Well, all of the seed orders are in with the catalogs, all of the soil turned and getting ready for planting, rain barrels are nearly full already, and plans are coming together for planting the crops. This is the time of year here in San Diego, and elsewhere, when plans come together for spring planting. Here at home, we are getting what equates to a late start on winter vegetables. Still learning about gardening here in this interesting climate!
San Diego is generally within climate zone 10b, which means we are able to grow crops year round here with a little work and planning. For us here at home, our plans were a little wonky for the first year so winter crops that should have been planted by around September were never put in. But, the season here is forgiving, and so we will be starting our winter crops "late", in January. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how this is late, but this is a learning experience! In Colorado where I grew up, nothing goes in the ground between December and March unless you have an ice pick and a death wish for whatever it is you may be planting!
January will be when all of our seeds come in from catalogs, and when we organize what we painstakingly harvested last year. What we've learned in retrospect is that some of our collected heirlooms may very well have hybridized, especially the tomatoes! Only our first crop will tell. Apparently, we should have kept single varieties of the veggies we loved most rather than say 20 varieties of tomato. But, if you don't plant 20, how do you know which one you love best? So we shall see. Those black prince heirlooms may turn out to be early girls this year, but I'm sure we will still put them to good use.
In the meantime, I would like to share a few great resources I've stumbled across. The first is folia.com, which is a great site for networking with other urban gardeners all over the world. Besides being a great forum for sharing experience, the online database of plants is incredible, including photos, growing tips, hardiness and care instructions. Awesome resource! And, you can even network for swapping seed stores with folks from all over the world! Neat huh? We will of course be having our own neighborhood seed swap here in SD, but you can bet I will be sharing this resource with my friends so that we can all branch out even further. My own journal and site there is http://myfolia.com/gardener/BrunoinSD if you are interested in following the more cerebral planning of this gardening year. We'll see how well I keep up there, but it will be nice at least to keep a record of our seed store and crops there for this year, as well as some quick updates on progress.
The other resource is an online garden planning resource that I believe I will be using to plan out crop rotations and reminders with, Garden Planner. It's a little steep on cost, $25 per year, but it seems very useful and resilient, and will even allow me to share a website with all of you on my garden plan and layout, which seems both inspirational and useful. I will give you my full review as I progress through the year.
Lastly, be sure to check out my recommended reading and resources tab on the right over there in my blog. I update those regularly as I leaf through them. If any of you out there want a review of these, I'm happy to provide, but these are all great resources for planning your crops this year and inspiring you to continue when the going gets tough!
That's about all for now! I'll be sharing more as things come together for the year, but for now, here's what's growing on our kitchen table right now! Sprouts are awesome year round crops, high yield and satisfying as you have a finished product in about a week. The hyacinth was a gift from my buddy Puck and doing beautifully as you can see. And, the camelia, rescued from a beautiful shrub near my work that lost a bunch of blossoms in the last rain storm. Enjoy!
