First Seeds

Oh Boy! I received my first order of seeds today from Park Seeds. Now comes the hard part. The great enemy of successful vegetable gardening is impatience. Here in Atlanta we invariably get glorious spring like days (It's 64 right now on 1/6) and the urge to get seeds in the ground is very hard to resist. Historically though, our last frost date has been March 20 on average and even with the occasional warm day the actual soil temperature stays below 60 degrees until April sometime. Some seeds like peas, beets and carrots don't mind the cool soil but beans and squash seeds will just rot in the ground if the temperature is below 60 and the result is big time disappointment.

Seeds are expensive. For example the three different squash seeds(delicata, yellow crookneck, zuchinni) were $1.75 for each packet of 20 seeds and the Bonbon squash seeds were $2.00 for 10 seeds.

Some of these I will start indoors in February and some I will direct sow as a socond crop in July so I don't actually have to wait until April to get planting. Very soon my basement will be full of little pots with squash, tomato, pepper and other seeds getting ready for their summer run.
I'm really excited about beans this year. My order from Seed Savers won't be here for a week or so but I have some really cool heirloom beans coming. It is so thrilling to know that these seeds have been saved year to year from way back(even back to the Native Americans). Each year our ancestor farmers saved the best seeds from their crops and nurtured them over the long winters even when they may have been hungry and could have used them for food. They replanted again the next year and the cycle started anew. Just the name of some of the beans is exciting...Cherokee Trail of Tears, Hutterite, Jacob's Cattle, Hidasa and even an heirloom French bean.

I've got some special heirloom tomato seeds in the works as well. "Cherokee Purple", which is one of the best tasting tomatoes there is, and one from Italy "Costoluto Genovese" which is said to be the best Italian tomato ever. I have the packet in my hand "seed source Italy"...I can't wait. There are a bunch of others as well. Amish paste and Martino Roma for cooking. "Cherry Sweetie" and "Beam's Yellow Pear" for salads and just eating like candy.

So yes, the anticipation is now official and I have all my seeds out in front of me on the desk and it is only a month until I can get some going.