Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Green Dreams

Now that I have the flowers taken care of I need to get serious about the vegetable garden. I am hopeing to get it tilled next Sunday, so that would give me a week to get something together to plant, I'm not absolutely married to getting everything in the ground on the same schedule I have been keeping because I've finally started doing the math and I've figured out that I am going to be on vacation while the garden is at its peak. If I hold off a couple of weeks, say plant the last week of April into the first week on May, instead of kicking my ass to get it in the ground my April 15th,  the garden will still manage to grow and I can be around to harvest it.

I got another seed catalog today. A gorgeous catalogue full of the most beautifully photographed, genuinely sexy peppers, beans and peas you ever saw, total vegetable porn. It worked though, because I think I may have decided on what I want.

There is a very attractive  pea collection of three different varieties, but at the same time, how many peas do I need? I like peas but they are hardly a staple of my diet, but, maybe they should be and what better way of introducing them, then to have a lot of them? I could have Oregon Sugar Pod II, Super Snappy and Super Sugar Snap. I found two kinds of beans that I think I want: Kentucky Blue and Blue Lake, I have seen these sold locally, so maybe these I can just pick up here.

All of these lovely plants need room to stretch. I did the bush bean thing  last year and was thoroughly unimpressed, I'm going to plant a couple of those with the potatoes though as a way to protect them from nasty potato eating beasties. Anyway, everything I want to plant need something to grow on, which leads us to: What are they going to grow on? Alphagal and Broskey have gorgeous, super strong hand made towers and they are fab -  but I am not a builder and I am not certain I need a year round solution.

Instead of something as high quality as those, I could try  my own  DIY tower, but if I really wanted to do that, I should have thought about that weeks ago. I think my fix for this is going to be three or four store bought trellis', conveniently sold at Poverty Barn but still not cheap. They aren't as romantic or visually appealing or as cheap as choice three, which would be  bamboo pole tee-pees, I have put some thought to, but even with some thought, I am worried that these might not be strong enough alone so I had put some thought to mayne pairing them with some kiddie hula-hoops for strength but it seems like a lot of math to get these together though and again, I should have gotten on this weeks ago. I think I'm going to hit Poverty Barn, if they still have them, again, I should have gotten on this weeks ago. Garden Planning Fail!

I'm having less luck with my peppers. I know I want some, but I don't know how many or what kind. I am sure I want sweet bells, like California Wonder or Flavorburst and Golden Giant but there are lot of them. I want them big enough to use for stuffing but my peppers never get as big as the ones I see at the stores that are sold for that. The peppers I might have to order because I haven't seen any around here that look promising. I'm now thinking, California Wonder, Flavorburst and Golden Giant. That was easy.

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