Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Sowing Our Wild Oats

Actually, oats are one of the few things we DIDN'T order to plant...

We filed our taxes on Saturday and went through our list of seeds, trees, and plants last night to remove extraneous items and get our list to a more-manageable volume and price. Today, while I was home sick, I ordered all those items. The damage:
  • 15 fruit, flowering, or windblock trees
  • 24 bushes for a hedge
  • 18 bushes for a windblock for the driveway
  • 143 fruit plants/bushes
  • 2 packets of herb seeds
  • 8 "decorative" plants
  • 31 vegetable seed packets
  • seed potatoes for white, red, and blue potatoes
  • starter sets for red, white, and yellow onions and leeks
  • 1/4 lb of sunflower seeds
  • 1 lb of jerusalem artichoke starter
  • all manner of food processing, storage, collection, and garden-maintenance supplies

In total (after taxes, shipping, handling, etc.): $541.86

And those totals do not take into account the 30 or so seed packets that we already have, the seed starter supplies that we already have, or the "free" seeds and plants that we will get as "valued customers" from three of the four companies we ordered from...

Sure, some people might say we're crazy. And M says he definitely didn't till enough ground for this garden, but these are not all going to be planted at the same time. We have specifically planned so that we will have some replantings, so some sort of vegetable production from late spring through fall, and even possibly into early winter (weather winter, not calendar winter). And several of the varieties we bought are heirlooms, rather than hybrids, so we can harvest the seeds and use them next year and know that we will get the same plant next year as this year...so, we won't need to buy as many seeds next year. And we'll already have a good windbreak and a small orchard/fruit yard started, in addition to perennial and re-seeding annual flower beds to keep calling pollinators back to our garden and yard year after year.

* Stringham high: Tax refund not as high as we had hoped, but combined with money put back, definitely enough to pay for plants, the installation of the coils for our geothermal heat pump, and a nice sum on a credit card.
* Stringham low: M is still going to be unemployed after this Friday.
* Stringham super-high: M is less stressed about being unemployed than about continuing in his current job (as attested to by his fingernails)--how sad is that?

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