I have a grow light, and I have the greenhouse window (which may not let in enough light to work for this, but I'll find out!). I have some seed-starting modules, cleaned up some small pots from garden centers, and saved a lot of plastic containers, like the ones four muffins might come in at the store. No reason to let those go to waste! I also made paper pots, which I'll set inside a dollar-store cake pan to water. I have two bags of seed-starting mix and a big bag of peat moss and a small one of perlite. With those two ingredients, I can make more seed-starting mix.
| before the first seeds went in |
Some of the vegetables I'm growing:
7 kinds of tomatoes
2 kinds of cucumber (regular and Armenian)
Japanese eggplant
Green beans
Scarlet runner beans
Peas, regular and snow
Carrots
Celery
Turnips
Onions
Potatoes--three crops of them.
Parsnips (or I'll try! They failed to germinate last year.)
3 kinds of winter squash
Yellow summer squash
Honeydew melon
And a lot of salad greens (in a few cases, they can double as stir-fry greens).
Swiss Chard, rainbow and white
Bok Choi (spring only--I learned the bug lesson last year!)
Spinach
Mache (aka corn salad)
Lettuce, leaf--four varieties
Lettuce head--"winter density" only
Strawberry spinach (can grow in summer when other greens would bolt)
Malabar spinach (can grow in summer when other greens would bolt)
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| strawberry spinach--leaves and fruit edible |
I'll also grow about eight sorts of herbs, some of which will be used to fill in the blank spots in the new perennial border. I'll likely plant them here and there in the main gardens, wherever I can find a spot, along with a few insect-repelling flowers like marigolds, edible ones like nasturtium, and a few that attract insects, like borage.
With the seed-starting, I can put some cold-hardy crops out by April 1. (It shouldn't hard freeze after then, and April 15 is the official frost-free date for me.) On June 1, I'll be doing a full harvest/tearing some of them out (peas, spinach, lettuce, bok Choi will come up), and putting in the hot-weather crops (like beans, tomatoes, eggplant, and Malabar spinach).
I have five hanging baskets, and some of them will be planted with a red currant tomato to dangle over their sides. I have three eight-gallon grow bags for yet more potatoes.
I have row covers, chicken wire, and bird netting to fight off the bunnies this year, but I suspect they'll get some of what I plant anyway unless I do them in.
Seed-starting summer crops ramps up about March 1.
| a not-quite accurate garden plan for one section |

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