Plans for the 2010 season?

[Gaston]

Yeah, I know it's early, but if you want any scarce seeds you'd best be thinking about it.

I'm putting the lasagna garden back. Now that Mom's not here I'm going to grow things that Sharon and I like. I've devoted 3/4's of the garden to things Mom said she like but would not eat, but that's going to change. She couldn't help it, she's been losing it for a lot longer than we realized.

So, back to the positive - I've just got to grow some of the French Charentais melons. The one year I grew them the fragrance was heady a hundred feet away ... but a danged coon ate all of them the one weekend I decided to take a little hike in the woods. I'm going to try them again even if I lose to the coon, maybe he's starved out and moved on by now. :D I found that we like Asian bitter melons (good luck finding them in a store outside San Fran), and those seeds are hard to get, too.

What are you thinking about for next season? Anything rare, or possibly rare? The year I raised the Charentais I found out too late that I could only get ten, that's a one-zero, seeds. Period. Lucky to get that little pack. I don't want to be caught by a similar shortage again next season.

[lishca]

nothing rare, just bigger...much bigger. this was the first season i could plant anything, so i just did some lil test plants. some corn, tomatoes, herbs. next year, i'm hoping to plant enough to last us most, if not all of the winter. growing up we always put food back for winter, but after i moved out, and away, i had little or no ground to plant in (and pots just didn't do the trick). so i'm really excited. i'm looking into heirloom seeds and will hopefully be branching out into potentially rare plants in a couple years, oncei figure out just what this gound can do :D

alicia

[Gaston]

Alisha,

If you haven't already found a source, try http://www.seedsofchange.com/

My nephew Mark went back to school and got his horticulture degree, and now he sells heirloom seeds and produce as part of his livelihood. I don't order from him because he won't let me pay for anything, but he's sent me some seeds anyway and they did extremely well. He knows his stuff and he's really picky about quality and getting good germination rates.

If anyone's interested I'll dig up his website/mailing address and post it.

[Gaston]

Whoops, looks like planting the Charentais melons again is a bad idea, we've had a month of raccoons getting into the trash every other nights and a couple of them are this years' babies, about half-grown when I saw them last month, which tells me they probably live somewhere close-by. I got a good look since when I started to put the lid on one of the big wheeled garbage cans there was one inside it. I spanked the can and jumped back, and was reminded just how fast they can climb and run. They/it ate every damned one of my melons just when they hit full ripeness a couple of years ago, so there's no point in planting another crop for them. I'm not mean natured, though, they can just keep eating the bad-fish-smelling canned cat food my Darling leaves out all night for the strays ... and then she wonders why we seem to get so many strays and wild critters. :D