I have just either jinxed us for the next two months or provided a catalyst for spring’s arrival, as this morning I ordered the seeds for our veggie garden from Vesey’s. Which way my luck swings should be evident in the coming weeks.

Last year’s food garden worked out pretty well on a limited scale, with the tomato and snow pea crops being quite prolific with minimal attention and the zucchini growing more than adequately despite utter neglect.

This year we thought we’d actually water things, weed a little and just maybe expand our horizons to include such exotics as beans, assorted squash and lettuce. I’ve picked just about everything for fast growth, ease of care and high yield.

The seeds ordered are:

• Gold Mine Bean – aka yellow wax beans
• Red Salad Bowl Lettuce
• Fastbreak Muskmelon – a cantelope by any other name, but a fast-growing one
• Dwarf Sugar Pod II Peas – lots, to be planted at three week intervals (they can be frozen, apparently, if they last long enough)
• Richgreen Zucchini
• Horn of Plenty Squash – like a yellow zucchini, with a bent neck
• Early Butternut Squash
• Tay Belle Squash – an acorn squash variety
• Scotia Tomato – these were stellar last year
• Red Alert Tomato – ditto
• Juliet Tomato – a sort of plum tomato, good in pots
• Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper – the really flavourful ones we used in salsa way back when. Remember, Heather?
• Explosive Ember Pepper – ornamental peppers that are flavourful and hot. Can be used along the fronts of flower beds. Nice foliage.
• Small Wonder Squash – skeddi squash, fast growing.
• Fairy Tale – a small, fast-growing eggplant variety
• Vanguard Watermelon – Katherine’s dream crop
• Carmen Pepper – fast-growing green (or red) pepper
• Racer Pumpkin – just for kicks
• Tortoiseshell Spinach – to start the season off

To this end, I suspect the Dirt Party this year will be focussed on getting the veggie garden straightened out. I checked on roughcut lumber and it looks like a local sawmill has a reasonable price on 2x10s in assorted lengths. Whacking together frames, filling them and getting things like peas, spinach, strawberries and the like into the ground will probably be the order of the day. Cold frames will (cross fingers) already be built. A few sections of fencing may need erecting, as windbreaks. I’d love to have a go at getting the greenhouse up, but that seems more like fantasy than reality right now.

All-in-all, though, I suspect it’ll be a smaller production than in past years.

I hope.

Addendum: I will have more plants than I need. I always do. If this intrigues you and you live near me, feel free to inquire as to extras of whatever appeals. Anything left over gets planted in the old compost pile and ignored, often to unexpected ends.