Spring preperations

As fall sets in and the garden goes quiet, we have started preparing for next years planting. It seems that all year is geared toward preparing for winter, and we are OK with that. We like to follow in the older generation footsteps when it comes to gardens. It was normal to save seeds from the fall harvest, dry them and replant. One of our neighbors gave us a bag of October beans she said has been in her family for 80+ years. Next year we will keep that tradition alive. Our sweet corn cross bred with our indian corn this year, giving us half silverqueen half blue ears when we picked them. We saved a couple ears and plan on planting the blue ones just to see what we get next year.

Every year since we started a garden we have saved the green bean seeds. We hit on a bean that is very tender and sweet, and has no strings. It's a bush bean, so they dont run. We like that they stay in their rows, which makes tilling and weeding easier. We also save at least one head from our giant sunflower plants, and replant them. Cupcake starts them with wet paper towels, and they do much better than planting the seed out right.

Other seeds we save are pumpkins and gourds, but we do not dry them and store them, we just leave this years pumpkin or gourds in the spot we want them next year and let them rot. We did that last year and were overwhelmed with plants this year.
We also had tomato plants come up volunteer in several places around The Acre, but it was thanks to chicken poop. Our birds love tomatoes, and they ate the low hanging ones right off the vine. One unseen perk was they spread seeds all over the place. Cupcake says if we could teach them to poop in rows we could make a million dollars. Something to work on in the future.
Our last seed plan was jalapeno peppers. This year was a bounty crop of jalapeno jelly, and every time we made a batch, I tossed the seeds out into a flower bed by the garage. We figure you cant eat flowers, but you can eat peppers, so with any luck we will have a big section of peppers near the house for easy pickings.
Like they say, it's never too soon to plan. That is a little insight in to our spring plans.
K&K