2009 January Garden

It's official, my wife and I our planning for this year's garden. I received some cash from my in-laws in the mail and my wife went to Menards to pick up some lumber. She is going to build me a 7 foot shelving unit for me to start plants in. I purchased a light last year and rigged it to work in our bay window, but it was too cold there. We'll be taking out some furniture from our living room in order to make room for the shelving unit.

I'm also making a list of seeds that I need to keep an eye out for (Cucumbers, Eggplant, Peppers, Kentucky Wonder Green Beans, Cilantro, Zuchini, Sugar Snap Peas, Onion Bulbs, Spinach, Radishes, & Basil). I already have Dill, Tomato, Lettuce, & Celery Seeds. Our Strawberries, Asparagus, chives, & some local onions are in the ground right now.

For most of our new seeds, I'm going to see if Walgreens is going to have $0.10 packets this year (I missed out last year). If they don't do it this year, I know Walmart got some in the spring which I'll use for my warm-weather crops. For the cucumber seeds, I'm going to look for a hybrid that is mildew resistant, since that is what caused most of my cucumber problems last year.

We also have 5 stumps that in March we want to have removed in order to help the garden grow better this year. We are hoping to tear up part of our driveway as well to make more room for the garden, which will be dependent upon the roommate situation. We're also hoping to get some rain barrels as well to reduce some of the leaking in our basement.

We'll also not rush to put out plants before their time this year. We put out our tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants out too early last year and they kind of just sat there and watched us. We'll put a lot more cool-weather crops in first and when we're ready to plant the warm-weather plants, we'll just pull out the cool-weather ones.

Last of all, we'll produce less pumpkin and apple pie filling this year. We've been enjoying them when we have them, but my waist does not need me eating pie every day. I would say 12 of each should be enough for us. On the other hand, we'll need to at least triple the amount of apple juice we made this year. We made 16 quarts of apple juice, which we are watering down to 32 quarts, but our daughter is drinking over 2 quarts a week and we'll be running out by the end of this month. We also are on our last bag of brocolli since our spring brocolli did not turn out well last year.