Spring Is Here! A Gardening Geek-Out.

Okay, so it's not....here here...yet. But it's coming soon.

Now, for the geeking out.

The new seeds (dressed in white) and
the leftovers from last season to go in this year

We got our seeds for the garden today! Gardening Season Version 2.0 is upon us. Our second solo attempt at growing food, after the beta version when we lived with mom in summer of 2012 and tended her garden and got bit by the gardening bug.

Truth be told we come from a long line of gardeners, and had dabbled in the dark earthy arts of the dirt over the years, never with any success on our own...until last year. Which was more or less 75% successful, as you can read about at one of our other blogs if you'd like (http://frankiesfarmadventure.blogspot.com/), which is retiring from active duty this year in the interest of streamlining the writing into only one or two places. (it's all about organization, yeah?)

Anywayyyyyy...*continues to geek out*

We bought a lot of seeds. We would have bought more but for the space issue, and also...umm...two human bodies can only eat so much spoils from the garden. For goodness sake we're still eating spaghetti squash and beets from the last garden. So many seeds, it's a little crazy. For instance, the squash plants only need two seeds per hill, and we'll only be planting, at most, two hills per type. At 25 seeds per pack...we have enough seeds for the next...something like six years.

To most people it probably seems ridiculous that we're so excited about gardening, but there is nothing like something fresh from the garden, pulled from soil you know, from soil you've toiled over (and trust us, with our back problems, the toil can be days of pain - but it's totally worth it), that only your hands have touched. It's just...so much better than some crap from the grocery store that's traveled over 1000 miles in a truck or rail car, or worse, ship or an airplane from another country several thousand miles away. Not to mention some of the seeds are organic/heirloom, which means no GMO. (As some regular readers know, we have a variety of issues with the upsurge in GMO everything, and it's not just from a poisoning perspective - http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2012/09/from-lab-to-field-and-on-your-knees.html)

Gardening probably couldn't be easier for the average person either...there are apps for it. Seriously. APPS. And websites with videos and information. And software. And if you're into machines and gadgets...so. many. machines. and. gadgets.

We're not into that stuff, the machines and gadgets (except for the gardening knife, obviously...), you can barely talk us into wearing a pair of gloves to weed most days. However, we did try out a The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner (http://gardenplanner.almanac.com) just to make sure we could fit all the things we wanted into our two garden plots.

To start off, this is not a paid advertisement of any sort, we are not representing them, they are not paying us. This is just a cool feature of their website because
a) it's not software so it doesn't require any crazy downloads [you only need a recent version of Adobe Flash, which, if you don't already have...you might as well leave the internet right now]
b) it's fun to play with because it automatically shows how much space you need around each thing you plant (as you'll see below)

They allow you to use it for free for 30 days, but you can only save one garden design. After the 30 days is up you then have the option of paying $25 a year (no credit card info required) or $40 for two years, for the features and benefits like being able to create up to five plans per year, continuous access to the garden plans, emailed reminders so you know when to sow and plant. Saving of plans to carry over for the next year's garden to remind what grew where the year(s) before, which enables you to quickly make the next year's plan, including removing things that didn't work out, or changing the location of things that might grow better in another spot. There are some other general features that come with it, and the trial version, you should just play with it and find out.

We played around with it before ordering seeds, because the order add$ up - we still have to wait for the potato (two varieties) and sweet potato "bulbs" which get shipped closer to the end of the frost season, and some things have to be purchased as plants and transplanted because the growing season is too short for some things (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli and cauliflower.

This is the West Plot, which is 30 x 12, designed using the The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner (http://gardenplanner.almanac.com), which is getting made larger when the guy we hire to plow the spots with his little tractor comes by after the frost season passes. It was just decided today, so we might be able to grow more tomatoes or peppers...and maybe some other things that can be dehydrated or canned for winter.

This is the South Plot, which is for more "late season" items, like winter squash, beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and onions...you know, things that take longer to mature or ripen.

*sighs*

Okay, we're done geeking out.

Spring is close! It's time to get excited.