What's Growing On!

Before starting my garden this year, I needed to decide how and what I wanted to grow. The first question I asked myself was if  I wanted to buy seedlings or start from seed. Last year, I started from seeds and everything turned out great, although I did buy a few interesting seedlings to round out my garden at The Mustard Seed seedling sale. I also found that by growing from seeds I was able to grow quite a few varieties of tomatoes and peppers that aren't readily available at your local garden center. With this in mind I made the decision to grow from seeds again this year. Last year I grew all my plants from Hawthorn Farm seeds, which I also bought at The Mustard Seed. Since I had almost a 100% germination rate, I decided to use their seeds again this year, plus they have some AWESOME sounding heirloom varieties that I wanted to try. While I had a few packets of seeds left over from last year and I figure they should still be good (crossing fingers and toes), I had to figure out how to buy the rest of my seeds, as The Mustard Seed doesn't carry all their varieties. While I was tempted to order online, the Hamilton Community Garden Network was helping to run a Seedy Saturday at a local church on February 28th and Hawthorn Farms was one of the vendors attending. I headed on down with money in hand and I was not disappointed.

If you can't tell, I'm really excited!

Seedy Saturday was full of amazing community groups and fantastic, knowledgeable vendors and I walked away exceedingly happy but $80.00 poorer. I also was able to snag a clove of garlic that I was told has been grown in Hamilton at Dundurn Castle since the 1800's. Being the history geek and amateur grower that I am, I could barely wait for it to be put in my hands!

SPECIAL GARLIC!!!

I know that I will probably grow my garden WAY too big and have WAY too many kinds of plants. However, variety is the spice of life so I am going to grow as many plants as I possibly can. My grow list for my garden this year is as follows:

TOMATOES                         PEPPERS

The whole seed shebang!

Black Cherry                         Tam Jalapeno

Siberian Red                          Hungarian Hot Wax

San Marzano                          Early Jalapeno

Golden Cherry                       Matchbox Hot Pepper

Cherokee Purple                    Sweet Banana 

Black Krim                            Aleppo

Jaune Flamme                        Chinese 5 Colour

Cosmonaut Volkov                Hungarian Black 

Gardener's Delight                 Cayenne

Druzba                                    Corbaci Sweet 

Old German                            Jimmy Nardello Sweet 

Opalka                            

Speckled Roman                     CUCUMBERS 

Black Prince                            Homemade Pickle 

Eva Purple Ball                       Lemon Cucumber

Farenheit Blue                         Marketmore 76

Djeena Lee Golden Girl          Mexican Gherkin

Valencia 

Violet Jasper                            EGGPLANT

Indigo Rose                              Black Beauty 

Polish Linguisa

Amish Paste

Black Pineapple

Blondkopfchen

Yellow Pear

Chadwick Cherry

Looking back over this list I have now just realized that I have committed myself to growing 26 different kinds of tomatoes, 11 different kinds of peppers, 4 cucumbers and an eggplant. Plus I still haven't made it to any seedling sales so this number is likely to grow!! YIKES!

I guess my garden is going to be bigger than last year and this after I promised I would downsize! C'es la vie! I can't wait to start growing this year and hopefully I will be eating and sharing a lot of fresh vegetables!