The first spring plantings

Yesterday I went to the nursery to buy the first things I would plant for spring. I've actually already planted one zucchini plant and the green beans. It's supposed to be cold for the next few days, but start warming up by the middle of the week, so I want to start purchasing my plants in preparation for planting. I'm bringing them inside at night for the next few days, so the cold doesn't stunt their growth.

I bought an heirloom tomato - costoluto genovese. It's supposed to produce deep red, lobed fruit, although the picture looks like some of them might be tinged a bit orange. I also want to plant an orange variety, a dark red/purple variety, and then we'll see what else. I'm looking to put in 4-6 heirloom varieties. I'm considering putting in some Amish paste in place of some of the romas, as well.

I also bought the same two eggplants that I had luck with last year - black beauty and bianca rosa, one of each. I'll plant a couple more in a few weeks, when I pick more of the winter vegetables.

I'm attempting an experiment of sorts, and putting some climbing yellow wax beans in the backyard, against our back fence. I've grown some vegetables in the backyard with mixed success in the past, and green beans were one of the mild successes. This year our trees have been trimmed quite a bit, and the yard is even sunnier than it has been in the past (which isn't saying much), so I'm hoping they do well.

It's also time to put in the basil. I bought about half as much for the garden this year, since last year I was going crazy trying to use or freeze it all before I needed the space in the garden and had to pull out the plants. The frozen pesto has been a life-saver recently, when we've had less time to cook, but I still have huge bags of frozen, blanched basil leaves that I'm not sure we'll ever use. I'm putting one plant out in the backyard for when we realize that we need basil and don't have time to run to the garden.

And that's it! I've got a few other garden projects to do, like moving one of our stumps, pulling out the overgrown parsley plant, and hopefully fixing the watering system, but those shouldn't be too time-consuming. My biggest goal these days is to find six-packs of sauce tomatoes and bell peppers. Who knew it would be so hard?