Thinking Spring

The gardening and seed catalogs are arriving in the mail on a regular basis now. I’ll be purchasing most of my new seeds from rareseeds.com this year. I plan on our having an entirely heirloom garden this coming spring and this supplier has such a good and unique variety. Next week I will seriously have to sit down and make my final decisions on what to order because it won’t be terribly long until I will begin growing the plants.

My canned food supply in the cellar has dwindled. Now I see that a more generous supply of spaghetti sauce and salsa will have to be canned next fall. We have eaten well all winter off last summers gardening endeavors. There is sufficient veggies in the freezer to see us through until fresh is available again.

It’s a good feeling to know oneself as self sufficient enough raise and preserve food, as well as (at least partially) sustain one’s self by the labor of one’s hands…and back I might add. Not everything did great, but we were gardening totally organically, so there were challenges and downfalls. We had some plants that failed, some that thrived and some that didn’t even come up. I learned about blossom end rot on my tomatoes and that it’s due to a lack of calcium. This year I will be planting crushed egg shells with my tomatoes. I learned that planting dill with my tomatoes this year may keep those tomato horn worms at bay. (I also learned that those same destructive worms turn into those cute little hummingbird moths.) I learned, too, that even if a garden product says it’s safe for organic gardens, you really need to question that and read all the info to make sure it’s something you really want to expose your plant and yourself to. There’s some pretty scary stuff out there that’s ”approved” for organic gardens.