So I've started to formulate my plan for what I am going to plant. I even have a little sketch on graph paper of what plants go in which place in my garden. I'm doing square foot gardening combined with intensive planting, companion planting and sheet composting. I have roughly 165 square feet to plant.
I am going to order all my seeds except potatoes from Baker Creek this year. Potatoes I'll probably get from Seed Saver's Exchange. I like Baker Creek a lot - they have a good selection but not too much that overwhelms me. Since I want to be a market gardener, I want to try out some varieties that I think will be good for markets. I was, though, having problems restraining myself... I had to pare down the order quite a bit. I'm sure every other gardener reading this will understand! But besides the selection, I like them because they are committed to not selling any genetically modified seed - it's all untreated, open pollinated and heirlooms. In addition, they even do GMO testing on all their seeds that are more subsceptible to GMO contamination. Corn is a big one - corn pollen can travel for miles on the wind... and unfortunately, if the corn you have been saving seed from for years becomes contaminated by GMO pollen from a farmer who is miles and miles away, you are all the sudden liable and could be sued by Monsanto for copyright infringement. I know it sounds nuts... but sadly enough it has happened and put more than one small farmer out of business.
So I decided that I'm just going to buy seeds this year and I'm going to build a grow rack for my basement to start all my long-season plants like peppers, tomatoes, melons, etc. Considering the fact that I'll only use one or two of each, and I'll end up with about 20-30 seeds, I'm going to plant ALL of them and sell the extras on craigslist. I do plan on selling plant starts as a part of my business plan in the long run anyway. I thought about buying a soil blocker but I think I'm just going to fold newspaper pots origami-style and sell them in those. They decompose in the soil and are free!
I'm not sure what I'm going to use for my soil mix - I know I'll use compost, worm castings, leaf mold, mycorrhizae inoculant, and then maybe soil-less starting mix and throw it all together. I'll build my rack out of some costco wire shelving and it should fit 8 flats for 1 shelf. So we'll see how that goes!
So far, here's my plant list:
Blue Lake Bush Beans
Purple Sprouting Broccoli
regular head broccoli
Amarillo Carrot (Yellow)
Cosmic Purple Carrot
Snow White Carrot
Shin Kuroda Carrot (orange baby type)
Richmond Green Apple Cucumber
Snow's Fancy Pickling Cucumber
Rocky Top Salad Mix
Million Dollar Melon (green fleshed)
Charentais Melon (orange fleshed)
Flat of Italy onion
Australian Brown onion
Crimson Forest Scallion (red)
Oregon Sugar Pod Peas
Purple Jalapeno
Quadrato bell pepper (yellow)
Mini Red Stuffer peppers
White Hailstone Radish
Early Globe Radish
Chinese Red Meat Radish
Purple Plum Radish
Bloomsdale Spinach
Jarrahdale Pumpkin (pie type)
Dad's Sunset tomato (orange)
Principe Borghese tomato (red paste type)
Siletz tomato (early red type)
Land Race Currant Tomato (tiny cherry type)
Tomatillo Verde
Genovese Basil
Oregano
Flatleaf Parsley
Parsley Root
Chives
Borage
Slow-bold Cilantro
Orange Hawaii Marigold
Empress of India Nasturtium
Blue Reflections Sweet Pea
Phew! That's a lot of seeds! That's the order I plan, I'll actually place it later and we'll see what I end up getting, since I'm sure some of these will be out of stock.
5 months ago
