We planted more seeds yesterday. I folded about 30 pots in a couple hours. Does it seem excessive yet? We’re wondering ourselves. But we actually have a lot more planting to do. Most of the seeds left will be planted directly in the ground, though, (carrots, more beans, onions, brussel sprouts, perhaps red potatoes, gourds) so we’ve got a bit more time to wait until the cold weather is gone. We also need to get the raised beds finished up (cleared of weeds and tree trimming debris, then filled up with more dirt) and the cold frames built before we can put anything in the ground. The cold frames will ensure we can plant early and not have to worry about the freezing temps and snow we’ve been having.

A bit of planning is going to need to be done to figure out where everything is going to go in the raised beds but we should have plenty of space. I’m going to use ground where weeds and grass usually grows under the rose bushes and peach trees for pumpkins, melons and squash. I’m hoping they will spread out and keep most of the weeds out. Since we’ve had such a problem with slugs eating our lettuce, I’m going to do it all in containers in the courtyard this year, using cold frames as needed over them. I may have to worry about the dog digging in the pots but after some training we should be able to break her of that. Worst case I’ll put chicken wire down in everything and hopefully she’ll give up the battle quickly.

Yesterday we planted:

• Druzba Tomatoes
• Gardener’s Delight Tomatoes
• Big Rainbow Tomatoes
• Black Krim Tomatoes
• Fresh Salsa Tomatoes
• Many more Roma Tomatoes (we’re using them for canning crushed tomatoes and paste)
• Hot Lemon Peppers
• Gigante Jalepenos
• Fordhook Zucchini Squash
• More canning cucumbers
• Vert Globe Artichokes
• Lots of Black Beans (from beans you cook from the grocery store)
• Pinto Beans
• Bell Peppers (from bell peppers we’ve bought in the grocery store. This is a bit of an experiment to see if they’ll sprout.)

My mouth waters when I think about all the fantastic things we’re going to be eating soon. Some of the plants are sprouting from our last planting. We also planted White Runner Beans and Clemson Spineless Okra on February 9th. Both of those have sprouted. The beans are growing incredibly fast. They just came up a few days ago but are already a few inches tall. Looks like we’ll need to get them in bigger pots soon.

Most of the pumpkin seeds are up already. The Rouge Vif d’Etampes pumpkins are doing nicely. They are a bit decorative pumpkin with an almost scarlet color. These pumpkins were supposedly the inspiration for the carriage in Cinderella.

These are the small sugar pumpkins. They’re great for pies and breads so I’m really looking forward to my first experience with fresh pumpkin in pies versus the canned stuff. We are VERY big pumpkin pie fans here and I”ve never had one made from fresh pumpkin so it should be interesting!

It’s an incredibly exciting time. You never know what is going to happen by the next time you walk through the room. We recently put a heater under the table in the kitchen which has significantly warmed up the room and seems to be helping the plants too.

The sprouts are thriving too. Here’s the radish sprouts I showed you on Saturday after 1 day of growth.

This was what they looked like this morning…less than 12 hours later. Almost all of them have shed their seed coat now and have a shoot coming out…or a root I guess it would be. You can really almost stand in front of them for a few minutes and see them growing.

I also got my herbs replanted in the window container. In between the rosemary and sage I laid out a couple dill seeds and the hole between the sage and parsley now has Chianti Basil seeds planted there. Both of these seeds barely need to be pressed down into the dirt for sprouting. The dill seeds are several years old so I don’t know if I will have any luck with them. But I hoping at least the basil sprouts. We use a lot basil around here during the year and there’s nothing like your own fresh basil. I’ve just never been very successful at getting herbs to sprout in general…but I think I usually had it a bit too cold for them inside.

You might remember me mentioning we picked up a chipper off the street on Saturday. We hooked it up and it actually WORKS! So instead of burning off everything in the back yard, we’re going to do some chipping. It’s something we didn’t need immediately but would have cost us about €300 new.

There is one little quirk about it. For some reason it doesn’t want to stay on. So the previous owners rigged a little wire for one of the bolts which will keep the chipper turned on. It’s probably not too safe it’ll do the trick. We already ran a test twig through it and everything.