Spurred by an unseasonably mild Kansas winter and some bloggy friends who have already purchased (and started!) their garden seeds, I’ve been doing a little browsing. My one year of garden experience certainly does not qualify me for choosing from the myriad of seeds available, and quite frankly… seeds scare me. I’ll kill them! Last year we used nursery plants.
I keep reading that starting my own seeds would be less expensive (if I don’t kill them) and I’d have a wider variety to choose from. We shall see!
Here’s what I’m thinking of planting this year.
- potatoes (red and gold)
- onions
- tomatoes
- bell peppers (green, yellow, red, orange)
- cantaloupe
- zucchini
- squash
- strawberries
- watermelon
- carrots
- asparagus
- broccoli (my 5-year-old’s favorite)
- some kind of lettuce or spinach, maybe?
I won’t be planting sweet corn, okra, or cucumbers because my relatives and neighbors share generously from their surplus. And green beens? Well… that just seems like an awful lot of work! Care to convince me otherwise?
Now… I could really use your help. If you have gardening expertise to share, please pass it along! I need to know what to buy, where to buy, how to start, when to start… everything! I would love to gather post links and other information from seasoned gardners to share next week. Surely I’m not the only novice gardner who could benefit from your experience. Thanks!
Visit Happy to be at Home for more Thursday Thirteen.
Get the book Square Foot Gardening (Mel Bartholomew) from the library. It works, I can not recommend it highly enough! We had spinach, beets, radishes, lettuces, cilantro, rosemary, two basils, thyme, sage, chives, lemongrass, shallots, tomatoes, onions, and other odds and ends last year all in one 2 ft by 8 ft bed.
We just ordered seeds today from Burpee. My youngest son has planted some things before, but the dogs stomped on them or the weed eater got them!
This year we are taking it seriously!
We order watermelon, jumbo carrots, corn, tomatoes, sunflowers for me, cucumbers,and strawberries. I’m planning on picking up some flower seeds and pretty lettuce. Oh, and some herbs. We are making 4 boxes for the garden so we can walk around them and the dogs won’t hurt them.
Oh, I didn’t order potatoes because they were so expensive. Is there a cheap place to get them?
And I didn’t think of broccoli…yum.
I’m going to check out that book Deanne suggested.
One more thing…I did order a little wooden thingy to make starter pots out of newspaper with. Then you just pop them in the ground. We’re gonna give it a try.
Keep us updated and I’ll check your comments later for advice. I need it big time!
-Kim
Wish I could offer advice, but this will be our first year gardening. We are doing container gardening with not being able to plant gardens in our backyard here on base. I checked out a couple books from the library and hoping to get some seeds soon.
Good luck, Amy!!
I did a series on gardening last year on my blog that I would love to share with you. Just need to pull them out and dust them off.
What kind of garden are you doing? Containers or in the ground?
We had bush green beans last year, and they weren’t much work at all. The only work in them is the snapping, in which I employed my kidlets to do. definitely do green beans!!
I’ll be honest and say that last year the only seeds that we planted that didn’t really work out were the onions–we got Lisbon bunching. Definitely won’t do them again–other than that, I say go for it!
We always plant tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, melons, and squash. The rest we vary from year to year. I have thought about planting asparagus but it takes so many years to get a crop. Like 5 or 7 so I have not done it. If I had planted it when I first thought about it though we would have some this year.
We also have blueberries and blackberries which are fun but also take several years to get a good crop. I hope you have fun in the garden.
I have a lot of posts and resources in gardening. I would love to contribute:-)
I agree with Phoebe – go for the bush beans. They are super easy. I didn’t think they were work at all. Plus, you can get stringless so prepping them for cooking is easy, too.
(Personally, I thought broccoli was a nightmare – the bugs they attract look just like the buds on the floret – until they move. And heads’ up – carrots need really sandy soil.)
There’s my 2 cents! Have fun!
