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Did spring come extra quick this year or was it just me?  Although I love the slowness and the break that winter gives us, I just can’t wait to get my hands and feet dirty in the garden this year. Oh, summer how I missed you and your fresh vegetables.  We also have some exciting building projects happening here in the farmhouse. Keep reading to find out one of our big projects for the year. We also want to continue to work on being more self-sufficient in storing enough food for our family of 7. Here are the 16 new seeds I am excited to grow this year.

16 Seeds I am Excited to Grow this Year

Rediscovered Root Cellar

This year, we broke through our basement foundation and rediscovered our root cellar. This was a dream that we have had for years now (even before we moved to our farmhouse). Here’s a little back story on our farmhouse. I find that so fascinating and I’m a little proud to live in a home with a family line attached to it!!!  Houses have a history and memories and I am happy to live in one that I can trace back.

We are the 4th official owners of our farmhouse. Our home was originally built in 1914. The original family immigrated here from Germany and we actually found a crate lid with Germany as the address on it in our attic. The first family stayed for 2 generations.

In 1990, the second family who lived here put a large addition onto the house, extending the original farmhouse. The addition consisted of 3 floors; the basement which is finished, a large living room on the main floor, and a master bedroom, spare bedroom, and extra bathroom on the 2nd floor. Underneath our old farmhouse kitchen is a root cellar. It has an old rock foundation and you could only access it through a cellar door underneath our deck. You actually had to crawl on your belly under our deck to a rickety old cellar door and shimmy your way down to the inner door. It was not the easiest access point, to say the least.

We wanted to make an easy access door to this old root cellar which required us to cut away part of the new basement and bust through the old rock foundation to give us access to our future dirt floor root cellar. I have little doubt this space was once used as a root cellar in the past.

Before and After Root Cellar Door

Our new root cellar door was put right next to the stairs in our newer basement. We will be able to walk down the stairs and open an exterior door to access it. It will be SO MUCH EASIER to get to now. We still have a lot of work to do on this root cellar, such as digging it out, adding a couple of steps, closing up the old cellar door, and putting in shelves. But, breaking the foundation and putting in the door was the hardest part of it.

Knowing that we now will have a great place to store food during the winter, we are going to try and focus on growing food that can be stored in our root cellar. With proper hardening off you can keep fresh vegetables in your root cellar to enjoy all year long. You will see that we tried to use a lot of winter varieties in our 16 Seeds I am Excited to Grow this Year.

Great Vegetables to Store in our Root Cellar

• Carrots
• Kohlrabi
• Beets
• Acorn Squash
• Butternut Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Pumpkins
• Garlic
• Potatoes
• Onions
• Cabbage

 

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Winter Gardening

 

Winter Lettuce and other seeds from Caleb Warnock

For Christmas a few years back, I gave my husband this book, Backyard Winter Gardening by Cabel Warnock. It’s such a wonderful idea to have lettuce and other hardy vegetables growing all winter long. This almost seems like an impossible task living in a northern climate (zone 4b), but winter gardening had been done for centuries. This year we hope to dabble in a few of the methods that are talked about in this book. This is a very informative book.

 

Something we have always wanted to try but usually, we are late to the seed buying game and miss out on his winter lettuce mix. This year we purchased our seeds early and were able to get some winter lettuce mix along with several other heirloom varieties from Caleb Warnox’s shop Renaissance Seeds including carrots, beets, bright lights swiss chard, peas, Cantelope Noir des Carmes,  sugar pumpkins, butternut squash, and several different types of lettuces.

Deep Winter Lettuce

A Few New Varieties of Carrots

We did not have success with our carrots last year. Some of our seeds did not germinate or were washed away by heavy rain. We also let the weeds grow too thick and because carrot germination was sporadic, I was afraid to pull weeds in that patch. All together this made for a very poor carrot year.  This year we are going to do better (fingers crossed).

2 years ago I grew these Dragon Carrots and really liked them. I also purchased a few new varieties include:

Atomic Red Carrots

Tendersweet Carrots

Scarlet Nantes Carrots

Atomic Grape Tomatoes

A seed-saving friend of mine shared these seeds with me and I was really excited because I have long looked with googly eyes at the Baker Street Catalog showing off these stellar-looking grape tomatoes. I was hesitant to buy these seeds because I was afraid that our growing season in central Wisconsin would not give the tomatoes enough time to mature. Hopefully, we are able to get them growing.

Brad’s Atomic Grape Tomato

Cabbages

We LOVE growing cabbage! This vegetable has quickly turned into one of our favorite things to grow and eat. We slice it up and sautee it with olive oil, roast it in the oven, add it to crock-pot roasts, and make our yearly sauerkraut with it. It’s also supposed to be easy to store in a root cellar. In the past, we have had success with seed starting Early Golden Acre Cabbage and Flat Dutch Late Cabbage. We will grow those as well as a few new varieties below.

