HUGE Seed Haul! First Seed Haul for the 2024 Garden (MIgardener seeds)

Planning for the 2024 garden is in full swing, and my first seed order is here! Let’s unbox my MIgardener seed haul together and dream about spring!

Music by Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com

Hey friends welcome back to Homestead on a Prayer in case you’re new here my name’s Jennifer my cat Milo and I are here with the first seed haul for the 2024 garden and I am so excited now this seed haul or this order actually arrived a few days ago and I have been

Exercising some really strong willpower not opening it because I wanted to open it with you guys today’s seed Haul is from Mi Gardener and this will probably be one of two pretty significant seed hauls that we’re going to do this year in preparation for the 2024 Garden so

Let’s open up this package and see what we got I mean I know what we got because I ordered these but I can’t wait to actually see them in person so just going to grab these in random order first I got some holy basil this is something that I grow every year it

Is a really great herb to grow in your garden it makes a great delicious tea really delicious and healthful tea and it is a great herb for attracting pollinators as well well so I ordered some of that next I have this is salad bowl mix and I think

That this is a free sample I think I don’t think I ordered this so I’m pretty sure this is a free seed just a thank you for ordering so I’m really excited about that I mean honestly if you are a vegetable Gardener can you really grow

Too much lettuce or salad greens I don’t think it’s really possible so that’s definitely an exciting one that I’ll put to good use next I got the Jade bush bean now I actually saved the majority of my bean seeds for this coming season I actually saved from plants that I grew last year

So I did not need very many beans but I did need a green bush bean so this year I decided to try the jade green bean so we’re going to give that one a try next I have the jewel mix nestam I love growing nestum in the vegetable

Garden they’re really one of my favorite companion plants to grow with my vegetables I mean they add a beautiful pop of color and by getting a mix like this we’re ensuring that we have lots of variety and lots of beautiful bright color that’s going to really stand out

From the vegetables they’re also really helpful for promoting Health in your vegetable garden a lot of people say that they attract beneficial insects which is always a great thing minimizes the work that we have to do controlling pests they also make a good trap crop particularly for aphids basically what

That means is that it will attract aphids away from vegetable plants that it may want to eat and to itself instead so it’s a little bit of of a sacrifice I haven’t personally in my garden had a really significant issue with aphids and so I haven’t really noticed them eating

My Nims but a lot of people do use Nims for that reason I grow them mostly honestly for their beauty and they attract pollinators next I got some slow bolt arugula I really like arugula it is a great vegetable to grow early on in the garden because it grows really well in

Cold it can survive a frost so this is one of the first vegetables that I plant in my garden every year year grows really fast it is a really early vegetable to yield the one negative that I found about arugula is that it does tend to bolt really easily that

Basically means that it goes to seed really easily it sends up its seed stock and when a plant that you’re growing for the leaves bolts and sends up its seed stock often what happens is the flavor of the leaves changes and so it isn’t usually desirable to eat at that point

So I haven’t grown this particular variety the slow bolt but I figured it would be a good one to try this year so I’m excited about that next I got some buttercrunch lettuce I grow a lot of lettuce I usually have many many lettuce varieties

But if I had to choose just one it would probably be buttercrunch butter crunch is my go-to probably my favorite lettuce it’s really delicious it’s really easy to grow I find that it does really well in both warm weather and cool weather so it makes a really versatile lettuce so

This is one of my go-to favorites next I have black seated Simpson lettuce this is another one that I grow every year I find it isn’t quite as Dependable as a buttercrunch it does tend to bowl a little bit earlier so I get a shorter growing season from it but

It does yield really early it has nice bright green leaves and it has really delicious flavor so I do really enjoy growing this it’s a Dependable variety that I grow every year next ruby red leaf lettuce this is a new one to me I haven’t grown this

Before I mean you can see the beautiful dark red color that’s why I decided to grow this one I like having some variety of color and texture in my in my lettuce salads and as you can see this has a bright red color and it’s got a little

Bit of a crinkly texture too so that looked really fun so I’ll be enjoying trying that one out this year next I got the super red roma lettuce now this has that same really vibrant red color that the previous lettuce did but it’s got a different texture I mean clearly these are more

Flat leaves more smooth leaves this is a romae lettuce I did grow this one last year for the first time and I was happy with it so be growing that one again next yes there’s even more lettuce this is the Tango leaf lettuce the main reason that I chose this lettuce is

Because the main reason I chose this lettuce is because it says it’s really cold hearty and can overwinter without any protection I do really like to push the limits of my growing season and grow as far into the fall and even into the winter as I can you know it’s just so

Satisfying in the dead of winter to be able to still Harvest something from your garden so this lettuce looked like a really good candidate to try growing in the winter I will probably try growing a little bit of it in the spring too just to see how it does but I’m

Really thinking of this more for my fall Garden planning ahe a little bit next another lettuce of course this is Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce I find this one to be pretty similar to the buttercrunch lettuce that I love but you can see it’s got a little bit of a

