Thinking "Garden" When it's 7° Outside

It was 7° yesterday morning when we woke up. As I sat in the office gulping my coffee, I looked out the window and saw our snow-covered garden...

It's hardly prime planting land at the moment, but good planning (and dreaming) land! :-) It's cold outside right now, but my seed catalog has me dreaming of warmer spring days and delightful summer harvests.

This past summer was our first-ever "full-sized" garden. We had no idea what we were doing, but we did a lot of reading and basically threw some seeds in dirt in the basement, got plants started with the help of a grow light, transplanted them to the prepared back yard, and then harvested when the time was right.

Overall I would call our garden a "success". We planted red and yellow tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow onions, green bell peppers, cauliflower and broccoli (flops on both accounts), lettuce, leeks, celery, watermelon, canaloupe, potatoes (which were dug up by a four-legged animal), and pumpkins (my favorite crop!).

We're planning on scaling back just a bit this year and going a little smaller. I still want to do tomatoes, but this time I want to plant small "snack-sized" tomatoes. I'm looking at the Tomato Sugar Snack Hybrid or the Tomato Christmas Grapes or the Tomato Super Sweet 100 Hybrid - all from Burpee. I certainly want to plant lettuce again (last year we planted Igloo which got bad reviews but we had/have nothing but praise after growing it) and will try peppers and cucumbers once more. The final garden plant will be pumpkins (we saved seeds from our own pumpkins and they worked great).

Some of last summer's produce - cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes

On the deck I'm planning on growing onions (that link takes you to the onions I grew last year, but I think I'd rather grow these or these this year) and possibly leeks in pots as they don't need a lot of "deep" space. I'm still using my leeks from last summer as I read that you could wrap them (and onions) in aluminum foil and stick them in the fridge and they will keep for months. Well, let me tell you...they do! I'll also be growing small pots of Thyme, Sage, Oregano, and Rosemary which I use when I cook.

If you're interested in starting plants from seed, I had great success with the seeds I purchased from Burpee online. We also started composting last summer and this fall, Peter made a compost barrel out of a trashcan and he has been collecting the worm juice from it all winter. We should have some healthy, happy plants this summer! :-)

What are you planning on growing this summer? Do you start plants from seeds or go to your local Lowe's or greenhouse to buy plants?