… About Our Garden: Planted and On Its Way

We got the garden planted about three weeks ago and things are moving along pretty quickly. We usually start with plants but this year decided to start with seeds (except for the tomatoes). We thought it would be a good idea to start the seeds inside, so we did that in early April. That went pretty well, until I set the seedlings outside to “toughen up” before planting — and then they got pummeled by the April 28 hailstorm. We were able to rescue a few and planted them but also planted more seeds. The seeds are doing much better than the plants! That’s good news for next year, because now we know there’s no use starting seeds in the house and we’ll go “straight to the garden” with the seeds in the future.

We started with two larger tomato plants (the kind they sell one to a container) and one four-pack of smaller plants. They were sitting unplanted in one of our patio planters when the hail hit, but overall they made it through OK. One of the larger ones was semi-broken at the main stem, so we’ll have to see if it makes it. We bought the plants in early April and they also got hit by frost a night or two, so between that and the hail they’ve already made it through a lot.

Here’s the full list of what we planted this year:

Three types of tomatoes: The big plants we bought are Parks Whopper and Bonnie Original (one cage each) and the small four-pack is Better Boy (three cages — because two of them were so small we planted them together in one cage).

Two types of summer squash: Early Prolific Straightneck (Yellow) and Burpee’s Fordhook Zucchini. We planted a few seedlings but the seeds we planted quickly outgrew them.

Waltham 29 broccoli: Sounds fancy, but as far as I know it’s just regular broccoli. Anyway, we planted seeds in the garden — one surviving seedling died a week after planting it.

Touchon Heirloom carrots: Our soil isn’t perfect for carrots because it’s too dense, but the top couple feet , so we plant shorter varieties that don’t have to try to get through the harder soil further down.

Two types of potatoes: Yukon Gold and Pontiac Red red.

Six types of lettuce: Black Seeded Simpson, Burpee Bibb, Butter Beauty, Gourmet Blend, Matchless (Heirloom) and Parris Island Cos. We planted the few seedlings that lived through the hailstorm (and a few extra seeds of some types) in our patio planters, and then we did a lettuce “patch” in the garden. We also have a seventh lettuce, thanks to the mild winter: some Romaine we had in a planter from last year came back on its own.

Genevese basil: We planted one or two seedlings that lived through the hailstorm and some seeds in a patio planter.

Plus we have the two types of strawberries we planted last year that already have been producing this year.

So that’s it for the 2012 garden. Now we just have to wait and see how things go — and grow!