Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Ordering Seeds and Moving More Toward Local

I recently placed my seed order for this year.  Early for me - mid-January.  But, still not early enough.  My favorite corn - luscious - is unavailable from Fedco Seeds and on back order from Johnny's.  Seems like I'm always missing something.  Oh well.

As some of you know, we grow a lot of our own food.  What we don't grow ourselves, we get from a local organic farm.  Veggies - that is.  So far, we have been successful at growing our own or buying locally and in season most of our veggies.  I can, freeze, or store them depending on the type of veggie.  What veggies have we done this with?
corn
green beans (and yellow and purple)
broccoli
cauliflower
sweet peppers
hot peppers
tomatoes and their lovely products (minus ketchup and paste)
zucchini
onions
garlic
winter squash (mainly butternut)
snow peas
swiss chard, kale, and spinach
beets

But there are a few others I would really like to do better with - carrots and lettuce primarily, with a fair smattering of shell peas and celery, and a pinch of turnips and rutabagas thrown in for good measure.  My seed order reflected this.  I ordered lots of different types of carrots.  Mostly, I splurged on pelleted seeds for the ease of thinning and weeding.  I am a terribly lazy and scattered gardener.  Thinning carrot patches is WAY at the bottom of my list.  Boy is very into growing carrots.  I'm hoping to recruit his help for watering and weeding.  He had a large pot devoted to growing carrots last year.  He literally would sit on the bench and watch them sprout.  And, if you know anything about the way carrots grow, this is a long process.  I'm still amazed that he had the ability to sit still for that long.  Well, I suppose he did have a pretty cool bench to sit on...

I digress.

Carrots.  I'm going to grow lots of carrots this year.  And, I really need to figure something out as far as lettuce and winter goes.  We grow plenty of lettuce during the gardening season.  But winter is a different story.  A greenhouse would be wonderful, but not in the plans quite yet.  We are working on a big picture plan (fingers crossed please) that will make many of our dreams come true (twinkling, flashing stars are dancing about the room right now with fireworks being shot off in the distance).  For the time being, though, I need a lettuce plan.  We eat a lot of lettuce...

Fruits, dairy, beans/protein, and grains all have their local and organic stories as well.  We do fairly well with fruits.  Some of which we have to travel a bit for (30 minutes mainly), but we are ok with that for now.  Dairy - we don't eat a whole lot of dairy.  What we do eat comes from Ohio or PA dairies (it's nice to live right on the border).  We buy eggs produced organically from a local farmer.  Most, but not all, of our grains come from local sources as well.  The dry bean issue will have to wait it's turn.

Lettuce...  any ideas?

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