Last year’s gardening season was… wonky at best.   We had to move suddenly- after I’d already planted a bed (thank goodness it was only one bed!) and I dove into the exploration of community garden.  Thank God for the community garden plot!  For a small pittance, I now have a 20×25 garden space for as long as I wish.  (And as long as I keep paying the annual fee, of course.)

As I’ve been starting seeds and making my plans- and watching my new home gardens come to fruition- I’m finding my memories of things are getting a little fuzzy.  Back when I grew 15 or 20 varieties of heirloom tomato, it was easy to keep track of my favorites.  Now I have seed for over 100 varieties- and they’re starting to blur together a bit.

Add to that a bizarre obsession with peppers too hot for anyone to eat. (40+ varieties of pepper seed, hot and sweet and everything inbetween.)

Plus a new affinity for eggplant.

And herbs.

And a sincere desire to really garden and produce food to put by this year.

I decided I needed to resurrect this blog.  It’s supposed to be my journal, so I can look back next year and see what was successful, and what was not.  See what I need to change- what varieties perform better than expected, and what I should never, ever grow again.

I hope some of these posts will be picture heavy, but more than that, I truly desire to be an inspiration.  Even if it’s a small pot of herbs on a back porch- gardening for food has so many rewards and benefits.

Have you gone grocery shopping lately? Everything is going up and up- and showing no signs of slowing down.  Meat prices have skyrocketed, leading many people to at least partially explore meat-free eating.  I am all over that, but even the produce is going up in unexpected increments.  And for good reason.

As the state of California continues to experience a drought, it’s no wonder prices are climbing!  I read the other day that 40% of the state’s avocado farms are being told to allow their fields to go fallow this year for want of water.  Our country relies on California for much of our produce.  In particular, I know we get a lot of our celery, broccoli and salad greens from California year-round.   It’s the dust-bowl of the 1930’s people- real life and in front of us.

In a different direction, we rely heavily on Florida and Georgia for strawberries, peaches, citrus and tomatoes.  They are currently experiencing flooding that hasn’t been seen in ages.  Those beautiful Florida strawberries are going to be at a premium in no time!  Late frosts/freezes have been hampering the efforts of many orchards across the south.

I know here in my home state, the unrelenting cold this winter has not been kind.  Wineries are planning to spend 2014 attempting to coax growth out of severely damaged grapevines- putting the winemaking on hold this year.

So while all these food prices continue to climb for very valid reasons, a packet of seeds still costs a very small amount.  One packet of carrot seed, for example, has the potential to produce more carrots than my family could possibly eat in a year.   One packet of lettuce seed could produce enough lettuce to keep an entire village in lettuce for months on end.

If there was ever a year to consider a vegetable garden, this would be it.   Here in Central Wisconsin, we’re still looking at chilling temperatures- the real garden season is still weeks away.  I don’t expect to get much planted before Memorial Day this year- the threat of cold and frost is just still too much.

So I’ll leave you today with a picture of the most important part of my garden this time of year- The Growroom. Simply the patio door end of my dining room, there is JUST enough room for all my starts to bask in the sunshine.  Provided we get sunshine.

Here you see on the far left my Fatalii hot pepper plant that I wintered over this year.  That was a huge success, and I’ll detail more on that another time.  You can also see two different sets of wire shelving, holding all my flats of tomato, pepper and eggplant starts.  On the bottom there is my pop bottle garden.  This worked great for starting herbs- not sure it’s a good solution for greens though.  On the far right are my indoor tomato projects.  The one in the red cage is a dwarf-that-is-not that I’m growing out for a buddy.  The one on the bamboo pole is actually what is left of my WildThyme GWR plant from last year.  I accidentally snapped off a branch in the garden, so I brought it in the house and rooted it.  It gave me one small tomato over the winter, so I was going to let it die, but then it surprised me by suddenly starting to thrive, pushing blossoms, and now there’s a tomato growing on it.   It’s starting to really take over the space though.  Hopefully it will make it a few more weeks and I can get it outside and see how it does.

Soon it will be time to work outside.  Not soon enough for my taste, but it will happen, and I really can’t wait for it this year.