Ending and Beginning

Planted several different kinds of tomatoes (red cherry, yellow cherry, full-size red and yellow), peppers, stevia, echinacea yesterday. DW planted some tomatoes on 3/3.

I feel the need to plant more of everything. I want to plant big flats of seeds, not 4s or 8s of things. We should have the room this year, so why not? I want to have surplus to preserve — and that’s what it’s all about. If we don’t have surplus, we won’t have any to store for the winter.

DS4 and I saw a robin in the back yard on 3/4.

I’m looking out the window at 6″ of new snow and looking forward to Spring, especially to trying some of the edible lawn weeds we have:

• Dandelion (Flowers, leaves, roots)
• Burdock (roots, foliage is toxic)
• Plantain, buckhorn and broadleaf (leaves)
• Purslane (leaves)

Those are the ones I know we have, and there are undoubtedly others. We picked and ate some dandelion leaves last Spring — can’t wait to try the roots.

What little I’ve found to read about these indicates what you’d expect: smaller and younger leaves and roots are better, and sometimes is the difference between edible and inedible. This is one resource I’ve found: http://www.eattheweeds.com.

I’m glad we don’t use chemicals on our lawn.

Today I’m baking a couple of the last Butternut squash from last summer. They are, in my mind, the biggest success story from last year’s garden. It’s been about 4 months since we harvested them. We’ve been keeping them in the basement with the other stored food, just on shelves. It’s about 45 degrees F down there, and they’ve done quite well. Excellent flavor also.

Seeds and plants ordered so far for the 2009 vegetable garden, and a few things for the yard outside the garden. I’m gonna be working my butt off this summer.

It really strikes me how many different squashes we have, and we don’t even have any summer squash yet. We’re really going to have to have a strategy for the squash bugs.

Several of the seeds/plants I ordered today were based on Sharon’s 25 Plants You Should Consider Growing, with additional input from my 4- and 6-year-olds.

Ordered 12DEC2008:
Bolero (F1) Carrot
Bright Lights Swiss Chard
Champion Collards
Copra Plants (F1) Onion
Garden of Eden Pole Bean
Gold Nugget (OG) Cherry Tomato
Gunnison (F1) Onion seed
Luscious (F1) (OG) Sweet Corn
Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomato
Merlin (F1) (OG) Beet
Starbor (F1) Kale
Stevia
Waltham Butternut
Yellow Brandywine (OG) Tomato
Yukon Gold Potato

Ordered 14FEB2009:
AMARANTH, GOLDEN GIANT
WINTER SQUASH,HOPI ORANGE
BEAN, GARBANZO, BLACK KABOULI
Buckwheat (Common) (OG)
Beauregard Sweet Potato
Robust 128YH Popcorn (F1)
Rhubarb, MacDonald Strain
Dark Red Kidney Bean
Long Island Improved Brussels Sprouts
Goldie Ground Cherry
Amish Heirloom Muskmelon
Connecticut Field Pumpkin
Honeypot Hybrid Watermelon

Ordered 27FEB2009:
Mini Apple (F1) Item No. 693     Pepper
Fordhook 242 Item No. 49     Bush Lima bean
Nothstine Dent (OG) Item No. 311G     Corn for meal
Slick Pik™ YS 26 (F1) Item No. 640     Yellow Summer Squash
Echinacea Purpurea Item No. 842     Echinacea