The Edible Garden Project: February 2013 Update

If you're relatively new around here and wondering why a gluten free food & travel blogger is writing about edible gardening - it's simply because growing your own food is a mighty simple way to make sure you're eating gluten free. Plus, I enjoy it and I like to share - so there's that too.

It's almost time to start planting for the warmer months ahead and I'm super excited for our garden this year! We're adding a number of new things to the mix including even more planting space. 

What major changes are we making based on lessons learned from last year? 

• Our cucumber and pepper plants are going in containers in our back porch area which acts a bit like a greenhouse. 
• We're not planting fennel - it takes up way to much space in raised beds and doesn't yield a whole lot.
• All of our greens, herbs, carrots, and beets will be all be started from seed and for everything else we'll pick up as starters from the Seattle Tilth Edible Plant Sales. 

In addition to the containers above, we currently have three raised beds and will be adding a fourth mini-bed for herbs. Oh and now that I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I forgot about our two Russian tea plants, pink lemonade blueberry, and lingonberry plants that also live in containers. This year will be the first that we get to harvest some of our tea!

 

Our first bed, will be all planted from seed - which I love! So much more cost effective and it's just more fun to grow things from the beginning. All of these plants should work well as direct seeds and will be planted during the month labeled below them (that goes for all the graphs in this post). We're planting more beets this year (for juice) and less carrots since I still have some frozen from last season.

The middle bed will mostly be filled with summer plants but it's also the one that I'm still looking for some ideas. We'd like to plant a paste tomato this year, but I'm not sure which one - any suggestions? We'll also do a summer squash again, but last year our Delicata squash was not very flavorful - so perhaps we'll switch to another variety. With eggplant, last year we grew a Japanese variety but might try something different this year. And finally, there's the open block of space which I figure we'll fill with something fun we find at Seattle Tilth.

Our third bed is mostly spoken for already - with our two rhubarb and the green globe artichoke taking up most of the space. We'll be growing those Cinderella pumpkins again this year, since they were such a crowd pleaser in our neighborhood last year. What I'm most excited about for this bed is getting to harvest a bit of the rhubarb this year since the plants have now had a year to establish themselves.

Our newest bed will be half the size of the others and will be our herb bed - at least for those that won't be grown in containers. I'm really excited about growing lemon balm and chamomile to make tisane. 

In addition to all this outdoor edible goodness, I've got something else amazing headed my way this week to try out some indoor edible gardening! I'll write more about that when I've got it all set up and ready to grow. 

Do you have plans for an edible garden this year? What will you plant?