February Foiled

A friend once told me to never make any major life decisions during the month of February - when cabin fever makes you (irrationally) think about changing pretty much everything in your life (like hair styles and color, living room arrangements, job situations). Instead, he said to hold tight 'till spring, when things (almost) always look better, brighter and more manageable.

A few distractions to bring us 'round to spring then? Yes!

I spent time during yesterday's lunch hour buying seed starting stuff - for our cold frame experiment - greens and lettuce. I'll just be setting the flats in our south facing windows. I found the perfect spray bottle, too - so Willa can help with the watering.

A Hoya plant. I cleaned out a few very tired, beat-up, defeated houseplants over the past few weeks and have room for a new tenant.

Forced bulbs. The more, the merrier. The sooner, the better.

Innisfree is selling plants this year! My checklist includes borage for our herb garden, Green Envy zinnias, chocolate mint, hollyhocks, elderberry, woodland phlox and tomatoes - Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, German Johnson and Mortgage Lifter. It was difficult not checking off *every* offering.

I'm talking about container veggie gardens, seed bombs and (next week) figs over at Virginia Living Magazine's blog.

Not really related to gardening, but making February a little brighter:

I'm making a ragdoll for Willa's birthday. She pretty much always has some soft little creature in her arms lately. I'm especially excited about all the clothing I can make for the doll and how I can embroider the face.

Have I mentioned The Snowman here, yet? We have been watching it a lot during our snow days - though our copy is VHS and it is starting to give up the ghost. It is all music, no dialogue. It's magic.

I'm getting ready to start my first Edna O'Brien book. I'm actually not sure this will be so uplifting as probably more moody and Irish.

This chicken and biscuits recipe is a nice stout meal for winter days. I've been making it for years now and was happy to see Willa loving it, too, this season. Ina tends to have a heavy hand with the butter and cream - so I cut the butter in half and replace it with olive oil and it totally works.

This baby silhouette tutorial is so quick and easy. After capturing Willa's, I'm thinking of lining up the three hounds for their own personal sessions.

Spring Dreaming :: Seed Order!

Let's get back to gardening, shall we then?

I'm going for more of a potager-kitchen garden this year. With lots of varieties of things plugged in next to each other in the raised beds (or, um possibly, raised bed - singular). Do-able, afford-able, diverse-a-fiable. (Is that even a word? No matter.)

My new favorite, zippy way to order seeds? My Victory Garden heirloom seeds through Etsy (photos above are from their site). For some reason, detailed order forms that needed to be filled out by hand weren't doing it for me. I am also going out to lunch to pick up the rest of my seeds (beets, spinach, snap peas) - from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange - at a local Charlottesville spot - Integral Yoga. (You can mail order them here.) The SESE has a killer seed starting chart at the front of their online catalog.

My Victory Garden order (all of these can be sown directly into the ground) . . .

Dwarf Green Pod Okra
Champion Radishes
Provider Bush Green Beans (*Easy Grow Choice)
Chantenay Carrot Seeds
Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce (*Easy Grow Choice)
Cimmaron Red Romaine Lettuce
Georgia Southern Collards
Southern Giant Curled Mustard

What I'm Buying As Starts (sometime in April . . . )

Melons
Tomatoes
Peppers
Eggplant
Basil, Chives, Parsley, Dill

And Some Possible (Easy, Non-Vegetable) Edibles . . .

Juneberries
Mulberries
Raspberries

Local Color: Seeds from TJ's Gardens

Yes, from high upon the mount, Monticello, down, down, down to my humble garden. The Center for Historic Plants at Monticello sells seeds that are direct descendants from Thomas Jefferson's own gardens. It is good to know I can buy myself a bit of class, thrown in with a bit of history. Makes for a good story in the garden.

I picked these up during an outing with Kris, her little boy, Will, and Willa. We walked the Thomas Jefferson Parkway up, up, up to Monticello and saw that they had plants for sale, as well as a tempting selection of seeds.

Not one to walk away from a seed rack empty handed, I am testing out . . .

Hollyhock (Alcea rosea) - "In a Garden Book entry in 1782, Thomas Jefferson noted that his Monticello hollyhocks flowered from mid-June through July. These seeds were harvested from Monticello hollyhocks, which produce four to seven (!) foot spikes of single flowers in shades of pink, with occasional white, yellow and red blooms."

Blackberry Lily (Belamcanda chinesis) - "Jefferson planted 'Chinese Ixia' in an oval flower bed in 1807. It grows to three feet with showy orange flowers in mid-summer and blackberry like seeds in September."

'Caseknife' Pole Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) - "The Caseknife pole bean is one of the oldest documented bean varieties in American gardens, dating to the 1820's."

No where near Monticello? No problem. You can buy them online here.

Easy Peasy Spring Vegetable Crops

Seed sellers Southern Exposure Seed Exchange already have their seed packets sprouting up around town. I have seen them at both Rebecca's Natural Foods and Integral Yoga.

