My Elegant & Complex Garden Plan

Despite never properly putting our garden "to bed" last year, I had great intentions of being totally on top of things this spring. Mapping out a garden plan, companion planting, researching what specific strains of common veggies (tomatoes, etc.) grow best in our region - you get the idea. 

But after a brutal (and busy) winter, I found myself with nothing planned or in place when that first post-it popped up in my planner reminding me that it was time to start planting seeds for this year's garden. What I did have was a pile of assorted seeds in the freezer whose age, levels of proper prep for saving, and probability of sprouting varied dramatically.

Since we've (finally) found a couple good farmers' markets locally and signed up for a CSA this year, I knew our primary veggie needs would be covered regardless of what we grew ourselves. [insert sigh of relief here]  Thus, I settled on my highly elegant and complex garden plan for this year: throw everything  on hand at the dirt and plant what sprouts.   :)

I reassured myself that if we somehow got an abysmally low sprouting rate we could always pick up a handful of seedlings somewhere to fill in any empty garden space. As it turns out, though, our sprouting rate was much higher than anticipated! I've made a huge mess twice already - once in the original round of planting, and again when I transplanted a bunch of seedlings to bigger cups.

I started with seeds for two kinds of pumpkins (cheese and sugar), peppers (chili and two varieties of bell/sweet), broccoli, carrots, eggplant, spinach, arugula, butternut squash, tomatoes (three varieties), onions, and lavender. So far I have no cheese pumpkins, eggplant, or peppers and only 1 butternut squash seedling. Everything else is thriving... and starting to take over our window sills. If they keeping soaking up what sunshine we can get, they'll (hopefully) be strong and ready for their move outdoors Memorial Day weekend.

Meanwhile, our wild edibles (like purslane) are starting to make an appearance, and our established perennials (rhubarb) are showing new growth as well. (Yay!)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything survives my poor gardening skills (and the deer), and that we get a great harvest this year despite my very inelegant plan.