Seed Inventory

I need to figure out how to make a good seed inventory. Being a visually oriented person, I'm inclined to use color to separate various categories, and I also want to keep track of various seed vendors. I love Strictly Medicinal, Baker Creek, and Wild Garden Seed. These highly ethical, non-GMO, organic seed companies have been my go-to source for years. Here are their addies:

Strictly Medicinal https://strictlymedicinalseeds.com/

Baker Creek https://www.rareseeds.com/

Wild Garden Seeds https://www.wildgardenseed.com/

It was a shock to me, since I tend to save seed from year to year, when I ordered my first seeds and saw the 2020 prices. Holy cannoli, they have gone UP! They've gone up enough that I don't wish to duplicate anything I already have, thus the need for a seed inventory.

Basic organization says I need one for cool season and one for warm season. I've never had a greenhouse before so I don't know what kind of overlap there might be, but since my brain is already used to dividing the seeds by season, that's what I'll do. Then of course there are the broad categories, greens, herbs, legumes, melons, squashes, roots, etc. I'll be leaving out many of my favorite plants because Gryph and I have developed allergies or intolerances to them over the years.

Ah, tomatoes are still on the list after all. I just asked Gryph, and he's willing to take a chance. Banana peppers are on the list also, and brussels sprouts, maybe tat soi or bok choy, turnips--ha! I should have asked for this list a while ago!--kohlrabi, asparagus, beans, peas, potatoes, carrots, beets, cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon (but only red! not orange or yellow or white, lol), tomatillos, ground cherries (the sweet version of tomatillos), "bell" squash (pattypan!), zukes, yellow straight neck, acorn squash, delicata (my favorite), butternut, and herbs: sage, parsley, cilantro, and rosemary. This is a pretty good start!

Annnd here is our first obstacle: looking for a link to Royal Golden watermelon so I can show you what Gryph and I are intrigued with, I hit the barrier, "Out of stock." Who knows how many times I'm going to come up against that as I try to figure out my seed orders? This past year of unprecedented demand, as people everywhere suddenly bought seeds and planted gardens in an effort to deal with the pandemic, has truly changed the seed world. Prices are up, availability is down. Seed surfing is going to take a while!

I confess it's more fun than figuring out the inventory, but I do have to do so before I can start buying more seeds. **sheepish smile** Guess I'll haul out some paper and get started.

Time to Resurrect My Favorite Blog: Now We're Gardening!

Hello! I seem to come back every couple of years, write a quick post, and then vanish. But I've been looking for somewhere to keep track of my garden and this seems to be the best place. I'm certainly making a dream, a dream of food and flowers--and you may as well hear me say it up front--NO SQUIRRELS. They've destroyed my every attempt at gardening for years now, and what they haven't gotten, the grasshoppers and roly-polies and late frosts have.

I should update on my last posts. My hugelkultur beds were a great success and the elderberries I planted in them were exuberant--too exuberant, because we discovered to our dismay that Gryph is allergic to the blossoms. We finally had to give the shrubs away. 

Doing Intuitive Readings only lasted for a while, because in July 2015 I got a perforated bowel and ended up in the hospital for three weeks. It took me a long while to recuperate from that. 

I went back to school in Fall 2016, majored in music, but in the spring of 2019 I got cancer. It came as a huge shock. All that I knew I had was diverticulitis, so when I went in for antibiotics and instead had to have immediate surgery, I was blown away. I finished that semester but couldn't go back; had chemotherapy that summer and the side effects seem to be permanent. I still write and arrange music. Probably always will, but school is over for me.

The new roof is holding well and we got a wheelchair ramp off the back porch as well, so now we can get up and down more easily. 

I did my best to recover from the aftereffects of the chemo all through this weird tough year, tried to garden, and was defeated at every turn. Which brings me to now, and my Yuletide gift sitting in the back yard: a small portable greenhouse! We dragged in some of my bigger pots and I replanted the peas which the squirrels have been ravaging, plus I got lettuce, kohlrabi, and swiss chard planted. The greenhouse has shelves, so today I went rummaging through the recycling bin and pulled out the toilet paper and paper towel cores, plus I pulled out the cores I had stashed in my craft supplies. I used saved deli trays as bases and filled the cores with potting soil, planted a couple kinds of beets, a couple kinds of carrots... and totally ran out of room. Huh. That did not take long!

Because I'm planting two and three year old seeds, I planted pretty thickly. (Germination drops off year by year.) I'm hoping it hasn't been too long. I might drop in some fast-sprouting lettuce seeds to get the best use out of the "pots"... ah, there we go. "Merveille Des Quatre Saisons" lettuce--this year's seed from Baker Creek, so should germinate strongly--and as I thin the baby lettuces, the beets and carrots should start germinating.

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