The Calm Before the Storm
Alright y’all. The bulbs are blooming and spring is right around the corner, so here I am with a garden post out of nowhere. I can’t promise a consistent posting schedule (again) this year, but there’s a ton happening already and it’s gonna make for some unhinged rants, beautiful photos, and so much serotonin. I have so many new ideas for this year’s garden and I am positively itching to get started. There’s some housekeeping to take care of first, though. And weather to wait out, but whatever.
Last time I left off, I think I was bemoaning the disintegration of my wooden beds before my eyes. Good news! I finally splurged on metal beds, and in doing so DOUBLED my square footage. I’m only just now realizing that it means double the work, but the excitement of having so much new space is winning over that. They’ll be a nice dark green, and should last much longer than we will last in this house.
One bed will be dedicated to herbs and perennial fruits, so I’ll finally have a better strawberry bed and a place to put my grapes and raspberries! I ended up getting a u-shaped bed as well, and that will be my main produce bed. Peppers, eggplants, squash, peas, beans, and cucumbers will end up in there, with some major redesigns to how I trellis things. I’m really looking forward to building a ton of things with bamboo this year. I will have a melon patch again, so my pyramid from last year will have a new home!
Last but not least, I will have a bit of an experimental bed going for brassicas and leafy greens. I haven’t ventured into them much because we have a serious slug problem, but with some extra special guidance and maybe a bit of electrical engineering, I’m hoping I’ll get SOMETHING out of them. Broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts are repeat attempts, and I’ll be adding lettuce, mizuna, bok choi, Swiss chard, and kale to the mix. To go along with those experiments, I’m aiming to do more cold weather gardening this year. Carrots, parsnips, radishes, turnips, some of the squash, and the aforementioned brassicas and leafy greens are all great candidates for winter harvests. I’ve half-heartedly done it in previous years, but this year I’m really aiming to extend my growing season as much as possible.
I’ve rattled off all of these crops, a ton of them new to my garden which is exciting in its own right, but the most exciting bit about this year is the theme. Last year I focused on a ton of purple varieties of things, and that went….well (no it didn’t). This year, I’ll be growing an international garden with heirloom seeds from all over the world. I ordered from Rare Seeds/Baker Creek this year, and while I am thrilled with the variety I will not be ordering from them again. Not only have I learned that they align with some less than savory (re: fucking awful) political figures, but they have landed in hot water after advertising a seed as heirloom when it was actually nicked and completely GMO. You can read more about that at your own discretion here and here. Also apparently their germination rates suck.
With that bummer over with, let’s get into some of the varieties I’m most excited about. Spoiler alert, there’s a lot of them!
Landis Winter Lettuce - A Pennsylvania Dutch specialty perfect for growing in my climate
Red Kuri Squash - Also called Hokkaido squash, this winter variety hails from Japan
Kamo Kamo Squash - An heirloom pumpkin from the indigenous Māori people of New Zealand
Gelber Englischer Custard Squash - Despite a name that sounds like England, these German patty-pans just look hilarious
Kajari Melon - An Indian variety with stunningly striped skin and incredibly sweet flesh
Kaho Watermelon - From China to Japan to me, these two-serving melons makes an excellent and refreshing snack
Kiwano Jelly Melon - Looking like a grenade from Breath of the Wild, these African Horned Melons have Jello-o green flesh and supposedly taste like banana and lime
Richmond Green Apple Cucumbers - Actually from Australia, these will be fantastic to eat fresh off the vine (like an apple, obviously)
Chinese String Eggplant - It’s in the name, but these will be awesome to grill
Thai Lavender Frog Egg Eggplant - Again in the name, these will only be the size of cherry tomatoes and will fry up nicely
Ensoro Ewia Eggplant - A beautiful scarlet eggplant popular with the Asante people of the Ashanti Region of Ghana
Pippin’s Golden Honey Pepper - Beloved sweet heirloom from the Philadelphia African American community, named for famed artist Horrace Pippin
Sweet Bonnet and Habanada Peppers - Grouped together because they are sweet versions of their much hotter siblings
Blot Peppers - A stunning, multicolored thick-fleshed sweet pepper from Russia
Golden Beets - A super sweet yellow beet with delicious greens
Kyoto Red Carrots - Deep red beauties from Japan (duh)
Carouby de Maussane Peas - Giant snow peas from southern France
Rugosa Friulana Summer Squash - Pale white and delightfully warty and delicious, these are common in northeastern Italy
1500 Year Old Cave Beans - No seriously, they were recovered from an archeological site in New Mexico and were carbon dated to 15 centuries ago
Alexandria Strawberries - Aiming to be the pride of the fruit garden, this Alpine variety will thrive in my climate throughout the year
Believe it or not, that’s not even all of the seeds I’ll be planting this year but they will be the crops that I focus most of my energy on throughout the season. The sheer spread of varieties over so much more space gives me so many opportunities to go crazy go stupid, and that’s what it’s about for me.
Over the handful of years that I’ve been keeping a garden I’ve always tried to focus on having fun and enjoying the process. Nurturing something like a seed from its humble beginnings and watching it explode into a full-fledged fruiting plant that can then nourish my body and nurture my brain is the closest thing to magic this world has to offer, and I will die on that hill. I’ll probably write up a poetic and emotional blog post about that eventually, but I’ll impatiently wait until the height of the season for that.
Until then, it’s time to start some seeds! It’ll be done in a few waves, with this first one being the biggest. It’s going to be a busy weekend setting up my lights and making some specialized soil mixes for the tiny little babies.
See you in a week, y’all.
PS, here’s a bit of a teaser for you. :)
