A.B.P. Always Be Planting

 

Under the grow lights in my bedroom are several different plants in various beginning stages of their lives with me.  As I start planning for a fall harvest and one for this coming spring season, I am trying to decide if I reeeeeally need 42 different tomato varieties.  Our Romas are still putting off bumper crops, even though the temperatures outside are actually beginning to give way to October.  Stink bugs, grasshoppers, and aphids are the main pests now, and they are a rare sight.  I'm more worried about stumbling upon wandering copperhead snakes now than I am about my crops being devoured by insects at this point. 

So inside the bedroom, the grow lights are overseeing the new wave of future foodstuffs. I got some Pattypan squash seeds from Shelley Kave at Healthy Homestead Chick on Youtube.  

I've wanted to grow Pattypans for a while. I'd even planted seeds for them this past season-- seeds that turned out to be pumpkins. So I grew lots of pumpkins and butternut. I had pumpkins taking over my cattle panel trellis that was supposed to be for the tiny, scalloped squash.  Just imagine my vision:  Medium-sized, round, peach-fleshed Arkansas Traveler tomatoes weaving in, out, and between wispy vines of beautiful, lemony yellow and off-white scallops of squash.  Instead, I received clumbering green-to-orange HUGE pumpkins and yellow bells that took over the cattle panel completely. I didn't get a single Pattypan out of the whole seed packet of Pattypan Squash!

                              

Shelley came to my rescue and gladly gave me for-sure Pattypan seeds from her own stock. And now they're growing for me.

As these plants move outside (they're gonna have to because I'm not trying to step over squash vines all over my bedroom floor), I'll keep you updated on their progress. I'm very excited about them.  

But A.B.P. isn't just going to be for Pattypans. I plant a seed just about every day, so there is always something growing.