Hidden Valley Ranch | Selfish Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Hidden Valley Ranch’

Things a gardening newbie learned today

Jun 20, 2009 Love Your Veggies

If you think you’ll be able to show up at Home Depot towards the end of June and find seeds, you’re in for a surprise.
Bags of potting soil are heavy. Really heavy. And if they start to slip from your grip and you try to lift them up, they spill dirt all over you.
By mid June, Burpee.com is done shipping tomato plants.
The really pretty, huge, well-designed strawberry pot you saw in a magazine costs $600.
Corn cross pollinates, and since you only have room right now to grow 6-8 stalks, you may end up producing 12 cornless cobs.
No matter how hungry your kids say they are when you stop at the local hardware store to get seeds, look carefully at what you’re buying, because bush beans are not the same a pole beans and will not climb up the corn stalk.
If you can’t find corn seeds, you may or may not be able to buy corn on the cob, take off some kernels, and plant them. I guess we’ll find out.
When your husband says that he will be done with your planting tub in a week, ignore him and go out and buy containers right away so that you don’t miss planting season.

Ready for planting

Despite all that, tomorrow I’ll be planting the tomatoes, the cucumbers, and one pot (half) of the corn. Corn is supposed to be planted in warm sunny dry weather, but that’s not coming to Brooklyn any time soon, so if I wait for that, there’s more chance that I’ll be harvesting corn in the snow. So, I’m going to plant half now in the 60-degree rain, and half in a couple of weeks in the sunny dry weather. We’ll see what happens. If/when the corn germinates, I’ll plant the beans and zucchini around them.

When I was in Chicago for the Love Your Veggies retreat, sponsored by Hidden Valley Ranch, I was raring to go. I wanted to hit the ground running with the planting as soon as I got back to Brooklyn. But the renovation, back doors, and ambitious husbands got in the way. This may not be my year for yummy corn and juicy tomatoes, but I’m going to try my hardest! What gives me hope is the memory of my sister wanting to plant tomatoes when we were kids. She cut open a tomato, put a dozen or so seeds on a paper towel to dry, and planted them. We all laughed at her. Until huge delicious tomatoes started growing.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Shop Amazon