Awesome Geographic Tool - www.plantsmap.com

In last year's blog, I posted a USDA plant hardiness map.  Today, I found a map website that gives you all kinds of data for planning your garden schedule.

Plantmaps dot com has a variety of maps.  Plug in your zip code and try it out.

Seeds

THIS YEAR'S SEED ORDER

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I just ordered seeds from Mountain Valley Seeds, a local seed company, for the upcoming planting:

Bean, Pole - Blue Lake Pole FM1K

Beet - Detroit Dark Red

Cucumber - Marketmore 76

Cucumber, Pickling - Wisconsin SMR

Eggplant - Black Beauty

Kale - Lacinato (organic)

Onion - Utah Yellow Sweet Spanish

Pepper, Hot - Jalapeno (organic)

Radish - Champion

Spinach - Giant Noble

Squash, Winter - Waltham Butternut

I picked most of the varieties based on the recommended varieties for Salt Lake Valley from USU.  If you live in the area, Mountain Valley lets you pick up your seed orders at their location, 455 W 1700 S Salt Lake City.

I plan on buying tomato and bell pepper starts from the Wasatch Community Gardens spring plant sale on May 12.

SEED SWAPS

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Today there was a seed swap at the Sorensen Unity Center.  Wikipedia defines seed swaps as events where gardeners meet to exchange seeds.
Seed swaps are good opportunities to find different varieties of seeds.  We jumped the gun and ordered our seeds first, and I think we may have found most of what we needed at the seed swap.
The National Gardening Association has an online seed swap.

At the Salt Lake City food swap, cool things were going on:

Wasatch Community Gardens was giving away free seeds!!!!

Booth for Adam's Heirlooms CSA

Some of the seeds I scored from the Wasatch Community Garden booth.

Seed catalogs for perusing. 

Seed packets from Slow Food Utah Ark of Taste Program.  I intend to grow these and tell people how I think they taste.

I also had the opportunity to meet Kyle LaMalfa!

SEED COMPANY LIST

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Seed companies allow for you to buy exactly the varieties you want. Some of these came from a list provided by Mother Earth News.

• Mountain Valley Seed Company - a good local company to buy seeds
• Seed Savers - this one looks pretty cool; its a nonprofit devoted to preserving heirloom varieties (see below for some of the cool varieties they have)
• Kusa Seed Society
• Johnny's Selected Seeds 
• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Seeds of Change
• High Mowing Seeds
• Fedco Seeds
• Territorial Seed Company
• Burpee Seeds
• D. Landreth Seed Co.
• Kitazawa Seed Co.

Purple Beauty Bell Peppers

Eggplant, Listada de Gandia OG

New House and Update (finally)!

I know it has been a looooong time since I posted, but I am getting back on the horse.   Last year, we were inspired by our garden-savvy friend to buy a house, so we went through an extremely rigorous process of selecting and purchasing a home.

One of the first things I did after getting the keys to the house is setting up my garden spaces.

One of the great things about our new house are two cherry trees.

I will add more about my new configuration in the near future, but first I will summarize my results from last year:

Our indoor garden did horribly.  It produced about a quart of green beans, ten flavorless tomatoes, and  two cucumbers.

However, our church garden did great!  It produced a ton of tomatoes, several pumpkins, and rosemary bushes.

Onions

Tomatoes

Peppers

Some of last fall's harvest.

Check out the overflowing tomato plants!

Zucchini!  How exciting!


A pumpkin pie that Brooke made from some of our home-grown pumpkins.


Pumpkins from our garden.

Ok, so look forward to more information about my new setup and my plans for it.  I also want to talk about canning, stonemasonary, and greenhouses!