My Seeds Came!!!

Yay, they're finally here! Or maybe I shouldn't say finally, as it took less than a week for them to get here after I ordered them, so they actually got here pretty quickly. I was just starting to get worried that I wasn't going to get my tomatoes planted soon enough, which happened to me last year. But they hot here, so everything's good! My tomatoes and peppers are planted in little jiffy pots, and are on their way to becoming big, productive plants. I can't wait until they sprout! By then it should be time to start some broccoli and brussels sprout seedlings. I love growing things! Now if only all this pesky snow would melt, then I could really start getting my hands dirty. Oh well, at least the end is near; winter's slowly ending. The last frost date isn't until late May, but as long as the snow is melting, I have hope that the Sun will once again show his warm face. (Winter depresses me, can you tell?) For now though, I can still be excited about the seeds! I ordered mine all from heritage harvest seeds. 

heirloom tomatoes (4 kinds!), peppers, lettuce, broccoli, brussels sprouts, beets, kale, wintercress, quinoa, mustard greens, carrots, and beans  

 And these are all the seed packets that I had leftover from last year. They're a bit muddy, but they should grow just as well as the new seeds! (Hopefully)

heirloom  kale, beans, carrots, mustard greens, lettuces, (all different varieties than this year's seeds), spinach, amaranth, sugar snap peas, swiss chard, orach, and arugula 

 I don't have a whole lot of seeds in each packet leftover from last year, but still, you have to admit that it's a pretty nice selection. I have almost 30 different kinds of plants! My raised bed has 50 square feet, and I'm using the square-foot gardening method, so I can grow 50 kinds of plants in there. It sounds like I have too many kinds of plants, but the tomatoes and peppers will all go in the front, and I don't think that I'm going to grow amaranth this year, as I bought a bunch of quinoa seeds. Also, the spinach, swiss chard and mustard greens can be grown in pots, so already that frees up a lot of room in my raised bed. And who said that I have to plant the same variety in each square foot? If I planted each square foot of carrots with a mix of seeds, then I can pull up a beautiful multicoloured bunch when they're ready! (I bought yellow, purple and orange carrots). I prefer variety over quantity anyway.

I even tried saving my own bean and pea seeds last year. Let's hope they grow!

Isn't just amazing how beautiful, delicious, and colourful heirloom organic vegetables can grow from such humble little seeds? I just love how a tiny little yellow ball, only about 2 mm in diameter can grow into a huge, almost tree-like plant that can nourish a person, and also be strong enough to stay stuck in the ground for a lot longer than the 15-year-old girl trying to yank it up would like.

I'm talking about this amaranth plant, which actually grew quite a bit more after  this picture was taken.  At full size (or at least when it was time to pull them up for the winter) I could barely get my hand around the stem (or should I say "trunk'?). I didn't even leave it long enough to get any amaranth seeds from it; I just ate the leaves. The seeds were smaller even than mustard seeds. Amazing, huh?