Abby's Gardening Glee

Tim and I bought a soil tester today.  We also checked out our local gardening store, and they have heirloom tomatoes!  So excited.  For those who don't know, heirloom plants are open-pollinating plants.  Commercially grown produce has to have certain characteristics in order to be successfully grown large scale and shipped all around the world without being damaged or going bad.  Many of those types have been genetically modified or artificially hybridized in some way.  Being hybrids, their seeds don't "breed true" very well.  so, you can't harvest seeds from your tomato plants and plant them successfully the next growing season, which is something I've been wanting to try.
Heirloom seeds are all the ones from smaller farms that have pollinated naturally and survived through natural selection.  These seeds used to be passed down through generations, but have become popular enough in the past few years to be more commonly found.  Seed Savers Exchange is a site I've been looking at recently.  The most exciting part of heirloom seeds for me is that they're all kinds of vegetables with odd characteristics and unique flavors that I've never had before.  For instance!

Cherokee popcorn

Pretzel beans

And who wouldn't want these pumpkins?!

First, however, we must prepare the soil.  As it was previously a perennial Zen garden, I think we'll have quite a bit of work before the soil is ideal for vegetables.  First we have to kill off all the weeds and grass that have overgrown the area.  Then, we find out what kind of soil is there.  According to The Harvest Gardener, the ideal soil for a vegetable garden is silt.  Most soils are a mixture of sand, clay, and silt.  The book calls this type of soil loam.   There are a couple tests I can do to find out soil composition (that doesn't involve calling in an expert.) I could fill a jar with water and drop some soil into it and watch how it settles.  Or, I could squeeze a handful of soil and see if it sticks together.  If so, it's mostly clay.  I think I'll try both.  After that, it's time to test the acidity with the soil tester.  Gardening is a bit more complex than I remember growing up.

In other news, Zoidberg is still doing well.  I just bought my first pair of maternity pants today.  I also got a comfy shirt for work.  I'm getting back into the swing of my pre-medication coping mechanism of making everything in my life into lists.  Tim just downloaded the Evernote app onto my phone.  He created a shared account for us.  It's a program we now have on all of our devices.  So far I really like it.  

Goodnight, folks.