Way back on Black Friday I put in an order with one of my favorite seed suppliers,Pinetree Seeds . Now, usually they ship out like lightning, but one of the seed packet machines were down and they were waiting on a component so they could get back up and running. Being the awesome peeps that they are, Pinetree's amazing customer service asked if I wanted my ordered shipped in multiple shipments, as they had all of it ready but one packet, which was delayed by the down machine. I chuckled and said I was fine waiting because you know, I have a few feet of snow and typically don't start any seeds until end of February or so.
Well, they finally got the machine squared away because a few days ago I got a padded envelope full of seeds, SQUEE!
I order seeds from quite a few different places, but Pinetree has been one of my favorites for years. There's a couple of reasons why. Aside from being a small family run business with excellent customer service, the main reason I love them is they cater to home gardeners, so if I want to try out a new variety without buying six billion seeds, Pinetree is the place to go. They have a glorious selection of heirloom organic seeds too, which makes me happy. I love to try time-tested and true varieties developed by our ancestors!
Every year I pour through the Pinetree catalog when it arrives (usually in mid to late November) and make little stars next to varieties that I want to give a go. After I am done, I go back and have a little heart palpation over the sheer number of stars I put in the book, mainly because they carry herb and flower seeds too, and then I remember that they do a 15% off your entire order Black Friday sale. Phew...
Anyway, Hive being full of awesome homesteaders, gardeners, and people who are just interested in excellent things, I thought it would be cool to share with you all some of the new things I am going to attempt to grow this year!
Yard long beans are something I have never grown, but when the entry said they tasted like a cross between asparagus and green beans, I starred that bean like the intriguing legume siren that it is! Plus, I like pole type beans. Double plus, they are PURPLE! My grandma used to grow bushels upon bushels of pole beans and I have that whole fond memory of picking, snapping, and canning green beans thing when it comes to any type of pole bean.
Okay, this one isn't new to me, but it is totally worth mentioning. Pinetree's lettuce mix is a salad BOMB! I seed a chunk of row feet of this mix every couple of weeks from the moment the soil is workable until about mid June or so, and this lettuce mix just delivers. There's a excellent mix of leaf, butterhead, and Romaine types, and I cut some for baby lettuce and leave some to mature out. It's got a glorious flavor and color profile, so much yum and ease of growth makes it a winner!
Ground cherries are something I have wanted to grow for years. The Hawaiians I live with can put away the fruit, and the idea that I could cultivate an annual out in the garden that yields a fruit which tastes somewhat like a pina colada intrigues me. I mean, just for jam purposes alone I'm intrigued. We'll see how they grow, yield, and taste this year for sure!
Sometimes the history of a plant gets me, and this melon is no exception. It's a rare French heirloom that was preserved by the Carmelite monks. I typically don't bother growing melons up here, because our growing season is pretty short, we have cool, non-humid nights, and well, those two reasons really. That said, this melon's back story and it's 80 days until finished packet claim ensnared my interest.
We eat a lot of hot food here, and when I say hot, I mean hot. The kids were eating ghost pepper salsa like it was ketchup the other day while playing Diplomacy for hours. One time I almost gave a local BBQ owner a coronary because I dumped several Tablespoons of his aged ghost pepper bbq sauce on my pulled pork sammie. He ran up and offered to go get me a glass of milk, and I replied, "For what?" as I joyfully kept eating. He stood wringing his hands off to the side for a few minutes until he realized that I, like the heathens I live with, truly enjoy hot things.
All that explanatory fluff was to lead up to my next plant try, Bhut Jolokia, AKA The Ghost Pepper. I am so, so excited to grow these little fireballs! Plus, I have a friend who smokes meat like a champion, and I can't wait to give him some of the ghost pepper chilis, this summer is going to be HOT!
I'm pretty obsessed with growing pumpkins, so I always get a couple of new varieties to try each year. This time around the sun I will be coaxing these two vines to yield along with all my other tried and true pumpkin types. Early is always a good thing to focus on in our super unpredictable, extreme growing season, and I love me some roasted pumpkin seeds, so the hulless squash got me all kinds of excited.
And then came the tomatoes. I usually grow around 50-100 tomato plants, mainly because I like them. And I probably have a problem saying no when it comes to starting seedlings too, but tomatoes are just so yum, and we eat a ton of pizza and spaghetti here, so it's not like they don't get used. That and I give about a truckload away every year too.
Anyway, Marianna's Peace just had a cool story, and I am a sucker for heirloom beefsteak type of tomatoes. When a tomato grows big enough that you can chuck it at an insolent teenager and hear a satisfying plop from forty feet away, you know that the plant was more than worth your time to grow.
The next tomato, the Large Barred Boar, reminded me of what would happen if a Cherokee Purple and a German Striped tomato had a love child. I love growing strange colored heirloom tomatoes, they are just so much fun to look at and eat! Plus, that the variety was developed by a small organic farmer in Northern California is a bonus. Love, love, love supporting small farmers!
Paste tomatoes are a must around here (RE: pizza and spaghetti are a thing in these parts), so I tend to grow a lot of Roma, San Marzano, and Amish Paste tomatoes each year, but the fact that this little heirloom paste tomato was brought to Vermont from Italy during WWII definitely caught my eye, and we will see if yields like I think it will.
And finally, there is the Yellowstone carrot. I am a fan of carrots of all colors, and the mellow sweet flesh of yellow carrots is something I adore. When I read this, "it was the largest and longest carrot we have ever grown, with some reaching over 12” on the Pinetree website, you better believe I added Yellowstone to my order. I mean at the very least the horses will be ecstatic.
And there you have, a sampling of some of the many seed varieties that I ordered. I am so excited to get my hands back in the soil. Mainly because it looks like this outside:
