Seed Starts

This past Saturday we were able to plant our Jerusalem Artichoke tubers from Ronniger Potato Farm. It will drop down into the low thirties for two more days next week and usually we have a week of cold snap in mid-February, but other than that, I think we will have some good sun-chokes next year. We praise the Lord that we were able to get our seeds this year with our current financial situation. We only bought a pound of tubers because they are so prolific. We figured the first year we will simply divide them and replant them. This should give us about a 50-75 foot row of sun-chokes for the end of the second year. Certainly not a bumper crop, but still alot of good supplemental iron in our diets. Sun-chokes have more iron per gram than ground beef! Not to mention the very nice yellow sunflower like blooms that I am sure my daughter will delight in.

We also started our heirloom "Amish Paste" tomatoes (courtesy of rareseeds.com) in some old egg cartons. We did poorly last year with tomatoes, but have learned much since. We've started 36 seeds and hope to see at least 20 or so germinate. We are not advocates of soil-less starting mediums and prefer to use soil from the actual bed they will be planted in. Eleutheros, over at Free Man's Garden, has an excellent post on this subject http://freemansgarden.blogspot.com/2007/05/even-though-we-aint-got-money.html which details the breakfast-lunch-dinner approach to starting seeds. I don't want to ruin the fun of reading the post, so I won't say anymore. For those of you who have never found his three blogs, you are in for a real treat. He does not identify himself as a "Christian Agrarian" , or even a Christian that I can think of, but he has solid writing and is a wealth of information in the best tradition of Appalachian Mountain Folk. I'm probably biased, having lived nearby his neck of the woods for the better part of a decade, but everytime he writes, I can picture myself sitting under a mountain tree with a cool glass of sweet tea listening and learning simple, but profound truths.

The rest of the garden is double-dug with three foot wide raised beds and straw mulched foot paths. It's not as pretty as the pictures in the book, but I am well pleased. When we moved here it was pure Florida sand and nothing even registered on our extensive soil tests. No N, no P, no K! Just sandy, dead, soil. Now, we're at 6.5 on the ph and thanks t0 our fancy stacked tire compost system, we have tons of organic matter ammendment! The only thing left is getting by the last frost and waiting on the moon phase. We are very excited!

Here is a list of what we are planting for our early spring/summer garden:
From Ronniger- Norkotah potatoes and Stampede Sun-chokes

From Seed-Saver's Exchange- Charlevoix Dark kidney beans

And from Baker's Creek- afore mentioned tomatoes, Roma II bush beans, Hutterite Soup beans, Yellow Hickory King dent corn, Sugar Baby watermelons, Edisto 47 American melons, Sugar Cream cow peas, Zuchinno Rampicante squash, and Lemon squash. They included a free gift of St. Valery carrots,which we were truly grateful for since our list was so small this year. Now we have 800 carrot seeds! Since I have many children, I am not really a "broad-cast" planting type of guy. I will make the plans, work up the patience, and sow all 800 of those precious seeds in nice little rows with the hope of a good 600 carrots coming to the table!!! That's the plan for now. 4 to 5 weeks to go, and gardening season is in full-swing in North-Central Florida. And believe it or not, I'm starting very late for most folks here.

Our big garden will be the cooler season vegetables and fruits later this year. For now, we are praising the Lord for His kindness and provision in getting this far!