2026 garden

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seeds are in

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Our order actually came in last week, but we weren’t able to get to the post office while it was open.

Here is what we got today.

In the bottom row, we have Tricolor Mixed bush beans, Rainbow and Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard, an Assorted Mix of beets, White Egg turnip, White Icicle radish and a rainbow blend of carrots.

In the middle is Bi-colour Pear gourds, my “just for fun” item, yellow scallop squash, Gill’s Golden Pippin winter squash, green scallop Bennings squash, Spring Blush peas and White Vienna kohlrabi.

In the top row is Red Beard bunching onions, Borage, American and Giant Noble spinach, Kandy Korn sweet corn, Purple Vienna kohlrabi, and an envelope to collect and store our own seeds in.

From this batch, these are the ones that will be planted this fall, before the ground freezes.

  • Rainbow and Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard
  • Assorted Mix beets
  • White Egg turnip
  • White Icicle radsih
  • Rainbow Blend carrots
  • Spring Blush peas
  • White and Purple Vienna kohlrabi
  • American and Giant Noble spinach

I am not sure about the Borage. I’ll have to do some research before deciding if those will be planted in the fall or started indoors in the spring.

Everything else except the corn and bush beans will be started indoors.

  • Bi-colour Pear gourds
  • yellow and green patty pan squash
  • Gill’s Golden Pippin winter squash
  • Red Beard Bunching onions.

Hopefully, starting the summer squash indoors next year will work. Direct sowing hasn’t been working out for those, for some reason. We didn’t have a slug problem this year, thanks to the many, many frogs, so that wasn’t the issue. We should be able to winter sow summer squash, but when I tried that for this year, none germinated. Most were old seeds, but there were new seeds in there, too. When I planted potatoes in that bed later, I did find a few seeds, but most seemed to have just disappeared. I did have to cover the bed with netting because of the cats, so they might have had something to do with the failure, too.

This, all on its own, is the makings of a decent garden for next year. We have other types of beans, winter and summer squash, melons, peas, corn and our own onion seeds. Of course, we’ll also be getting seed potatoes in the spring, and will probably try the little bell peppers and orange eggplants again. We have herb seeds that I might start indoors, if we have space, or we might cheat and buy transplants again, instead.

So there we have it! The beginnings of next year’s garden, much of which will actually be planted this fall.

Hopefully, we’ll have a better growing year than this one, because something really weird is happening with this year’s garden. It’s been so frustrating. We should be at the peak of growth and harvesting right now, and there’s basically nothing – and not just because of the deer! I’ll be talking about that in my garden tour video, and you’ll be able to see exactly what I mean.

Speaking of which, time to try and record some video. The rain has stopped, but we’re supposed to get thunderstorms later this evening!

So happy with all the rain!!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seed order

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Yup.

You read that right.

I’ve ordered seeds for next year’s garden already.

There’s a reason for that, though. For starters, we can already see how things went with direct sowing in the fall, and how they’re doing now. So while these are for our 2026 garden, some will be planted this year, before the ground freezes.

Another reason is, MI Gardener has refused to raise their prices making them more affordable, even when taking the dollar difference into account.

As low as their prices already were, they also have a 20% off sale, and free shipping to boot.

I took advantage of that.

Well. Just for the seeds. Everything in their site is on sale for a week, but ordering things bulkier than seeds over the border is not something I plan to do.

When I did the winter sowing, I made seed mixes using up a lot of our seeds that were starting to get old. All our radish seeds, spinach, a summer squash seed mix I’d accidentally bought extras of a few years ago, beets, Swiss Chard, etc. were all finished off when I made our seed mixes for the winter sowing.

Here is what I ordered today. I ended up taking three screen caps of the entire order, to get all the little thumbnail images.

Borage: this is an herb I’ve been meaning to get for a long time. Many uses, and a great pollinator attractor.

Kandy Korn Sweet Corn: I have the super short season Yukon Chief for next year already. Having a longer season variety means we can have a longer season for corn, and no overlap on pollination times, so we can still save seeds.

Fordhook Giant and Rainbow Swiss Chard: the same types that I finished off in my winter sowing seed mixes, these will be planted in the fall.

Giant Nobel and American Spinach: while I am looking to save seed from what we have now (we didn’t eat much spinach this year; they bolted too quickly), these are new varieties that I hope will do well. They will be planted in the fall.

White Egg Turnip: all our turnip seeds were used up, so I will be trying this interesting looking variety for our fall planting.

White Icicle Radish: these will be sown in the fall, but not for their pods, though I will probably allow at least one go to seed. My younger daughter likes the daikon radish, which was sold out. This is a smaller relative, and I think she will enjoy these. I recall seeing a variety of radish sold specifically for their large seed pods that I’ll keep an eye out for as well.

Spring Blush Pea: a new variety to plant in the fall, along with other peas we still have.

Bi-Colour Pear Gourd: my “for fun” item.

Purple Vienne Kohlrabi: I used up the last of our old kohlrabi seeds to plant in the fall, and most of the ones that are growing now are the purple ones. Definitely doing to plant more in the fall!

Red Beard Bunching onion: I’ve tried a red variety of bunching onion twice before, and they didn’t succeed. I want to try again with this variety. For bulb onions, we will have our own seed.

Assorted Beet Mix: I planted the last of our beet seeds in the fall, and have the most robust beets growing right now. I decided to go with a mix this time. I like variety!

Green Scallop Benning’s Squash: we’ve got white scallop squash, but they don’t seem to like germinating here. We have more seeds for next year, but I want to try a green variety, too.

Gill’s Golden Pippin Squash: a new and versatile variety to try. I have lots of different types of winter squash seeds, still, both large and small. I like variety!

Tri-colour Green Bean mix: we have a number of different beans left, but the first bush beans we ever grew were a tri-colour mix, and they were the most successful we’d ever grown.

Rainbow Mix Carrot: to plant in the fall. We still have a couple of varieties of carrot seeds left, so we could also start some in the spring, as space opens up, too.

White Vienna Kohlrabi: of our old seeds, it looks like only a couple of the white kohlrabi germinated. These will be planted in the fall. I think they will fair better, not in a mix.

Yellow Scallop Squash: because I like variety, and I really like patty pan squash!

While I will probably pick up other seeds for next year between now and spring, between this order and what I still have in my seed bin, we don’t actually need anything else, besides things like potatoes. It may still be July but, with fall planting in mind, plus working on getting more beds either reworked or made new, I hope to have a larger garden next year, and get a head start on it, this year. After all, almost half of our growing season is already gone!

The Re-Farmer