The blog is back! This year we will see if I can keep it going through the busy season. I’ll try to keep my entries short, so I don’t get hopelessly buried.
We are planning for another great year at the farm. The first big round of planning is complete and we have mostly decided on our crops for this year. I’ve spent a lot of time this week with the seed catalogs. Yesterday and today I ordered most of the seed for this year. We use a number of different suppliers. I look for favorite varieties, organic seed, and price. This year we ordered mostly from Fedco, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Osborne, and Seed Saver’s Exchange. I buy seed potatoes from Milk Ranch and onion starts from Dixondale Farms. I also check out Territorial Seed, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed, Harris Seed, NE Seed, and High Mowing Seed. Check out their websites. I enjoy the paper catalogs more. I take out a pen with green ink and draw big circles around all my old favorites and anything else that catches my eye.
You do have to wonder how the catalog writers manage to come up with glowing descriptions for each and every variety. Amy Goldman has a new book out: “The Heirloom Tomato From Garden to Table”, which follows the same format as her books on squash and melons. I highly recommend all three books. I’ve been pouring over her tomato descriptions this week. Unlike the seed catalogs, in her book not every tomato gets high rankings.
This year we will be growing twenty-eight different pumpkins and winter squash from seven different suppliers. I first learned about some of our favorite squashes in Amy Goldman’s squash book.
I’m still thinking on the varieties of tomatoes we will offer as plants in the spring. We sold a few leftover plants in 2008. This year we plan to sell veg and herb starts, mostly varieties we grow here at the farm. There is every indication that lots of new gardeners will be growing some of their own veggies this year.
New crops this year? Kohlrabi, collards, bunching onions, a small butternut squash, and some wild new pumpkins are a few of the new things you will see in the farmstand in 2009.
And this year the wait for opening won’t be as long. We will open the farm a month earlier, on Wed. May 13. See you down on the farm.
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