ pumpkin seeds. We got 20 beautiful medium to large pumpkins last year out of just 5 plants. The Musque de Provence we planted was interesting and grilled well - especially with some fresh rosemary, kosher salt and olive oil brushed on- so we will be planting that again too. I want to add pie pumpkins and a few varieties of winter squash this year to round out our fall harvest.
I’m considering adding ‘dry’ corn this year. It could be interesting to see how we do making our own corn meal, and how much can be produced from a small crop. I’ll just have to make sure that my corn patches are far enough apart and at the right orientation to the prevailing summer winds so that there won’t be cross pollination between the sweet and dry corn. Popcorn would be fun too, but I have to remember to take baby steps and not overwhelm us with a garden three times as big as last year’s. We need to work up to the level of production I would like to reach over a span of a few years, not all at once.
There is, of course, the drawback of having several months to wait before we can actually get out and start working the soil. It can be frustrating to look at all the glossy photographs of fruits, vegetables and flowers when the weather is so miserable. There is nothing but mud this time of year – when the ground isn’t frozen. The most irritating part of this winter so far has been the frozen crust of earth on top of the mud. A deceptive mess when you have to be outside.
For now I will have to content myself with dreaming about how nice the vegetable garden will look this year and all the flowers I want add to the beds around the house.
