Thinking about the Garden

Well today was payday so I surfed on over to Burpee and picked out my seeds.

Last year my daughter graduated from High School and I so I never got around to starting the tomatoes inside like I usually do. I did buy some plants but I was glad I didn’t’ spend too much effort on them because we had flooding, the garden was underwater for a few weeks and the blight was something awful.

I always fight blight here but this was too much. I got enough tomatoes to make a couple of dinners …but not enough to can.

See I don’t like raw tomatoes. I like them in sauce …
so I grow paste tomatoes and can them. I make tomato sauce and salsa and can it and enjoy it in the winter.
Not this winter though. The wonderful thing about a garden is that there is always next year!


These are the seeds I ordered:


Tomato Big Mama Hybrid: These are my favorite - very meaty, big and few seeds.

Tomato Viva Italia Hybrid: these are smaller but I like to hedge my bets by planting these as well because they are more resistent to blight.

I'll probably check out some of my heirloom catalogs and buy some weird tomato and grow them for fun. I like orange tomatoes. I used to make chili on Halloween when the kids were home and one Halloween I made the chili with all orange tomatoes and orange peppers.

Speaking of peppers - peppers and tomatoes are the staple of my garden. This is what I've ordered:

Sweet Pepper Early Crisp Hybrid : I'm going to try these because they are early. I prefer red bells and they are pretty pricey in the stores but they have such a long season it's hard to get any red ones before the frost.

Burpee doesn't have the greatest variety when it comes to peppers so I'll have to check out some of my other catelogs. I'll probably pick up some jalapeno seeds at Target... I used to buy these "jingle bell" --little bells that got red early - so cute...

Gotta have some beans:

Bush Bean Bush Blue Lake 47

I have trouble with vine borers and I found if I buy cucumbor plants they are past the stage where the mama shoots those buggers in the vine so that's what I'll do this year.

I don't plant cabbage or broccli...I dont' like fighting the worms. I'm a pretty lazy gardner. I plant what survives with little fussing. For me that's pretty much tomatoes and peppers. Some beans.

I also have an herb garden. I pulled up my flat leaf parsley by mistake last year so I'll need to plant some more of that. I have oregano and chives. I'll plant some different kinds of basil and cilantro of course.

And I'm going to grow some milkweed for the monarchs.
Dill for the black swallowtail - though I didn't see any last year. I had some the year before on my dill so I'm hoping they'll come back.


That's a start. It's such a hopeful thing to order seeds!