Gardening Edit: Entry 1 – Early Spring

OMG I am so excited for the upcoming growing season! You could say I wet my plants hahah. Ok, no. I am sorry for that. Anyways, in true Jacki style, I dove right in. While I know that we won’t have our vegetable garden to the size where it would provide all our veggies for the year, we have to start somewhere. So I am starting with what I know we love and use so much of. Here are the fruits and vegetables we are growing this year:

• Tomatoes
  • Black Cherry
  • Roma
  • Slicing (can’t remember the name!)
• Cucumbers
  • Pickling (boston pickling)
  • Slicing (Marketmore)
• Peppers
  • Jalapeno
  • Banana peppers
  • Cayenne
  • Assorted bell peppers
• Pumpkin
  • sugar pie
  • Jaradale
  • porcelain doll
• Sugar Snap peas
• Shelling peas
• Beans
  • Pinto
  • Black
  • Jacob’s Cattle
  • Garbanzo
• Onions

These will keep up busy this summer! I am already have the tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers in soil blocks, I put them in 1.5 inch soil blocks and am planning on potting them up into a 4 inch soil block. The reason I decided on the large blocker versus pots is I think over time the soil block will save us money and we won’t be using so much plastic. I plan on using the recipe from The seasonal homestead, as there are specific amounts, and I don’t know how to translate the recipe from Eliot Coleman’s book.

We are in Zone 7b so our last frost is around mid April, I am worried I started too soon but I can always plant more! We sourced our seeds from multiple locations, Johnny’s seeds, Marias Heirloom, and Rare Seeds. I had ordered some from etsy, but was unhappy with the packaging and information I recieved. The packets of seeds only had the very generic name of a seed with no other information, so I won’t be sharing that source.

I am going to start the 4×4 soil blocks and will be back when that is all done. Oh and Ryan is going to be making me some soil trays this weekend so I look forward to that!