1st Seed Order, Here I Go!

[digitS']

Some of you have already begun to order seeds. Some of you have already begun to plant seeds. Even, outdoors!

I probably won't see the sun again today. Everything outdoors is covered with snow and hoar frost. But, I'm making out my 1st seed order! I want to get some things that will be new-to-me and have a special allure . Taking a chance on Fireworks and Gold Dust - 2 new tomato varieties . . .

How about you? Taking any chances this year?

Steve
edited to say: I probably shouldn't have put this in Random Ramblings but . . . what the hay

 

[baymule]

Haha Steve! My entire order/orders are chances!! Purple potatoes, rosy potatoes (used to go to feed store and buy unknown red skinned potatoes) blue jade corn, multi-colored corn, (bought peaches n' cream from grocery store on sale last summer) orange icicle tomatoes, Arkansas traveler tomatoes, blue cherry tomatoes, trombocino squash, hulless oats, quinoa, amaranth, dill, echinacea, lemon balm, mullein,english peas (tried these before-was dismal failure-here's hoping!) anise, hyssop, albino beets, rainbow chard (never tried chard) Lebanese white squash and zuchinni and yellow squash, all WAAAAYYYYY more than I really have room for, but I'm doing it anyway. Maybe just a few of this and that, but my object this year is to grow all from seed, all named varieties and have FUN!

In years past, I snatched started plants from wallyworld of the feed store, plus a few seeds here and there. This year, I had too much boring wet, cold, muddy, gray, dreary days locked up in the house with my 89 year old mother and heritage seed catalogs. Since she is not much on conversation, I stuck my nose in the catalogs and I now have a tub (the small plastic thing you get as a souvenir from the hospital) crammed with orangey paper mailing envelopes stuffed with seed packets.

And just to see if it will grow and survive, i ordered seeds to toss out on burned piles in the horse pasture. If the horses don't eat/tromp on it, if drought doesn't strike and varmits leave it alone, I will grow; green striped cushaw, tan cheese pumpkin, Conneticut field pumpkins and straight eight cucumbers. We'll see.

 

[digitS']

More power to you, Bay'.



What I am most concerned about are the squash & pumpkins out in the horse pasture. Dang rodents can be death on those things. Have you ever eaten the growing tips of the vines? Their flavor is like winter squash.

Steve

 

[4grandbabies]

Some of you have already begun to order seeds. Some of you have already begun to plant seeds. Even, outdoors!

I probably won't see the sun again today. Everything outdoors is covered with snow and hoar frost. But, I'm making out my 1st seed order! I want to get some things that will be new-to-me and have a special allure . Taking a chance on Fireworks and Gold Dust - 2 new tomato varieties . . .

How about you? Taking any chances this year?

http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h...tists_in_circus_zpsf9ac9b6b-1_zpsd086d22a.jpg

Steve
edited to say: I probably shouldn't have put this in Random Ramblings but . . . what the hay

I am in the thinking stages, getting a lot of good catalogs....

 

[897tgigvib]

I wanna do a WANIGAN ASSOCIATION REVIVAL thing. add some other things besides beans, but they have to be real rare things.

I at least looked at the wood I'll make my frame with that'll hold my seedling flats of LOOOOONG season beans! It's a tired kind of day so far for me. Got my cup of espresso and hoping that fixes that!

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Oh Steve, you must have been looking over my shoulder. I just clicked on FINALIZE ORDER about 10 minutes before I came to this site. Like Bay said I usually hop from the Farm-n-Tractor to the WallyWorld to the Rural King several times in late winter snatching up seed packs or plant cups I think I want to plant.

BUT NOT THIS YEAR!!!!

The "New Smiles" has emerged. I went on-line and actually sat down and planned my gardens over the past three weeks. I ordered 20 new asparagus crowns to replace my 15 year old and tired plants, gobs of veggies (gobs is a very technical term that not many outside of the gardening world understand), 50 strawberry plants, 16 new grape vines, 6 new fruit trees, and already I cannot remember what else. I even ordered some types of squash and we don't even like squash. Duh!

Now my credit card is in a state of shock. The 20% off and free shipping helped me get off of dead center. Now I hope and pray that we have a few dry weeks before planting time to get some of the gardens in shape for planting. Oh yeah, I gotta build some new tables for inside my new greenhouse, too. I have been stockpiling old wooden pallets from which to build my tables but it's too dang cold out there for this old man to hammer on my fingers. My fingers tend to break off when they're frozen and I bang on them with a hammer.

 

[digitS']

No smashed fingers, Smiles!

Looks like gobs of fruiting perennials, too!

You'll need to join me in learning to like summer squash. I have been at it absolutely, forever. (Honestly, if it is camouflaged with onions and tomatoes, I'm finally okay with zucchini.) Not liking winter squash is unimaginable . . .

I have just clicked finalize on Tomatofest! The first time I've ordered from Gary Ibsen, altho' I've searched thru his website many, many times . I have this feeling that the 2013 has just now begun!

Steve

 

[so lucky]

I was at our local farm store yesterday. They had some racks of packaged seeds in! Woohoo! Look at all the pretty colors! Feel the packages! Read the directions over and over! It was Livingston Seed, the company I bought the Blue Lake pole beans from last spring that turned out to be about half something else, not Blue Lake. So I doubt they will get any of my veggie seed business, but I did buy some zinnia seeds from them. And, they had some Pharoh quail! Tiny little fluff balls. I know nothing about them, or I might have bought a few. Sure were cute. I shall google to find out what they are.

 

[journey11]

Other than some new varieties of beans, I'm sticking to the tried-and-true this year.

 

[digitS']

So Lucky, Pharaoh quail are Coturnix quail. Wikipedia has them under "Japanese Quail."

I once decided that if I could keep chickens and pigeons, I could keep quail and bought 35. A friend had a few before I got mine and that lured me into it.

The quail all went in a room in my garage, after a brooding stay in the house. I built the wire cages to hold 1 or 2 hens and a cock. It was all easy peasy and the hens laid like a house afire!

They aren't long-lived creatures and only about the size of robins when you have the surplus cocks dressed out. I had to really concentrate to crack the eggs without making a mess but they have surprisingly large eggs for such tiny birds. I was all out of the business in 2 years. A funny thing was that the next door neighbor didn't know I had them thru that time. She said that she had thought the crowing was just birds in the trees behind the garage.

Steve