We’re planning on doing a garden here, too. We have over three acres and we only have peach trees…can you believe that??!! However, we have to do a container garden because we have a TERRIBLE problem with bears. (they are in our peach trees every day and a regular garden would just be a feast for them…let alone it would be useless to have!) So…eager to see advice on container gardens, too. We’re going to do a tomato tree or hanging basket for tomatoes (saw it in our Gurney’s catalog), carrots, blueberries, strawberries, and lettuce. I’d love to do potatoes, but not sure how they’d do in a container. This all sounds great on paper… I just hope we can make it a reality! Looking forward to the posts!!
Make sure you find the perfect spot for the asparagus, because it will stay there forever. you won’t be able to eat any of it for about 5 years too. It isn’t something you can quickly enjoy LOL.
I SOOO have to plan this out now, but I’m really intimidated. I’m planning to move up from an herb garden to a full vegetable garden. Can’t wait to see all the advice!
I think we are overtaking my Father in laws garden this year…It should be REAL entertaining..My gardening skills are just abt like yours..We’ll have to compare stories! HA!
Lettuce and spinach are super easy, and they’ve always grown well for me. Potatoes take up a lot of space (which I don’t have much of so I never do those). And I always buy Burpee seeds, don’t have anything bad to say about others, I’ve just always done Burpee (probably becasue that’s what my mom did). Green beans are pretty easy; I like the bush variety. If you do the bush variety you need some cages (like for tomatoes), but they don’t sprawl and take up as much room that way. Good luck with your garden!
I’ll be the 39th person to say that you should definitely do bush green beans! They are very easy, and delicious. If you plant the purple/burgundy kind (they turn green when you cook them), they are also easy for children to pick, as the color makes them stand out from the leaves. Doing carrots is also a great idea, as for some reason kids seem to LOVE to watch them grow (I think it’s the excitement of not being able to actually see the carrot part — it’s so exciting for them when it comes out of the ground).
My one suggestion for you seed-wise is to soak your seeds before planting — at least the larger ones like zuchinni, squash, and melons (I’ve never tried soaking tiny ones like carrots). My grandmother (who always had a ginormous garden) swore by this for improving the percentage of seeds that actually germinated. Wet a clean rag, and wring it out. Lay it out flat, spread as many seeds as you wish to plant in a single layer over one-half of the rag. Fold the other half over the top and leave to sit for a day or at least overnight in a pie plate or baking pan. Keep the rag damp. Sometimes you’ll even see the beginnings of a baby sprout as you plant them!
We are getting ready to start our seeds for the year (which I do with my mom — who knows a lot more than I do!), so I’ll try to post pictures of the process (and, hopefully, the PROGRESS!) on my blog: http://thecherrytreefarm.blogspot.com/
Enjoying your blog as always,
Kristin
I swear, green beans are the easiest ever. We did dwarf beans last year so we didn’t even have to have a support for them as they stay small and they grew SO quickly and gave us lots of lovely beans – and we grew them in containers too!
I’m looking forward to planting too. Last year my dog got into the garden and dug up all my plants. I was so upset.
That reminds me, I need to start building a fence.
I’ll agree that asparagus will last FOREVER. I had an ancestor whose diary/ stories revealed that she moved asparagus roots with her from her home in Ontario, Canada to South Dakota where they settled on a tree claim. My grandma was doing genealogy research in SD and found her grandmother’s asparagus alive and well where their old tree claim was! (Over 100 yrs later.)
Now, about regular gardening. I’ve done container gardening for 1 yr now. I don’t have a yard and grow everything on my porch. My tomato bush died of a disease and only gave us a few tomatoes. My pepper plant was exceedingly slow at producing. Rosemary, parsley, and basil thrived in containers! Now I’m trying to grow winter greens like Swiss chard and spinach.
I’ll be sharing more info on my garden in future posts! Just got lettuce started in our cold frames
I’m so HAPPY that garden season is almost here! 
We are going to do a garden this year also. We have our area staked out and I have been thinking about what we are going to plant. I have loved the advice here and am thankful you posted about this. Good Luck to you and wish me even more luck!
I need to start planning. This will be our fourth year with a garden. I have lots of gardening posts on my blog — feel free to pop over to my blog and look for the “gardening” topic link.
We are adding on to our garden again this year, and we seriously need to plan. I really need to be more organized when it comes to my garden!