My seed order is in...

I just finished ordering seeds from High Mowing Seed Company. I'm excited about trying a new tomato this year and very much looking forward to the awesome lettuce I've become used to through the summer. This is the third year I've ordered from them, and have always been quite satisfied with the number of viable plants and the quality of the produce.

Well, that's not entirely true. Last year I ordered corn and was pissed when the plants only grew about 5ft tall, with about 1-1/2 inch stalks. We had a wonderfully sunny summer, which corn loves. I'd fertilized and adjusted soil pH in my terribly acidic yard. I watered every other day. We got plenty of corn, an average of 2 ears per stalk, and it tasted wonderful, but I was positive it would have been so much better if it had grown properly. When I visited their website to order my seeds this time, I intended to get a different type of corn and read each description carefully.

Turns out I'm just too used to Iowa. Most of the corn we grow here is feed corn for animals or "factory" corn for things like cornmeal, oil, syrup, etc. I was unaware that the corn I got last year was only supposed to get 5ft tall, not 6-7 like the corn around here on a good year. Not all corn grows like Jack's beanstalk and gets a whopping 3 inches thick. Who knew? So I went ahead and ordered the same stuff as last year. It did have great flavor after all.

Chad is a soil hound too, but this time he's getting his plants from Four Seasons Nursery. I'm trying to talk him out of about half his list, since they're trees or bushes and we just don't have the yard space. He's planning on getting a dwarf blueberry bush, supposedly able to live in a pot. I'm really really hoping that's true. I'm not a fan of peppers or onions (or lots of other icky crunchy vegetable-y things), so I only grow boring predictable stuff. This year I'm planting the corn of course, and slicing tomatoes, leaf lettuce, pie pumpkins and basil. I actually have tons of dried basil from two years ago, but I love the smell of flowering basil. It's a wonderful, thick smell but hangs only near the plant, so it doesn't overpower the whole yard. I plant it all along the border of my porch and along the side of the house. I also ordered some flowers for the front yard. Anyone else have a garden? What are you growing this year?