Seed Buying 2010-style

It's that time of year again, folks: Time to purchase seeds! As a reminder, this is my current plan for my 2010 garden.

Admittedly, I'm a bit early at the start but I'm always paranoid that my favorite seeds will be sold out (and I do believe the tomato & arugula seeds I wanted to buy-- very specific varieties-- are sold out). This year I am all over Southern Exposure Seeds & Seed Saver's Exchange. I heard about Southern Exposure when I attended a "Raising Winter Greens" seminar. It's awesome because many of the seeds they carry are known to thrive in my area, plus many are organic and come from small farmers and seed savers. I wanted to buy from Seed Saver's Exchange last year but, um, I couldn't figure out how to buy from them. I must have been tired or something because their website is quite easy to use...I have no idea what my problem was last year!

Here's what's on tap for this year. From Southern Exposure Seeds:
Eggplant: Early Black Egg & Ping Tung Long
Mustard greens: New Star Mustard
Swiss chard: Ruby Red
Sweet Peppers: Tequila Sunrise
Zucchini: Dark Green
Ground cherries: Cossack Pineapple
Pickling cucumber: Edmonson
Total: $24.10

From Seed Saver's Exchange:
Cucumber: Mexican Sour Gherkin
Tomatoes: Sheboygan & Stupice
Total: $8.25

Plus...a garlic mix I bought in the fall ($22.50...I know, pricey but I should have to buy garlic "seed" again! Just replant cloves I've grown!) brings my grand total on seeds this year to

:::drumroll:::

$54.85

!!!!!!

This doesn't even include the Yellow Potato Onion multiplier onion I want to order in the fall (at $11+ but I won't need to buy onion "seeds" again either). I'm not sure my thyme is doing so well so I'll probably need to buy more of that again...another expense.

Clearly, seeds really add up. I'm rather confident I'll get at least $54.85 worth of organic veggies out of the garden this year; I mean, it's easy to get $20 worth of herbs out of the garden! The initial outlay is not cheap. This is why, for me, gardening is much more of a hobby than a way to really save money on groceries. Even buy starting most of my vegetables from seed, it's still not cheap!

I am also going to attempt to use the rest of the following seeds I bought last year. Perhaps unfairly, I am going to exempt this cost from this year's garden. For one thing, it would be too time consuming to figure out how much I used last year and for another, I don't want to hunt down the original prices I paid:

Sungold Cherry Tomatoes
Thai Dragon Hot Peppers
Thai Basil
Red Rubin Basil
Unwin's Dalhias
a few kinds of kohlrabi
carrots
French Breakfast Radish
and several kinds of marigolds & nasturtiums

However, there are lots of seed (an embarrassing amount actually) I either bought & never used or used but didn't quite work out. I will be handing these out to friends to hope they can find a good home!

Winter Vegetables Are Boring?

I confess, I really enjoy summer vegetables best. You don't need to cook them (in fact, many are better raw) and they are just so crunchy and juicy and fantastic. I mean, I know I complained about having too many tomatoes but now I can't imagine how that would be possible!

Making winter vegetables interesting is a bit more of a challenge. There is of course the oven roasting. I definitely enjoy a mixed roast vegetable dish made with olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe some thyme or rosemary. I've also used cumin or chili powder on occasion or tossed the veg, while still warm, with a vinaigrette. A lemon vinaigrette works especially nice on roasted broccoli. But despite these variations, I long for the variation that you get with the summer cousins.

So, I've made an effort to seek out unusual (at least for me) ways to use the typical winter vegetables: Dark leafy greens, winter squash, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, turnips and other root crops. Below are some interesting recipes or ideas that have spiced things up.

Dark, Leafy Greens
(Collards, mustards, turnip, and asian greens. The "usual" is making these southern style or cooked with beans)

Oven roasted kale: I haven't tried this one yet, but if it's anything like the crispy spinach at Rasika, I bet it's fabulous!

Mustard green gratin: A hearty way to get in the green stuff.

Stir-fried chinese broccoli: I love ordering this when we go from dim sum. It makes me feel better about consuming an additional pork bun! You could do this with any asian green.

Winter Squash
(Butternut, acron, spaghetti, etc. The "usual" is roasting or steaming or soup)

Butternut squash & sage risotto: I've already blogged about this, but it's worth repeating!

Thai curry with acorn squash & asian greens: This recipe is good as-is, but I often modify by using what I have on hand which is usually chicken stock, chicken, and leave out the lime leaves (sometimes putting in lime zest).

Root Vegetables
(Carrots, potatoes, turnips, etc. The "usual" is roasted mixed veg, mashed potatoes or baked potatoes)

Carrot salad with cumin: I had this at a restaurant that added dried currants. Delicious and light.

Warm sweet potato salad with chorizo: I just found this recipe from the WaPo. I'm thinking it would be a delicious lunch all by itself...

Broccoli & Cauliflower
(The "usual" is steamed or roasted.)

Aloo gobi: Curried cauliflower and potatoes. You could use turnips too.

Cream of broccoli soup: Um, a little cream never hurt anyone, right?!?

What do you do with your winter vegetables?

Announcement: BIG, New Project

As alluded to in a prior post, I've had something exciting in the works for some time. And by exciting, I mean life altering: The Dirty Radish is having a baby.

Behold! Sprout doing a ninja kick!

