2012 Seed List

Ok, so now that I've figured out basically all of the seeds I'll be using this year in my garden, I thought I would share my list with you. You can check out my 2011 list here if you want to also. I haven't started any of my seeds yet, but seeing as last year I started my peppers on March 3rd, Little M and I might be spending some quality time out on the sunporch this weekend!

2012 Vegetable Seed List

• Hubbard Squash (saved from a couple years ago, will need to save more this year)
• Butternut Squash (also saved from a couple years ago, need to save more this year)
• Black Beauty Zucchini (unless I can find a heirloom yellow one for our climate)
• Pumpkin (still need to find one, preferably C. mixta so it doesn't cross with my other squash!)
• Bushy Cucumber (unless I can find another one that might do better here)
• Double Standard Corn (thanks to local friends for passing this seed on to us this year!) 
• Amish Paste Tomato (same as last year)
• Italian Heirloom Tomato (same as last year)
• Cherry Roma Tomato (for Little M, same as last year)
• Walla Walla Onion (new Irish Eyes seeds from Local)
• Cipollini Onion (new Irish Eyes seeds from Local)
• St Valery Carrot (unless I can find another one that might do better here)
• Sutton's Harbinger Pea (mix of saved and leftover seed from last year)
• Snow Pea (saved from last year - they did amazing last year, hopefully these saved ones will too)
• Bush Blue Lake Beans (leftovers from last year)
• Kentucky Wonder Bush Beans (leftovers from last year)
• Kennearly Yellow Eye Beans (mix of saved and leftover from last year)
• Dragon's Tongue Beans (saved from year before last, if they sprout)
• Garlic (planted already, saved from last year)
• Yukon Gold Potatoes (need to pick some up once it comes in at Local)
• Fingerling Potatoes (hopefully the few I've been holding off from eating will work)
• Peppers (I've got a bunch, mostly from last year - Chocolate Beauty, Golden Treasure, Marconi Rosso, and a hot pepper combo. Not sure how many will germinate, time will tell!)
• Cilantro (new Irish Eyes seeds from Local)
• Sacred Basil (new Irish Eyes seeds from Local)
• Chives (from some local friends last summer, looking forward to adding this to our herb area)
• Dill (from last years seed)

I still need to pick up a couple more seeds in the above list, and there are a couple other herbs that I likely will end up trying. The last couple years I've been pretty busy with just the veggies and haven't done more than have some Basil, Oregano, Thyme, and Rosemary in pots, but hopefully this year I'll be able to focus a bit more on the veggies that really do well here and instead of attempting any melons I'll put some effort into having a little herb plot in the corner. Oh, and I'm sure the mister will convince me that we need to grow Russet Potatoes again. They are ok, but personally I prefer my potatoes to have more taste like the Yukon's do!

Here are a couple more, some of my dream list:

• Rhubarb
• Scarlet/Sunset Runner Bean
• Kale
• Ailsa Craig Onion
• Sage
• Asparagus

Obviously I'd love to have more garden space, particularly those raised beds between the house and the chicken coop that I've been dreaming of for over a year now, but until we save up enough money to put in a serious deer/dog fence around at least a section of the property, house, and orchard, that's not going to happen, and that's why most of these will likely stay on the dream list!

What about you? Have all your garden seeds purchased and your 2012 garden plan drawn up? Started any seeds yet? I'm hoping to start some seeds this weekend in between hanging out with some visiting family, I'll let you know how it goes next week :)

It's been a quick February

Not only is February a trying month for me in terms of winter dragging on, low light, etc, but it is a short month (although longer this year!), and so it has been a challenge for me to make progress on my month's goals. The combination of fewer work days to accumulate my monthly-needed hours and fewer days period to complete tasks is like a double whammy... So I suspect most of my February items will be transferred over to March, not really a problem, as none of them were time-critical or anything, and the most important (taxes!) I finished off during a stellar 2 hour nap from Little M this past weekend.

