Grow Your Own Food In The Garden

I know what you are thinking, well why is she writing this gardening post in February? But oh am I excited for this! for 2023 I have my goals set out for me. I plan on growing some of my own food in my garden this year. I’ll share some things you can use to grow your own food in the garden too. This year I will also be resetting some garden beds and making the most out of the space available in our yard for some homegrown greens! I am only using Heirloom seeds, which means I can keep the seeds year after year.

When Do I Start?

An important thing to note before you grow your own food in the garden is knowing your last Frost Date. With a quick google search, you can figure out when you can begin planting outdoors in your local area, or when you should plan to plant early indoors. Because I live where there is snow for a good amount of the year and very hot summers, I will have to wait to start planting outdoors. However, I can start some planting indoors. I will be starting most of these so they will be ready to go out into the garden on May 22, so I will be starting them 6-10 weeks earlier so anywhere from March 13th. I think it will be good to start them at that time.

For now, I have some seeds starting indoors that I plan to keep indoors. I have them in starter trays with supplemental lighting, on a heat mat. Maybe one day I will move on to Soil blocking, but I will definitely need a better setup for that.

Growing Calendar?

Since I live in northern Nevada, I will start some seeds indoors for planting on or around March 13th.

• Tomatoes
• Jalapenos
• Celery

Between April 24th and May 1st, I will start my (bush variety) squash and my Sunflowers. My last frost date is May 22 this year so I will have all of those prepped for the garden. On May 8th I will seed two types of corn I am planning to grow this year. One is Japanese Black Sticky Corn, and the second is Bear Island Flint Corn I got from my cousin. We will have to see how the corn grows out here but I am looking forward to trying it out.

After the corn starts, I will try a 3 sisters style with some runner beans on the corn, but otherwise, I will have my beans and my squash in two other plots on a rotation. Because I want to avoid cross-pollination, I will be growing these two corn varieties on opposite sides of my house, Where the wind will not directly affect each other and they will be over 100 feet apart so I hope that helps as well. 4 weeks after this. On June 5th I will plant my popcorn variety, as to avoid cross-pollination.

May 22 coming around means I will be able to plant all the other plants! I will be planting amaranth, Lettuce, Bok Choy, Black Nebula Carrots (DAAAARK Purple) Dragon Tongue Beans, and Soya Bean (Chiba Green, so I can make edamame). I will also be moving all of my other seedlings out into the garden once they are grown enough.

I ordered some seeds online:

• Chinese Pink Celery
• Black Beauty Tomato
• Tomato Rosella (cherry tomato/smaller variety)
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Bok Choy
• Golden Giant Amaranth
• Black Nebula Carrots (purple!)
• Merlot Lettuce
• Little Gem Lettuce
• Titan Sunflower
• Basil
• Strawberry Corn (for popcorn)
• Dragon Tongue Beans
• Japanese Black Sticky Corn
• Desi Squash
• Kakai Squash (pumpkin)
• Soya Bean- Chiba Green (for Edamame)
• Salad mix/ Microgreens (for the chickens)
• Goji Berry
• Tomato (Orange Hat)

I also have some that I will be buying for fruit this year. Such as Strawberries, Raspberries, and mulberries. I actually already got a Mulberry as a small seedling and have been growing indoors over winter. Turnip has gotten to it a couple of times and pulled the leaves off of it so if there is anything I could say about them- They are resilient!

This will be my first year going this crazy in the garden and during that 60 days between when the frost date hasn’t arrived and the seedlings are in. The race will be on to finalize my garden bed plan! If you cant tell yet, I am VERY excited to grow my own food in the garden this year. I will do a separate post on my plan to arrange the garden. We will be trying to go from 1 bed of usable garden space to at least 6 if not more. And planning for a much larger space to allow anything to grow.