Note: Two years ago today, my first post hit the blog, recording the first day of Garden Season 2023. I can’t believe this blog is already two years old!
An exciting thing happened recently: Opening day of Garden Season 2025!
Technically we started cabbages in January and broccoli the first of the month, but both of those take a while to grow enough for setting out. They served as a “preseason exhibition” of sorts.
We are doing things a little bit differently this year, so it wasn’t as all-out a seed starting bonanza as in years past, but we had enough to keep us busy. And, of course, we had to fuel our efforts with a trip to Chick-fil-A for lunch {and tea!}. Our seed starting was divided in two categories: direct sowing and in blocks.
The week before, Mr. cut the vetch we over-wintered as a cover crop, and dropped it in the grow bags to break down as a mulch. When it was time to plant our peas, we pulled the vetch back to plant. Our hope is that as the vetch breaks down it A: feeds the soil and B: helps with weed control. We’ve got 10 bags sowed in sugar snap peas for eating and another 3 to grow for seed saving.
We also sowed 2 of our larger grow bags in fava beans, with the intent of growing them for seed stock. This is a different kind of fava bean than we’ve used in the past, and they’re so big! These are not for eating, but purely for soil amendment; ideally we’ll be able to grow enough to save seed and not keep buying more.
After a lunch break, we tackled the soil blocking. Getting the mixture just right is a process, made more difficult when you discover fire ants moved into the open bag of peat moss. That was fun. Once we got the soil mixture correct, Mr. made the squares and I seeded them. We ended up with 50 nadapeno blocks {from seeds we saved last summer}, and 42 head lettuces.
Speaking of lettuce … Following the success of our makeshift tunnel for my violas, we made another one to prepare for lettuce beds. In addition to the soil blocked lettuces, we also direct sowed leaf lettuce blends in two grow bags, and a bag of arugula. Hopefully the tunnel greenhouse-effect will help them come up and grow in spite of the lingering cold.
Once the best broccoli starts were selected and up-potted, we got everything settled on the indoor greenhouse and called it a day. For now.
We’ve still got quite a bit to do before the Summer Garden is ready: Waiting for the feed & seed to get their seed potatoes in, so we can plant them. In a few weeks, we’ll get tomatoes started – and there will be many {I’m already figuring out how to rearrange the greenhouse shelves}. Green beans will go out mid-March. Squash and cucumbers wait for their turn to be planted.
It’s an exciting time, and I am already dreaming about those garden fresh feasts.
Have you started garden preparation? What do you hope to grow this year?
Now I am dreaming of your fresh garden feasts too!
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I can’t wait! 😀
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What a lot of work! I hope it will pay off for you with loads of fresh, homegrown veggies 🙂
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It is a lot of work, but it’s rewarding too 🙂 Hopefully it’ll be a great garden year!
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I just found your blog and subbed to the RSS. I have some early tomatoes, celery and lettuces planted. I also done some blueberry seeds but they are slow germinators so who knows when and if they will sprout, I am trying hard to not start too early and end up with a plant jungle in every window of the house. You reminded me that my cabbages didn’t germinate and I need to go down to the basement and poke some more/newer seeds in. This year I am using seed snails and so far I am really liking the results.
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Welcome to my little corner of the web 🙂
Yay for early plantings! It is so easy to end up with a plant jungle in the house – our first two years married, my living room turned into a baby tomato WILDERNESS, lol …
I’ve never tried growing blueberries from seed – I’ll be very interested in finding out how that works! And the seed snails do look like a cool method 🙂
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Happy 2nd blog anniversary! My mom loves gardening but unfortunately I don’t have green thumb.
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Thank you 😀 ❤️ Some of my friends can’t grow things either, which is nice because I can share my garden overflow with them – once these veggies start coming in, they’re going to *come in* with gusto, haha 🙂
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With the price of food in the grocery stores, home gardening is definitely helpful to keep costs down. I look forward to following your garden over the spring and summer. 😊
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So true! We notice a huge difference in grocery bills during the summer, when we can rely more on what we’re growing. I’m hoping to add chickens this year, so there may be fun chicken content in addition to the garden growth 🙂
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Happy two years blogging 🥰 it looks like you’ve been majorly busy in the garden too. That fire ant issue sounds like a nightmare but other than that it sounds like it must have been a satisfying day. I look forward to seeing how all of your vegetables progress. I love sugar snap peas. It sounds like you’ve got lots of lovely produce to look forward to. I’d kind of like to plant rainbow carrots. I doubt I will as I wouldn’t know where to put them, I think my niece would find it fascinating to see some grow though and like the different colours of them.
I haven’t really been in the garden much yet but the crocuses seem to have had a surge this year. I’m sure less returned in 2024 so it was a definite surprise.
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Thank you! 😀 I can’t believe it’s already (only) 2 years! I love sugar snap peas too, and this variety is so, so good – we’ve been fortunate enough to save the seeds several years running, so if all goes as it should they should be equally delicious this year.
Carrots do look so cool growing! We’ve had a hard time with them ourselves – they like loose (sandy) soil, and while our grow bags are not really compacted, we still haven’t been able to grow many *big* carrots. One day!
Yay for crocuses! I’ve got daffodils blooming now, and it’s lovely to watch the world starting to wake up 🙂
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It does seem to have that ‘is that all it is/how has it been so long’ feel at the same time 😅ooh that’s wonderful to hear. Hopefully you’ll manage to save some again this year too then 🤞
Ah if you’ve struggled with them then I imagine I definitely would 🤔 I hope you have some luck with them one day though. Maybe I’ll do flowers of some kind with her instead.
Aww that’s lovely, they always look wonderful. Mine seemed to vanish from the borders but I’m hoping the tulips will return 🤞 I agree that it’s lovely seeing plantlife return 🥰
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I can’t grow anything. All of these crops sound wonderful. Things I’d love to have on my plate.
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I didn’t realize just how much you could grow in a “house garden” until we got married, and it’s been an amazing learning experience. And yes, so very very yummy 🙂
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[…] project, and dipped my toes into the cross-stitching waters. There were blooms admired, and our first official seed-starting […]
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