It counts more than ever

Ah, February, you bright-eyed temptress.  Rising out of the doldrums and gray cloak of winter, you arrive with an unexpected blast of sunshine, melting away the vestiges of months of frozen torpor.  In a fit of carefree joy, we leave our coats at home, roll down car windows and bask in the glow of an early spring.  Sure, if we were honest with ourselves, we'd admit that before long temperatures will plummet, another blanket of snow will likely fall, and we'll return to shivering under layers of blankets.  But for now, we revel in our delusion, believing beyond belief that spring is finally here.

In the height of a false spring, for someone like me, it's a sudden reminder that the growing season will be here soon.  That means time to plan, time to pore over seed catalogs, and time to fantasize about how this year will be the year that we really produce significant amounts of food.  It's a time to realize that in this era of genetically modified frankenfoods and ever-increasing costs at the grocery store, growing the food you are able to is of higher import than ever before.

As was the case last year, we have available to us a single 8' x 16' plot of land at the Downtown Community Garden.  And as was also the case last year, we plan to maximize the limited space we have to grow as much edible plant matter as it can support.  That means planning ahead, charting out both the physical space as well as the time each crop takes to mature, and ensuring we have the seeds and the timeline to make the plan a reality.  Many gardeners focus on tomatoes, others on one favorite crop, like garlic or peppers.  In our garden we intend to grow no less than 17 distinct vegetables, so we needed to be sure we thought things through.

We also needed seeds.  After reading a report online about the relationship between major seed suppliers and corporate agriculture giant Monsanto, I nearly knee-jerked us into buying all new seeds, to ensure no genetically modified varieties would take root in our garden.  A little further research led to promises from Burpee and Ferry-Morse that they never supply GMO seeds, for as much as that's worth.  We deliberated, and finally decided that we'd use up the remaining name-brand seeds, but replenish with heirloom varieties, in our case, from Seed Savers Exchange (located in Decorah, Iowa!).  For 2011, our new heirloom seeds are Nebraska Wedding tomatoes, Black Valentine and Tiger Eye shell beans, Empress green beans, Chocolate Beauty bell pepper, and Amish Snap peas.  Shell beans are an entirely new venture for this year, but as we strive to generally eat less meat, it's one that's exciting to set out on.  And the new crops look gorgeous, too. Here's a shot of the Tiger Eye beans from www.seedsavers.org.

Now we wait for our order to arrive, and hurry up to get our seed-starter in place.  While these beans are fine being simply planted in the ground, some other plants are not so amenable.  From the calculations we made this weekend, our broccoli seeds need to be in a grow medium of some sort and under a grow light by the first or second week in March.  Broccoli's a cold-weather crop, and it needs a headstart so it can be fairly sturdy during the first few months of outdoor growing season.  Last year we sowed our broccoli in the ground in early May and our plants went to seed before we could eat any.  That's not happening this year.  We're researching our options for lights, and the countdown is on 'til first seeds hit dirt.

The rational-thinking center of my brain realizes that we are still a long way from spring's genuine arrival here in Iowa.  But even as our Iowa Cubs head south for baseball's Spring Training, so too does Spring Planning and Spring Planting start to take shape at home.  This is the time where the work goes in to transform simple vegetable patches to impressive Victory Gardens.  Hope springs eternal, as they say.  And while hope may be all we've grown yet in 2011, we're definitely prepared for the season.  This one's gonna count.