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the ice is melting, so...

It's January. That means if you garden it's time to start pricing and ordering seeds. Or you can be lazy like me and simply wait a few months and then buy them at Hudson's hardware.  Yes, I know, tomato seeds need to go into the ground now, but when I tried that last year I was totally unsuccessful. So rather than spend a fortune of time and a little money on seeds and soil and fertilizer only to turn around and buy plants for the garden, I'm just going to skip step number one. It makes life a little bit easier.

And I'm in a tad of a quandary. For the last three years, I have been unsuccessful with bean or pea plants. Thanks to drought, deer, bugs, lawn mowers, and goodness knows what else all my peas and bean plants have only harvested about two meals (with no leftovers!). As much as I enjoy watching them come up, I also know when I look at the time factor it's more cost effective to simply buy them frozen in the store. And truly? They taste just the same.

I'll plant tomatoes and okra. Those seem to be my staples, even if they don't always do well. And I harvested just enough cucumbers for pickles and eating & sharing this last year. So I'll put those back on the list as well.  And I'm contemplating beets. I really like pickled beets, so why not?  I'll probably forgo the cantaloupe and have a straight watermelon row, and I'll nix the peppers even though they did fine. We simply don't eat them enough to justify growing them. I might try onions again. Potatoes?  They did okay, so I'm not sure if they're worth attempting again. And quite honestly, that will just about fill my garden space. We joked about making it larger this past year (or at least adding a second space), but seeing as I seldom had time to adequately tend the space I had I think it would be silly to expand it. I even considered having a pumpkin patch, but truly, one pumpkin makes more pies and pumpkin butter than I care for.  Why would I want a whole garden full?

Sometimes I'm thankful my head corrals my daydreams before they get out of control.

Comments

Lydia said…
Mmmmmm....okra:) Have you ever tried frying your okra? How about fried green tomatoes? Both are DELISH and favorites of mine!
Monica said…
I have tried fried okra, but I can never get it to be as good as my Mom's! And I have loved fried green tomatoes since I was a kid, but have to limit them now. My grown up stomach doesn't always handle the acid. Go figure!

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