The lack of posting lately has not only been driven by the weather but also my need to take a nap as often as possible. It's been interesting growing Sprout (as we affectionately call the thing growing in my womb). There are lots of similarities to growing a plant & growing a human. I mean, if you're using a seed, it's both sexual reproduction. But there are some key & important differences that have made growing a human far, far more difficult that growing a plant. These include:

1. The "germination" period for a human is much longer than your typical vegetable or flower seed.
   
2. Growing plants doesn't make me tired, sick, repulsed by the very thought of food (and thus, veggie gardening) or craving papaya salad. Or fat, for that matter. Growing plants usually relaxes me and makes me lose weight from all the shoveling, carrying heavy buckets of mulch/compost, etc.
3. You can take a break from growing plants or hand over responsibilities such as watering to someone else (like my husband). But, as the knocked up female, I cannot give away the responsibilities for incubating this spawn. And the symptoms listed in #2 make it very tempting to want to do so.
   
4. Have I mentioned how tired I get?
   
5. Growing plants does not make my hair look this good. So lovely & shiny!

However, it's all still very exciting. I mean, terrifyingly exciting. There's still that anticipation of "Did it work?" (and you know what I mean by "it"...). At this point, it's pretty clear "it" did as I'm firmly planted in the second trimester. Now, my husband & I are both wondering "What *is* it?" just like if a friend gave you some seeds they had saved but not labeled. Luckily, we are 100% sure this is a Homo sapien but the exact variety (ahem, gender) remains unknown! Also there is the "When is it going to come out?" question. Right now my due date is July 8th, but we shall see if Sprout is punctual (like its mother) or a bit tardy (like its father).

As this is a gardening blog, I promise to keep the nastiness that I hear pregnancy becomes away but I cannot promise that future photos of a baby dressed up as a little peapod or ladybug or bunny or, um, a radish won't pop up every now and again in the rapidly approaching future. You've been warned...

My First Year Garden: Lessons Learned

Technically, this wasn't my first year gardening. I'd grown veggies in pots last year. However, this year was my first concerted effort at actually producing instead of experimenting with which spots got the best light & such in the yard. And, geez, I've learned a lot this year. From an indoor aphid infestation to first strawberries to fall vegetables left for dead, there was good, bad & ugly!

Here are my lessons learned:

1. Start peppers indoors earlier than the other vegetables. They take longer to germinate.
2. Get another grow light or start fewer things from seeds. My seedlings were far too crowded which resulted, I think, in leggy purple basil.
3. When I plant outside, lay out a soaker hose. This will make irrigation easier in the summer when the rains stop. (Wrangling a hose through and around tomato plants heavy with baby tomatoes is not fun. Some precious darlings get knocked off!). Or, figure out some drip irrigation scheme.
   
4. Plant tomatoes at the end of the bed or in the back so they don't shade the peppers.
5. Plant selection: Sungolds are keepers, Wonder Lights are blah.
6. In January or February, mark the planting dates for the entire year on my Outlook calendar. And set reminders!
7. Net my ground cherries. I only got 5 last year from my garden & the rest went to the blasted robins.

And, 2010 will be the year of me tracking garden expenses and weighing garden yields. My garden is certainly my hobby and not a money-saving venture, but I am interested in its impact on our budget.

The Holiday Haul for a Better Garden to Come

By the miracle of Santa, I got some lovely presents to help my 2010 garden be better than ever. I got:

-Another grow light so that my babies won't be quite to squished next year
-Set of garden tools with sturdy tote to keep them all organized and easy to find.
-A book on seed starting (which is mega detailed)
-Subscriptions to Organic Gardening and Fine Gardening
and, for garden-related entertainment,
-The Brother Gardeners

I hope you all's holidays were warm, bright and cheerful as well.

Snowpocalypse

The DC area is notoriously skittish when it comes to snow. I would argue that it's with good reason, though:

a) DC area is full folks from warmer climes, like myself. I never had to drive in snow until I was 23 (when I moved here)

b) It doesn't snow that often here. This means that people like myself don't get the opportunity to properly practice the winter driving *and* that there is little incentive for local governments to invest heavily in snow plows, etc.

c) Traffic is bad on a good day. It's a thousand times worse on a snow day.

and

d) When it snows here, it usually happens in the morning and just a few inches. This melts by midday and then freezes into black ice juuuuuuuuust as rush hour starts. That is terrifying stuff.

But, this recent snowfall rivals the Storm of 2003. That was my first winter in this area and in February, we got a doozy. I remember opening up the door to my balcony and sticking a yardstick in the ground...18in! My grad school was cancelled for that entire week.

This snow storm is probably worse that that. In my yard, I'm measuring about 20 inches in the non-drift areas. Remember my raised beds that looked like this in the summer:

Well, you can't really tell I have raised beds. Or, really any garden at all now:


Unfortunately, this snow is too fluffy for snowballs or snowmen. Therefore, it does me no good.

More Winter Information Resources

This morning, it feels like 14*F outside which is very chilly for DC. Very, very, very chilly. The kind of chilly where your nose runs and your cheeks burn if you're outside too long in the wind.

We've already discussed how I am not terribly cold-hardy. Thus, I'd rather spend most of my winters indoors with some hot cocoa, dreaming of spring. Last time, I posted about books. This time, I'm going to post about TV.

Gardening by the Yard was an awesome show. It was kind of like the Good Eats version of gardening...you know a wacky host (Paul James in this case) provides both entertainment and information in one half hour show. Sadly, the show has been cancelled. You can, however, find episodes online and reruns still show up on my DVR (I believe on Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings).

I mourned the loss of Gardening by the Yard for awhile, but then I found that Paul James had his own website with web videos. Hurray!

These are truly fantastic resources to hone your gardening skills, and add to your gardening knowledge, all while staying warm this winter.