Seed Shopping!

Based on Janet's recent advice on online seed and plant vendors she likes, I finally sat down last weekend to do a little armchair gardening of my own, ordering seeds from the web for the first time ever (from Territorial Seed). Yay for me! And, while I'm at it, yay for Territorial Seed too -- I placed my order Sunday afternoon and my package arrived Wednesday morning. Wow, they're fast!

I'm joining Janet to take the "Growing Challenge" this season, and have decided to give mesclun salad mix a try. Last year was the first time I'd ever tried growing lettuce, and I had gone with a butter lettuce of some sort (I forget what it was now) and had no success with it at all. The plants grew pretty well, but the lettuce itself was inedibly bitter.

We tried eating the leaves when they were younger, and then when they were older. We tried harvesting the leaves more often so it would put out more of them. We tried watering more, then watering less. We tried singing Beatles songs, then punk rock songs (I swear, those leaves perked up when I was humming The Ramones, but they still didn't taste any better).

Eventually, I dug the plants up and chucked them in the yard waste bin, because I resented keeping them alive any longer if they weren't going to do anything for ME in return. Whatever, butter lettuce. You're on your own.

I've since read that getting too hot can make lettuce bitter, and am wondering now if maybe I planted it too late in the season, or if full sun wasn't the best spot for it after all. This year, I'll do some reading on the optimal conditions for that mesclun salad mix before I put it in the ground and see if I can't do a better job of it. I'll be keeping you posted! I can't promise I can actually post weekly, as the Challenge dictates, but I will certainly try my best.

While I was picking out those seeds, incidentally, I also threw in some for Cosmos, my favorite flower. Chocolate-colored Cosmos (which I have never seen for sale anywhere, alas) was my wedding flower, and I just love everything about those plants. They have gorgeous flowers that last almost all summer long, it seems, and even their foliage is pretty -- soft and fluffy-looking.

My Mom plants a lot of Cosmos in her yard every year and hers typically do extremely well -- they get really tall and look absolutely stunning (the photo at the top of this post is of my twin sister and her adorable son in front of my Mom's Cosmos, by the way -- see what I mean by stunning? And thanks for letting me include this photo here, sis!). I'm not having that same kind of luck, though, and in trying to figure out why this winter, I learned that Cosmos like to be both hot and dry. It IS both hotter and dryer at Mom's house in Salem, Oregon, and maybe that's why hers thrive and mine struggle? But I also know I'm extremely guilty about overwatering everything (being thirsty gives me a headache, and I definitely project that onto my plants) so that may be another reason why my Cosmos don't seem to do all that well.

This year, I may try them in big black pots, so I can move them around and find the optimal spot for them, as well as get them up closer to the house where they'll stay warmer. They want hot and dry? I can give them hot and dry. Or, at least, I can give them "somewhat hotter and possibly a bit on the drier side." I'll let you know if that seems to work (it sure worked last year for our tomatoes!).

This weekend, assuming I feel up to it and it's not pouring down rain (I've been down with a cold or sinus thing most of this week), I'm hoping to get both my mesclun mix AND some sugar snap peas into the ground. I can't believe it's just a few days away from March already! I'm very excited for spring gardening, and looking forward to seeing how this whole Growing Challenge thing works out. Cross your fingers for my lettuce mix! And if you have any pointers on how to make Cosmos OR mesclun grow well in Seattle, I'm all ears!

Take the Growing Challenge!

I'm taking the plunge and taking the Growing Challenge! Follow the link for details, but the gist is that you grow some new edible item from seed and agree to post at least once a week about gardening. The new items shouldn't be a problem; I'm trying celeriac and parsnips for the first time this year, as well as a couple new things not from seed (Jerusalem artichokes and a plum tree). The challenge will be to post weekly, especially as the gardening season gets underway in earnest. Already I've started spending lots of weekend hours in the garden, leaving minimal time for research and writing.

So why would I want to participate in something like this? I suppose because growing edibles is a cause near and dear to my heart. I got my start as a gardener when I was about four, helping my mother plant squash and tend our veggie garden. As a result, I always knew where food came from (including meat, since we raised cattle, chickens, ducks, and even a turkey once. Trust me, there's something to be said for ignorance in this case.) I also knew what vegetables were supposed to taste like; hence I've never been able to endure a store-bought tomato. Now that I'm older and no longer a starving student, I've started buying organic produce, because I hate the thought of exposing my family to a bunch of toxins. Having grown up in an agricultural area, with crop dusters dropping who-knows-what near my neighborhood, I also hate the thought of farm workers being exposed to so much poison. So I'll do what I can, and gardening is a part of that effort. If I grow it, I know what's (not) in it, I can grow varieties that aren't found in the grocery store... and I can save a ton of money. Organic produce is *expensive*, and so are weird veggies like leeks and parsnips that I like to eat but don't like to pay for.

So there you are--a rambling dissertation on why I grow edible stuff. Care to join me? You don't need a big yard. There's lots of great information on growing veggies in small spaces. Maybe I'll work up a post on that topic. In the meantime, do a little Googling and give it a try!