I mentioned in an earlier post that Chris and I have an upcoming wedding! September 10th, actually. This has changed up the garden plans slightly, as I would like to grow most of the flowers for our wedding.

It’s a fall wedding, and will take place outside, so sunflowers are fitting. We’ve had good luck with sunflowers in the past, and I think we can add some daisies to the mix.

Here are a few pictures of the smaller sunflower varieties we grew last year. The yellow flowers are dwarf varieties, Sunny Smile, from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. They produced beautiful 6″ flowers, with dark centers. The orange variety escapes me now; it was a random sunflower packet I picked up at Bachman’s last spring. They were pretty, but not too productive.

I ordered 6 new cutting varieties, along with Sunny Smile and some of the standard 12-foot sunflowers from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. We haven’t grown these yet, so I don’t have pictures… these are from Johnny’s website/seed catalog:

Varieties we’re trying for the wedding:

• Moulin Rouge – 3″-4″ blooms
• Sunbright – 4″ – 6″ blooms
• Autumn Beauty – Assorted sunflowers, up to 8″ blooms
• Little Becka – High producing plants. I think these are smaller flowers.
• Sunny – 5.5″ – 6.5″ blooms; a tall variety
• Velvet Queen – 5″ blooms (look similar to Moulin Rouge, but larger flowers)
• Sunny Smile – 3″ – 8″ blooms, with smaller branching flowers

I’ll update on the progress of these flowers over the summer. I am hoping that succession planting through Mid-July will yield enough for the wedding this September. We’ll just have to see!

That’s Minnesota in March for you!

Catnip, the earliest spring herb:

Also, it looks like the thyme wasn’t even phased by 4 months of freezing weather and more than four feet of snow. Ready to use!

Before the weekend, we still had 6″ of snow covering the ground. It’s amazing how fast things change this time of year! Of course, CBS says that we may see 3-5″ of white stuff again this week… but the season is definitely changing. Chris has found a lot of neat things sprouting in his garden already and has plans to put in potatoes soon. Actually, he may have been out there seeding lettuce and other cool crops this weekend.

My garden is finally cleared from snow, so I took some time to investigate.

Apparently we missed some onions. Last year we also found some onions we missed, and they produced some stunning flowers. Here’s our resident model showing off what happens if you don’t harvest your onions:

They are the long, green stems with pretty white flowers on top. Here’s a link to a close-up picture of the onion flowers. (He’s a 95-pound dog … those are some big onions!)

I’ve been slowly working on ordering seeds for this year.

The envelope is already sealed on my order from Sandhill Preservation Center in Iowa.  I will post what I got when I plant it.  But I am excited to try the sweet potatoes I ordered from them.

I am still looking for a good paste tomato to plant.  I will also be trying out Stupice, which I ordered from Bountiful Gardens last year.  It is an early tomato that is supposed to produce throughout the season.  Most of my tomatoes are going to planted from seed outside.  Thats a blog post for another day…

I have also ordered some trees.  I have hazelnuts, chestnuts and hickories on order from Badgerset.  Jessi has ordered a scary amount of grapes to line our fence out front.  And I am planning on possibly getting a couple Northern Pecans and Oak trees from Oikos as well as some trees from the county conservation district and native plants from Morning Sky Greenery.  There is a lot of work I’d like to do, but there are limits to my time, attention span and cash so a lot of these plans will have to be put off.

There are a few more herbs I’d like to get as well, but other than that I am trying to keep everything down to a manageable size to do limits on my time and money.

It’s that time of year again!

10 weeks until Minnesota’s average last frost. We like to put stuff out earlier than that if the weather permits. I have a lot of plans for the garden this year – including growing the flowers for our wedding this September! I’ll have to post more about that later. I also ordered 100 grape vines, and Chris ordered some nut trees so I’m sure this summer we will be busy planting.

There is a nice little nursery just down the road, so to save some time I am planning on just purchasing a lot of transplants from them. There are a few varieties that we just can’t pick up locally though: heirloom tomatoes, fancy peppers, funky-colored cauliflower… so I took out the shelves and grow lights and set everything up in our spare bedroom again.

There seems to be a lot of debate on using coconut fiber vs. peat moss as a seed starting medium. I read a few posts on gardening forums, and people have strong opinions about both – on which is the most environmentally friendly, and which performs better. I haven’t made a decision yet, but I did decide to put both to the test this year with our seedlings.

I picked up some Hoffman Seed Starter from Bachman’s. It is made of peat moss, vermiculite, and limestone. I also picked up some Burpee Eco-Friendly Concentrated Seed Starting Mix from Target, which is made of coconut fiber.

Half of the pots are filled with peat moss (the green pots in the picture above), and the other half with coconut fiber (yellow pots above). I prefer the consistency of the coconut fiber, and it seems to be better at both retaining moisture and draining than peat moss. We’ll just have to wait to see which one the plants prefer!