What fun it is to get out the leftover packets and check them against my seed viability chart.
My gardening notes from last spring and summer make rather depressing reading. Hardly anything succeeded after the last of June. We can usually count on the heat-lovers, tomatoes, corn and beans, to come through for us. The record heat and drought put a stop to all that. Even veggies that soak up heat found it was all to much of a good thing. They swooned and had to be carried from the field.
While the solar scientists try and make up their minds as to if Solar Cycle 24 has passed max, I'm betting the garden that it hasn't. My prediction is we are in for another hot dry year. Accordingly, I'm going to plant early varieties of the spring crops that did so well for me last year. Packman broccoli were prolific. Many await in the freezer.
Little Sweetie snow peas, from Stokes, were great. I had plenty to eat and froze a few packages. So now I'm looking for some regular peas to try. Wando peas are billed as being able to withstand drought and heat. When I finally understood what was meant by growing peas on brush, I've gotten good results. If they had said grow them on sticks stuck into the ground, that would have been better. "On brush" made me think they meant a brush pile of sorts, an idea too silly to try.
The more seed catalogs I reference, the more confused I become. Mr. Big peas take 72 days to mature, according to one catalog, but only 58 in another. One source says the vines will grow to six feet; the other says 30 inches! Who to believe?
Then there was the Romanesco broccoli, the big green mound in the middle of the garden above. It grew for months. The seed packet said 80 days to maturity. Somewhere else, I read it took much longer. It took even longer than that. It never got a head. I know the feeling.
I'm making my list and checking it twice for the annual trip to Planters' Seeds in Kansas City. Probably they will have the appropriate pea seeds for our region. Meeting up with my daughters and grandkids there is the high point of late January. Bulk seeds are such a great value. We get several years' planting for the price of one package from some of the stingy seed companies.
