Area51- Our Backyard Vegetable Garden-Year Two 2026:

Starter Plants	Vegetable Garden Prep	Planting
		Harvest

This will be the second year growing our own vegetables in our on-ground vegetable garden and the greenhouse. Not having to build everything from scratch like I did last year will be a welcome relief as it was a ton of work! We had great overall success with our harvest and learned some lessons that will make 2026 even better.

April 16, 2026: This past week I stopped into Gaze Seed and picked up seeds for this years crop. I also prepaid for russet seed potato which I'll pick up when their stock arrives.

About the only things I won't be growing again this year will be beefsteak tomatoes and corn which did not do well at all last year. This year the garden will be planted out with: Russet Potato (less than last year), Turnip (more than last year), Carrot (same as last year), Sugar Snap Peas (same as last year) Red Green & Yellow Onion, Cabbage, plus new crops: Broccoli, Parsnip and for fun, Purple Carrots.

The greenhouse will see Tiny Tim Tomatoes (less than last year), Roma Tomato (new for this year) along with Jalapeño, Red, Green and for fun Rainbow mixed variety sweet peppers. I also picked up seeds for Cilantro, Chives and companion flowers: Marigold.

The only pack of seeds I have left over from last season, good ol' Turnip!

This year I made some changes to planting out seed starters. Last year we used a variety of containers many of which were too small. This led to transplanting into larger containers which in turn damaged a lot of roots leading to lost plants. This year I'm starting everything in solo cups, the only transplant will be from cup to garden/greenhouse.

Each cup was notched on the bottom three times to allow proper drainage.

I used a mix of two colours of cups to quickly distinguish different seedling varieties then wrote a description on each cup with a sharpie.

Last year we started a ton of stuff from seed on April 26th, many of these were way too early including the herbs and sugar snap peas. This year the only things I'm starting at this time are Red & Yellow Onion, Tiny Tim & Roma Tomatoes, and all the varieties of Pepper Plants.

Just like last year I'm using Promix from Costco for the seedlings. I filled a five gallon bucket half way with soil, then thoroughly mixed in water until the soil was moist but not wet. Each cup was filled and soil pressed in by hand not too tight.

Using a seeding tool and a pair of needle nose pliers, seeds were dropped into the holes approximately 1/4" deep (per seed package directions) then covered over by hand.

These Plastic totes were used all winter to store our Potato harvest and are coming in handy to hold our starter plants!

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!

Cheers, MIKE