Canning was my gateway drug to gardening. I became obsessed earlier this year with amassing as many canning recipes as I could find, so that I could ultimately distill what I wanted to can this year down to only the best recipes. I scoured all the sources I knew, looking for recipes: Food In Jars and Food Blog Search were great starting points. I found myself perusing Tigress' Can Jam 2010 and all the archived recipes by food type.
One of the goals of her challenge was to encourage people to can things that were in season for their location, source from local farmers or their own backyard if possible.
I started really looking around at the grocery store, curious to find where my fruits and vegetables came from. I'd honestly never gave it much thought. I mean, I knew pumpkins happen around Halloween, and I knew Washington is a huge producer of apples, but that was the sum of my knowledge. Where does most of our citrus come from? The southern states, mostly California and Florida and sometimes Texas. When is zucchini in season? A summer squash, and it's typically in season around June or July. I became curious about backyard gardening. I started reading resource, after resource, after resource..
I started looking into what grew best in the Seattle area, what people would recommend that newbie gardeners would grow. I started primarily looking for spring/summer season gardening, but eventually expanded to consider what I would grow next fall/winter. I set my sights on some obvious "easy" choices: peas, kale, chard, lettuce. I also set my sights on some "not-so-easy" choices: cucumbers, zucchini, leeks, onions, tomatoes, peppers, brussel sprouts, tomatillos. I figure that this is a learning year, and I don't have to put all these seeds in the ground, and if I end up hating this whole adventure-- I have friends who'll gladly put my seeds to use.
I bought all my vegetable seeds through two sources: Uprising Organics & Adaptive Seeds. After reading through every seed selling site that every existed, I boiled it down to these two sources based on their beliefs, practices, and locality. Both companies are from the Pacific Northwest, and both sell only organic and open-pollinated seeds, with a focus on heirloom strains and seed stewardship. I also bought some flower seeds from Ed Hume to spice things up and attract pollinators to our yard.
I have an advantage to this beginning gardening adventure. This house that my partner and I rent in a suburb of Seattle already has several raised beds in the backyard, complete with chicken wire attached to the fence for a trellis. Included with the rental was some stuff that "came with the house." Included in this were stacks of seedling trays in the basement, and stacks of 4" square pots, along with miscellaneous other pots. There's even some tomato cages, a few bins that appear to have been used to hold soil and compost. Several big planter pots out front, sitting neglected. Someone once gardened happily here, but it had to have been at least 5 years ago. The raised beds appear to be rather small at about 2-3' X 6', and they seem rather shallow at about 8" high off the ground. They're covered in sod and rather deep grass. I still have quite a bit of work ahead of me..
Any advice for my new adventure?
