How does your garden grow?

Even though I have only had a garden once or twice in my married life, having a vegetable garden goes way back in my family.

My Dad grew one just about every year when I was growing up. His mother and grandmother always had big prolific gardens. And then on my mom's side, my PawPaw (her Dad) keeps up 2 gardens each year. And both of my great-grandmothers on that side were big gardeners as well.

Didn't mean to get off on my gardening genealogy there. Just wanted to say: growing a garden runs in the family.

It's been a few years since we've had one at our house, but plans are coming right along this year and I'm so excited! It is even better this year than before, because I feel like Greg is (almost) as into it as I am, so it's OUR garden, not just mine. :)

He has definitely been putting some muscle into this year. I posted here about him doing the beginning dirt work on his birthday last month.

Then a couple of weeks ago he borrowed PawPaw's tiller (and a few lessons to go with it) and got all our dirt nice and soft and into rows.

My job has been all the planning and purchasing.

Whether it's good or bad I'm not sure, but tend to be #1 - very sentimental, and #2 easily influenced. So, when I read a book this winter about the big bad farmers and companies having a monopoly on the seed market with their genetically engineered, blahblahblahblahblah, I instantly loved this company:

Seed Savers Exchange

From their catalog: "Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit membership organization dedicated to conserving and promoting heirloom vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers."

I just thought that was too cool and was hooked. It was so much fun poring over the catalog and reading the descriptions of all the different vegetables!

From them I ordered seed packets of zucchini, yellow squash, cucumber, bell pepper, eggplant, corn, and 3 varieties of tomatoes.

Last Saturday I started the tomatoes, peppers & eggplant in the little Jiffy peat starter kit. I also threw in a couple of basil seeds since I already had them. We'll see how that goes.

Here is how things are looking one week later:
This past Monday I put out some lettuce seed that I already had, plus the corn. And then Tuesday, it rained. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday.

So.... not sure what is going to come of my corn and lettuce. Especially the lettuce! I'm afraid it is all washed away! But starting Monday we're supposed to have sunny highs in the 70s. I'm hoping things will start popping right up.

I know my little indoor seedlings could sure use some sun. The little things are starting to look kind of pitiful!

To check on other gardeners or to post your own Garden Club report, go visit the Peterson Clan!