Getting the garden started

A few weeks ago, around the same time we made our gutter garden, we planted a bunch of seeds.

I always start veggies from seeds because it’s cheaper than buying plants. Usually I don’t have much trouble, but I figure that if something doesn’t sprout then I can always buy the plant when it’s time to put things in the ground.

We started three kinds of tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumber, squash, zucchini, jalapenos, pole beans, basil, cilantro, parsley, spinach, and sugar snap peas. We also bought some strawberry plants. At our last house we grew an awesome strawberry patch; I’m hoping we can replicate it here.

I learned a lot from my last garden. Specifically, I learned that a family of two does not need four cucumber plants unless they are planning to open a pickle factory. This year we’re sticking to one cucumber, zucchini and squash.

The ONLY thing I can’t get to sprout is zucchini. Basil? Check. Cherry tomatoes? No problem. But Zucchini? This is a plant that will sprout if you wave a loaf of zucchini bread over the ground, but I can’t get it to come up. Is it possible to get a bad pack of seeds? I’m sort of opposed to purchasing a zucchini plant. Oh, the dilemmas that come with spring.

This is the cucumber peeking out.

These photos are a few weeks old, so now my cucumber has leaves and my sugar snap peas are halfway up a trellis. The spinach, which looked like this:

Now looks like this:

And we had our first salad last weekend.

I love sugar snap peas. My dad told me that he never got to harvest his because my sister and I would just eat them straight out of the garden as kids.

We’ll see if any of these make it to the table.