Bok Choi White Stem Cabbage

Red Acre Cabbage

Tomatillo

Ground cherries have been one of our favorite things to grow in the last few years. I know, I know, tomatillos are completely different than ground cherries but they look similar because they grow in a little lantern-like case. The shape and look of a tomatillo appeal to me and I enjoy the surprise of growing something completely new to me.   It may be risky but it is also fun to grow something completely new to me. I also love me some good Mexican and some fresh homemade salsa verde might become our new favorite. You never know.

If you have some favorite tomatillo recipes I would love to hear them. Please comment below and help out this tomatillo newbie.

Green Husk Tomatillo Seeds from Seed Savers Exchange

Shell Beans

Green beans have always been a staple in our garden but I never really considered growing my own beans for drying. I mean, they are so cheap at the store and seem like kinda a hassle. Why waste your precious time and effort growing them? But, for us, homesteading is more than just trying to save a buck by growing your own food. It is also about having the knowledge to do things. I wanted to mark grow dried beans off my homesteading know-how and give it a shot.

Plus, beans like this are SO PRETTY! I found myself drooling over some beans on Instagram last summer.

Adzuki Bean

Kenearly Yellow Eye Bean

Still hoping to purchase Calypso beans from Jungs when I make it there. These beans are just SO PRETTY!!!

A great place to buy heirloom seeds

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Squash!!!

 

Mooregold Squash from Jung’s– A friend gifted me these seeds after she made a quick run to Jungs for her mom to purchase Mooregold Seeds. True friends give seeds, right? She said it is one of her mom’s favorites and it almost always sells out. I was very thankful and am excited to try growing it. After looking at the seed description, this pumpkin-like winter squash is a good keeper.

Acorn Squash- This is not a new variety for us but I am going to triple the amount of acorn squash I grow this year. Why? Because I found an acorn squash recipe that my family loves. Thank you to the creator of this recipe called Squashage (sausage-stuffed squash) who turned my family of squash haters into squash lovers.  Acorn squash is also a good keeper in the root cellar after hardening off.

Pumpkins (& a Squash)

I love pumpkins! Although I would say that I am not very good at actually growing and harvesting them. I find myself weeding our enclosed garden which is closer to the house and neglecting our wonderful pumpkin patch. But these pumpkin varieties make me swoon. I really hope to have some pumpkin patch success. My goal this year is to ADD MORE FERTILIZER!!! We have an amply amount of manure and we just need to fertilize them more.

I also would like to put up some kind of a fence to stop the deer and raccoons. I think they feasted on our corn and pumpkins last year. We heard that you can make a fence out of 3 lines of fishing line. The deer hate how the fishing line feels on their fur and will leave the patch alone. I am not sure if this is a wife’s tale or not, but I can handle putting up a fishing line fence.

Some new pumpkin varieties we’ll be trying

Winter Luxury Pumpkin– This 1893 variety is the most sought-after culinary pumpkin in the world because of its absolutely fiberless flesh. Once baked, this variety mashes into a creamy blend without additional ingredients.

Rouge Vif D’Estampes / Cinderella Pumpkin– These pumpkins are just marvelous! They are pretty and one of the oldest known pumpkins to be grown. They have thick skin which makes them great for storing.

Sweet Meat (Winter) Squash– I put this “squash” in my pumpkin section because it not only looks like a pumpkin but the description also said that it has orange flesh and makes good pumpkin pie. It’s also powdery mildew resistant and looks cool. I am excited to try this variety.

Fairytale Pumpkins– similar to Cinderella Pumpkins but with a unique look of their own. I could help buy grab this pumpkin seed packet at our local hardware store. This is a unique french heirloom “cheese” pumpkin. Turns a buckskin color at maturity. It is great for baking and will keep for a few months.

 

This makes me excited to get my hands dirty in the garden

This post re-ignited my desire to get into the garden. I have started a few of these indoors but a lot of them will be put right into the ground. I can’t wait for the weather to get a little warmer and then to dig my hands into it and get to planting. Thanks for reading the 16 new seeds I am excited to grow this year in our garden. With a new root cellar and a desire to store enough food for our family of 7 for a year as a goal, we are sure to have our work cut out for us.

Is there anything that you are really excited to grow this year? What new seed varieties are you hoping to try? I always say, “You never know unless you try.” So go buy that pack of seed and give it a shot. A pack of seeds is a very small investment that could turn into a ton of food for you. You might fail, you might hate the fruit it gives, it might be a wasted effort, but you never know unless you try. So… go for it!

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Are you new to gardening? I have been hearing from many people who are starting their first gardens this year. It’s so much fun to see gardening increase in popularity and for people to start to take control of their food supply by growing their own fresh vegetables.

Would you like to read more about gardening? Here I share 10 Gardening Tips & Tricks To Try This Year.

What do you do with all that fresh garden produce? Join the Preserving Challenge to make preserving food a priority this year. Even if you are new to preserving food, this is a great resource to help encourage you and keep you motivated. Free Printable Tracking Forms and Planning Sheets here.

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and see what we are canning, making from scratch, growing in the garden, and raising on Misty Acres Farm. 

Happy gardening friends!!

-Lindsay from Life on Misty Acres