I've done really well this month on some of my personal & our family 2012 goals - lots of rowing (gotta crank it up for March's 5000m per day challenge!), lots of quality time with Little M, planning our (belated & childless!) honeymoon, saving money for our financial goals, and there have even been 2 viewings of our for-sale rental house (even with a renter in there, granted she's keeping the place looking even better than our staging was - we're so lucky to have her!). I've also been feeling really good about how my daily to-do list is structured, and I've been really content with how our days have been flowing because of it. So really, I'm doing good on keeping up on daily and even weekly things, and making great progress on yearly and even season things, but not doing as hot on monthly things. Whether it was an overambitious February goals list, or whether I need to re-evaluate how I transfer items from my month list to my week list to my daily list, I think I'll be doing things a bit differently in March :)

I'm still just as glad I finally made my household notebook this year, because I'm definitely way more organized, productive, and calm because of it!  And heck, getting those taxes done and out the door in February is weeks and weeks ahead of the near-to-deadline-scramble of the last 2 years, so really all I can do is be very content with getting the most daunting and important item crossed off the month's list! Here's looking forward to a March that involves no tax prep work, lots of seed starting (more on that later in the week, I picked up a bunch more seed packets Friday!), and a journal article coming out from my thesis work!

My new seed starting set up

I remember about a year ago reading a post on YouGrowGirl with really great instructions for building a shelf lighting system. At the time I had just found the old shop light in the garage, and although I would have loved to have heating pads and multiple lights all together in a shelving system, I just didn't have the money to invest in one, and so I just filed that idea away in my brain for later use. Fast forward about a year, and while browsing through Home Depot one day, my husband pointed out some metal shelving units that he had been thinking would be perfect for on the sunporch for my plants, for drying garden produce, or for seed starting.

I agreed, and a little thought started growing in my head. I remembered the post on YouGrowGirl, and remembered the Christmas money from my parents I still hadn't spent. After looking some things up, I ended up ordering a metal shelving unit from Amazon. It shipped really quickly, and just a couple of days later, I was setting my unit up! How exciting to have so much more space, and pretty space at that, to set up my plants!

I haven't started my seeds yet, and still have some more varieties to buy, but in the meantime, I've been enjoying using the shelving unit to house my varied collection of herbs, flowers, succulents, and cacti. I likely will drop some of the shelves down a bit lower to get the seed starting shelf a little lower since I'm on the shorter side, but other than that, this is likely how it will look for the foreseeable future.

Our very first egg!

Friday afternoon I came home from work early, and spent some time with my family before the weekend (around here, weekends mean two 12 hour shifts for my husband, so very little family time). After Little M's nap, we headed outside. First I went over to the chicken coop to give them some food and see how they were doing.

I was leaning over in the coop, giving them some food, and I was thinking about how the white golf balls I've had out in their nest boxes, to encourage them to lay, and lay in the right spot, were going to look rather odd next to a brown egg, since most of our hens will lay brown eggs. As I straightened up, my gaze passed across a spot on the far wall that had been hidden by chicken bodies moments before as they rushed to the food. I did a double take. A pale brown egg was sitting there, on the floor, amidst the chicken feet as they rushed by it here and there. I quickly went further in to the coop and picked it up. It was a bit dirty, but whole!

These darn chickens should (could) have been laying at least a month ago, if not two. We weren't supplementing with light or heat, though, wanting them to make it on their own to weed out any breeds (we've been trying 8) that weren't able to take the cold temperatures we get here in the winter. So although I've been not-so-patiently waiting for quite some time, I knew they would start laying once the days started to lengthen. I've been saying 'any day now', for weeks!

On Sunday I found another egg, laid in a slightly lower traffic area of the coop. It looks the same as the first one, so I figure only one girl has started laying. If I get an egg every other day for a little while until the others start, I'll be perfectly happy! I guess the next couple weeks will tell whether they start slowly or whether we quickly get overwhelmed with the number of eggs thirteen hens lay on a daily and weekly basis!

I wish I knew which of our thirteen girls it was laying already, but since 12 of those are brown egg layers, I suspect I'll need a few more eggs to see the range of color variations to start pegging eggs to girls, if it's even possible then! At least the Americauna girl's eggs will be easy to tell apart, and hopefully that will make it easy to selectively incubate them if any of our hens go broody, since Rooster Cogburn is also an Americauna, so that is the one breed we have that we could possibly get pure-bred offspring from this year.

Oh Spring, I'm so happy you are on your way!

(Of course, within an hour of finding that egg, the snow started, and by bedtime we were up to 4 inches of damp new fluffy snow!)