Seeds

My vegetable patch in San Francisco is a tiny 40 square feet. A few weeks ago I sat down to wrap my head around the new garden. Umm, this one is a little bigger, weighing in at 420 square feet of raised bed growing areas alone. Yikes! I debated on just starting out with a few beds here and there, but then I began to worry about wasting all that amazing dirt just sitting there, calling out to me to fill it.

At least one bed has been taken. This is her garden bed.

So I figure this, most people who have a garden, have day jobs, right? They are likely only able to spend most of their time in the garden on the weekends. Just like me. Yes, I'm sure I'm going to miss a few crucial times when I should be ready to pluck those just ripened peas off the vine before they go starchy or when the birds get a hold of the cherries before we get a chance to (aparently, this will happen).

The 60 year old cherry tree that still produces fruit. Stay away birds!

But you've got to give things a try. Take some risks. What's the worse that can happen? You lose a lot of money on plants you've bought. Which isn't good. So, this lead me to realize that it was going to cost A LOT of money to fill all those beds up with store bought plants. Not to mention I'm picky when it comes to choices. Quality counts. So it all comes down to seeds. A lot of this garden will be grown from seed. I can only start seeds in the ground, no transplanting since I won't be around to baby them all week. There certainly will be some storebought plants. I'm looking forward to this Tomatomania in a few months where I plan to stock up. Peppers will be bought too. But the rest, all seeds.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds to be precise. It just so happens that we live one town away from the Petaluma Seed Bank, where you can spend hours pouring over seed packets among other seed-crazed fools like myself. We went over last month and I stocked up. I was kind of shocked by the $45.00 price tag but then I realized these seeds could provide most of our vegetables for a couple of seasons. Think of what that will save in trips to the grocery store and farmer's market. A lot. Check out Baker Creek's site and be sure to order their catalog, it's 196 pages of incredible seeds. They have a new book out too which is a nice read.