The Future will be Green

I didn't want to spend too much time in the past with my Christmas tree so I decided to start thinking about the future... I ordered my Garden! Well, most of my garden. I'm going to get some Carolina Golden tomatoes and I'm sure there will be other sweet young things that will catch my eye in the spring, but for the most part the lovely people at Burpee and I are going to be corespondents. I can't wait!

This year I decided to be a little less out there than I was last year.  I ordered four different kinds of red tomatoes -Big Mama, Fourth of July, Burpee Burger and Health Kick , one kind of bell peppers, Crisp Hybrid and some green bean seeds that this year will not be planted directly under a powdery mildew factory and this year instead of rainbow vegetables I'm going with:

Grown for its fibrous flesh which, when dried, makes the best bath sponges ever! Harvest at 2" long for delectable baby vegetables. Needs at least 90 days to harvest for sponges. North of zone 6, start seeds indoors. Vines spread 12'.

"Grown for its fibrous flesh which, when dried, makes the best bath sponges ever! "

Luffas! They aren't from the sea! Who knew?  I'm going to grow sponges! Isn't that the kewlest thing evah? I just thought it seemed so freaking awesome. I can't eat them but I don't eat tomatoes either and this way I'll never be spongless and if it works? Maybe next year I can send homemade gifts to people too. That would be so cool.

My tomatoes are more , um garden variety than last years, but I decided to go with  more useful day in/day out tomatoes.  I wanted bigger fruits to work with and the exotics I had were all on the small side. I also didn't want to get stuck with tiny tomatoes and this years group has only one smallish variety and its only smallish not tiny. I'm happy. The peppers this year they didn't sell as groups and I just had to pick out the largest variety that got ripe the soonest . I'm probably going to get at least one more variety of pepper in the spring.

I also think I'm going to widen my net garden space-wise as well. I don't have to plant everything in the existing bed, the sponges for instance and the beans I'm thinking are most likely going to be elsewhere, maybe in the front deck or on the side of the house that gets all the sun. I have a lot of time to think about it.