You can also order the catalog here.

What's so spectacular about SESE?

1. They are local - so you are buying seeds that do well in our area. This cuts back severely on the first-time gardener frustration factor.

2. They sell organic heirlooms. Enough said.

3. Their catalog ROCKS. At the front, is a sowing/transplanting guide that is nothing short of a thing of beauty. Clear information on best sowing dates and times specific to our area. No math skills needed; no counting backwards necessary. Seasoned and newbie gardeners will find it helpful. Get the catalog or view last year's catalog in .pdf format on their website (the planting chart is on page 3).

If you are thinking about trying out vegetable gardening for the first time, early spring is an ideal season to start. The crops are easy to sow and harvest and are so thoroughly appreciated after a long winter. The seed varieties I recommend from SESE that have yet to let me down:

Long Standing Bloomsdale Spinach
Black-Seeded Simpson Lettuce
Red Salad Bowl Lettuce
Cherry Belle Radishes
Sugar Snap Peas

These can all be sown directly into your garden. No indoor seed starting and no transplanting. Mixed all together, they make one of the best salads around. A spring tonic of sorts. Go. For. It.

Heirloom Seed Catalogs Abound!

Some women drool over shoes. Some over bags. Some over jewels.

I (obviously) fall into the category of women who drool over plants and, during this time of year, seed catalogs. I call it plant porn. Cause I'm dorky like that.

Thanks to Janet of the Piedmont Garden Swap for this link to a listing of heirloom seed purveyors from around the nation.

We're talking Colonial Williamsburg; the Victorian old-school vibe of R.H. Shumway's (pictured above); hundreds of different heirloom tomato varieties from Heirloom Tomatoes; The Victory Seed Company; and locals Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and The Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.

One caveat: Some of the direct links to catalogs are dated or dead, but there are enough on this list to keep one busy.

So . . . we all need more seed catalogs, right? Right.

And it is important to support and grow heirlooms. Again, right? Hell. Yeah.

An Experiment: Growing Corn in Raised Beds

If I pull this one off, I will be absolutely beside myself with glee.

The thought of fresh corn, from my own garden, seems to be on the level of another vegetable gardening stratosphere. So unattainable. But, like any garden junkie, I always think this year will be different.

I did a little research and here is what I am testing out.

In a 5'-wide raised bed, I measured out four rows across - leaving one foot between each. I then planted length-wise (another 5' or so) - again, leaving one foot between each planting. From what I understand, this should take care of the necessary cross-pollination for corn to grow and should work for a hobby-sized planting.

I planted an heirloom variety - Stowell's Evergreen White Corn from Heirloom Acres. Here is what they had to say about this variety, "Introduced in 1848 by Nathan Stowell of New Jersey, this is the king of white sweet corn. Just plain delicious sweet corn taste on 9" ears with 16-20 rows of plump, white kernels. Matures slowly over a long period, extending the harvest. I can't say enough about this one." Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa. Is it August yet?!

I am shamelessly mooning over corn-inspired recipes and thinking about parties centered around fresh shucked and grilled corn.

It's all about the zen visualizations. Sow the corn. Be the corn. Butter the corn. Eat the corn.

And if that doesn't work. Buy the corn. At the market, er, um, down the road.

And revisit and replot next year. As per usual.

Seed Lust - Part IV - Well, Well

Heirloom Acres Seeds
Over 700 varieties of heirloom vegetable, herb and flower seeds, books, cover crops
http://www.heirloomacresseeds.com/

Looky, looky here. No. Self. Control. Sir Otis is pictured with my most recent seed packet booty.

I feel an intervention coming on. I can rationalize this act of horticultural debauchery by arguing that it will ultimately be a source of food for us - but we all know it runs a little deeper than that. This e-commerce racket will be my undoing.

I was drawn to Heirloom Acres Seeds for two reasons - 1. Access to an incredible selection of heirloom variety flowers and vegetables and; 2. The $.95 mini-packs.

Heirloom seeds are open-pollinated varieties (think of birds and bees handling the pollination bit) that have roots in an earlier time and an original seed. Some say pre-1951 is the cut off. Growing heirlooms is moving away from the monoculture trend in today's agriculture - i.e. grow the same dependable hybrids over and over. Instead, with heirlooms, you have more varieties and you will be sustaining the future of each heirloom vegetable through growing and nurturing them in your own garden.

Some of my newly arrived heirlooms (heart racing as I write this) - Stowells Evergreen White Sweet Corn, Bronze Mignonette Lettuce, Caribe Red(dish) Potatoes, and (drumroll) The Best in Taste Tomato Sampler - which includes - Black Prince, Brandywine Pink, Cherokee Purple, Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italia and Yellow Marble. I must say, the smaller packets for $.95 help me screw up the courage to try something new without having hundred of seeds to feel accountable for . . .

On that note, join me (laugh at me?) as I also try to grow asparagus and rhubarb in the Piedmont. Guffaws are welcome . . .