Ordering Seeds and Crowns

It is so exciting to finally start ordering things.  Last week we received our comfrey seeds we'd ordered from Thompson & Morgan and ordered our siberian pea and black cohosh seeds from Turtle Gaby.  Those were small orders and everything in them was companion plants and boarder plants.  Yesterday we placed our orders for the edible in-garden stuff.  So many exciting and beautiful plants!

From Johnny Seed we are getting artichoke and lettuce seeds.  Forest found the blog The Urban Ton Project, and was thrilled when he read about how they were growing artichokes in Minneapolis.  So we have those on the way.  And I have dreams of lettuce lining the path to the chicken coop and being able to harvest a massive amount of greens for a salad every night.  Yum!

Seed Savers Exchange is where we placed our largest order.  Squash, tomatoes, peppers, herbs and so much more.  I love ordering from them!  Heirloom plants are so stunning and they taste so good!

Seed orders are exciting, but my heart really started pumping when we ordered the asparagus and strawberry crowns.  Seeds can be stored in a box and postponed for a year if it's just not the right time.  Crowns. on the other hand, can not.  We ordered our asparagus from Seeds Of Change.  30 of the Jersey Knight and 30 of the Sweet Purple.  I'm all about variety... and asparagus. :)  I have been looking forward to starting our patch for years now and I am thrilled that this will be the year it gets in the ground.  Even though I know we wont be able to harvest for a while.  But boy, in two years, we will be living in asparagus bliss!

I hadn't thought about planting strawberries in the garden until this year.  We have big plans for the future of making chicken runs in the large field behind their coop and filling it with different kinds of berries.  But that is many years off and while we wait for that we spend a lot of money (locally, of course) picking strawberries for the year.  While I like supporting the local business, it also makes sense for us to grow them for ourselves since we have the space.  So we ordered from Henry Field's and we got two different varieties.  Both are winter hardy (which we need at the edge of zone 3).  We decided to get both an everbearing and a june bearing so we could have our berries spread out a little bit during the season.  The everbearing variety is called Ogallala (pictured) and the june bearing is called Honeoye.  It will be a few years until we see a lot of berries.  But they will be there eventually and we have hopes of learning to propagate them ourselves, so we wont have to invest in them again anytime soon.

I can hardly believe how much this garden is already coming together.  It's so exciting, and makes me a little nervous.  There are so many new things we'll be trying all at one time.  But whether we have good experiences or bad, we'll be learning.  And that, along with having fun, is what is most important.

Plans for 2011

The last couple of weeks have been really exciting for me.  Forest and I started working on our plans for our garden.  Now we've lived in Minnesota for the last 4 years and have had a garden at his parents house every year, but this year will be the first time we get to garden at our house and set it up using the sustainable, permaculture methods we have learned about.  We went out on a warmer day a week or so ago and got the rough dimensions of our gardening space.

The area we'll be fencing in is approximately 218' long (north to south) and I'd say an average of 50' wide (east to west.  The land contours down every so slightly towards the northeast and there is also a large tree to the northeast the overhangs the garden.  We're planning to trim the one branch that is giving the most shade, but the north end of the garden will only be getting afternoon and evening sun during the summer.  We're going to have a 3' bed around the whole garden for boarder crops, in hopes that the multiple layers will help keep the quack grass out of the garden.  Or at least minimize it's invasiveness.  After that we have at least a 3' footpath and on the east side of the garden it will be 5' so we can get the riding lawnmower and bigger carts and things through for harvesting purposes and to get organic matter in and out easily.

Most of the beds are 4' wide except those few which are obviously bigger.  To me there is still quite a bit of work to be done in the planning, but it's a really good start.  It's to scale to so we really have a good idea of what our space looks like.  I worry that we're to optimistic with our spacing and that we wont be able to fit this many beds in that space, but between the northern boarder and the central keyholes we have a lot of room to work.

The keyhole bed in the lower left hand corner we had planned to let Aurora have a flower garden.  but after looking at it more we have decided to make our duck house and small yard for them over there.

This will be our first year with ducks.  I'm nervous but we just have to do it.  With a garden this size and the slug problems we had last year, we can't do it without them.  I sent my order in two days ago to Sand Hill Preservation Center and we're ordering 15 Cayuga ducklings.  It was hard to figure out the breed we wanted but eventually we decided on the Cayuga because of it's hardiness in the cold and it's ability to reproduce naturally and it's more relaxed personality.  I had thought about Indian runners or Campbells for a while.  But after a little research I realized those breeds were rather high strung and with dogs and kids around I figured we would do a lot better with one of the heavier breeds that was a little more mellow.

We're ordering seeds and plants from all over the place.  At least 10 different nurseries and seed companies, and the orders are starting to roll in.  Hopefully I'll be placing my huge Seed Savers Exchange order today so that we can get things like our tomatoes and peppers started soon.  It feels so good to finally see this dream of ours coming to life and to know we'll be producing food in our own backyard this year.