I know we’ve basically said we’ll probably wait until next year to have a full garden, but we can still dream right? We’ve already constructed a list of fruits and vegetables that we’d like to grow in the garden, some rather common and others, not so much. We’re putting together a list of seeds to order and we’ll see which ones we actually plant this year. But some of this stuff is just too good not to give it a try.
Stevia
They say growing just one plant will yield enough leaves for you to have sweetener for a year…we drink tons of sweetened iced tea throughout the year so we figure this will be a much healthier alternative. There is still some controversy on stevia as a sweetener as there is a 1985 study out there which says the plant has mutagenic activities prompting the EU to outlaw the sale of stevia sweetener. This study has been debunked lately and we think the risk is so low given that people in south America have been using it as a sweetener for generations without adverse effect. Besides, how much worse than pure cane sugar can it be?
Tomatoes
Hubby found the seeds for a tomato called “Black Krim”. The fruit turns black and is supposedly very sweet, meaty sort of tomato. Perfect for sandwiches was the thought that went through our head. We ordered all seeds from Exoga.de, but it seems tomatogrowers.com has them available in the US. We are not sure how far we get with the garden this year, but if we do progress nicely then these are definitely on the list to plant. Tomatoes are an absolute essential in our lives.
Corn
We love to BBQ and no BBQ is complete without corn on the cob. So as we continued our search through Exoga’s catalog (mostly because we thought it was ridiculous to pay 0.98EUR for the Stevia seeds and 3EUR for shipping) we came across a variety of corn which supposedly grows 1/2ft a day and reaches heights of 18ft, producing cobs 1.5ft long. This being Germany we know it’s not genetically modified since it’s pretty much outlawed here, so we have to see this for ourselves.
Peanuts
We haven’t been able to find out what the yield will be per plant but they recommend that kids give it a try so how hard can it be? And it will be really fun to eat peanuts grow from our own yard 🙂
Lettuce
We bought a few lettuce plants last weekend which we just got in the ground today…but we’ll post more about that later. We’ve got lollo rosso, lollo verde (? the green version of the first) and iceberg lettuce.
What you see here is the sorry start of our vegetable garden. The cold frame we bought yesterday is now set up and the lettuce is planted, but that is something for another post.
