You Grow Girl™

Azalea -- Gainesville Florida

I am so proud of myself! This year, for the first time in years, I am on time with my seed starting. Woo hoo! Last week I found out the glorious news that I have a small plot in a garden in my neighbourhood. I am beyond excited about this. Finally I can get back to growing some veggies in soil. I haven't grown veggies in soil since 1994. Of course this news has sent me into a flurry of activity and my usual tendency to "overdo it" is out of control. On Sunday afternoon I walked over to check the size of the plot and it's pretty small -- but I'm not complaining! It's a huge improvement over what I'm usually dealing with.

The first thing I did was buy a heated seed starting dome. I decided to take the plunge and see if the heated bottom is really worth the extra cash. And by extra cash I mean $30.00 CDN which is a pretty big leap. We'll see.

I spent the last few days making and remaking mental lists of everything I want to grow. Then I went over the seeds I currently had on hand, looked them up online to see what others had to say, and asked Davin, friends... anyone who'd listen what they thought. My main objective is tomatoes. Over the last year I've collected quite a list of heirloom seeds and breaking it down to the essentials has been difficult. My plan is to try teepees as my staking method. I'm going to do (hopefully) two teepees and grow the tomatoes around it. My current list stands at:

Silver Fir Tree +
Sunrise III +
Purple Tomatillo
Black Krim
Cherokee Purple
Purple Prince
Anna's Russian
Yellow Pear
Black Plum
Lemon Boy
Banana Legs*
Yellow Perfection*
Evergreen*

* indicates varieties I am unsure about but started seeds anyways with the plan to give them away if there isn't enough space
+ indicates plants to be grown in containers on deck

My second priority is peppers. I have a few varieties that I collected that sound interesting. A brown bell pepper called 'Sweet Chocolate' was purchased at Seedy Saturday and two other sweet heirlooms 'kavalerovo' and 'chervena chujski' were freebees sent by Faith.

I also plan to make some room for ground cherries. During the early days, when the plants are small and space between plants is abundant, I plan to fill up the gaps with fast growing greens like arugula and mizuna. I am going to surround the garden with beneficial attracting herbs such as dill and cilantro. I'm not sure what else yet as I'm not entirely sure how much space will be available.

Tonight I am in the process of finishing up my seed starting. I haven't even begun to deal with cucumbers (a bush variety to be grown on the deck) and basil. Those can wait a bit yet so I don't feel rushed. Don't even ask me how I managed to move the houseplants and free up space on the grow light shelves in order to fit the huge seed starting tray.