Reddish tinge to it the fact that it’s called Marvel of Four Seasons kind of is a little clue that it is meant to be very adaptable and to grow in a variety of weather and temperature conditions so this is another go-to for me so the next

Seed packet that I got is a packet of the long slim cayenne pepper these are really spicy peppers really beautiful long slim Peppers as the name suggests we I don’t grow a lot of these I usually just grow one plant because it tends to yield really prolifically and we

Honestly don’t use a lot of them mostly what I like to do with these is to dry them and then I use them primarily in herbal medicine we may also grind some up and use them for seasoning so I’m restocking my Cayenne seeds next I decided to try growing some

Mini pumpkins this year this is the jack be little pumpkin I found that this year I did really want some of those little pumpkins for decorating for fall and Thanksgiving and I thought these might be kind of fun to try growing maybe on an arch trellis I need to look I need to

Do a little bit of research about the growth habit of these I know a lot of winter squashes do tend a Vine and would be a good candidate for an arch trellis so if these grow that way then I may try these on one of my Arch trellises this

Year so as a companion to that orange Jack be little pumpkin I also got the mini baby boo pumpkin this is a similar looking pumpkin but obviously it’s white so I really like the idea of having a variety of those and I think if I kind of intermingled them on the arch trellis

I think that would look really cute with all those little tiny pumpkins hanging down so that’s just something that I’m experimenting with this year and while I know these are edible honestly I’m not sure if we would eat them ourselves but they would make great food for our

Chickens I know they love pumpkin they eat as much pumpkin as they can get so they would really enjoy those next I got the butter Bush squash I’ve been trying for the past 2 years to grow butternut squash I haven’t been all that successful this one is a bush

Variety and so I’m thinking it might be a little more manageable to grow a bush but butternut squash as opposed to a traditional one where it really Vines and takes up a lot of space so I’m going to try these next year and we’ll see how they

Do now I’m also restocking my seeds of the honey nut squash I did try growing this last year I did get a couple tiny squashes we actually haven’t eaten them yet so I’m not sure about their flavor but I really did want to give these a try because they came very highly

Recommended to me so I decided to give these a try and we may try growing these on an arch trellis as well so I’m restocking those seeds and I think the rest of my seeds are all Tomatoes now I know at the end of last gardening season I said that one

Of my plans for this coming gardening season was to grow fewer tomato varieties and more that were good for processing I think I’m probably going to stick to half of that which is to grow more that are good for processing I can’t make any promises about the number

Of tomato varieties I’m going to grow cuz honestly there’s so many tomatoes out there like how can you really narrow it down so I’m going to show you the seeds that I got in this seed haul and if you have any experience with these

I’d love to hear about it so first I got the black from Tula tomato you know if you’ve been following with me for any length of time you know that I really love those black or those Deep Purple Smoky tomatoes so this is another one of those I haven’t tried this one before

But it had excellent reviews and I’ve heard great things about it so I really wanted to give that one a try next I am trying the Ukrainian purple tomato this was definitely an Impulse buy was not on my radar but I was looking through at my Gardener’s

Website to place my first seed order and I saw those and they just seemed so fun I love that purple color as you know and this is a little bit this is a little bit different shape it’s kind of a plum variety I thought it might be kind of

Fun to try this so we’re going to give those a try next I got the roma tomato now this is the classic processing sauce paste tomato I really do want to next year be a little more diligent about growing more preserving varieties as I said I

Want to be able to can some more tomato products hopefully some tomato sauce salsa maybe crushed tomatoes instead of sauce but either way I do want to try to do some more tomato preserving so I I ordered a variety of canning tomato types and this is the first

One next and this one is also a canning a preserving type is the Jersey Devil tomato this one is supposed to have great yield it’s supposed to be larger Tomatoes which makes less work than you’re when you’re processing because if you’ve ever canned tomatoes before you know that removing the skins and the

Seeds and the cores can be a lot of work and if you get a larger tomato there’s there’s less of that work to do because there’s only you know it’s a lot less work to remove the seeds and skins from one large tomato as opposed to three

Smaller tomatoes that take up the same space so I wanted to give this one a try and one more processing tomato variety this one is the 10 fingers of Naples I don’t really know much about this variety but it just something about it kind of intrigued me so I decided to

Give this one a try as well again this is another canning processing variety I think this year you can see that I have those three varieties there I think what I’m going to do is try growing all three of those kind of do a side-by-side comparison as far as flavor yield ease

Of processing all of that and if I come up with a favorite I may end up just settling on one to grow in the future we’ll see what happens I’m not going to make any guarantees about that because you know how I am with tomatoes so I’ll

Grow them all and we’ll do a side-by-side comparison and that will help inform our future decisions the final seed that I got in this order here is is the Vintage wine tomato now you can see why this tomato just called my name and why I had to

Have this tomato I mean that’s beautiful it’s just got those lovely stripes and it’s just got such a fun name too so I think that this will be a fun one to grow as I said I don’t know very much about any of these new tomato varieties

But I’m really excited to find out so thank you so much for joining me outside in my yard today you can see we’ve got the the sad Dead Winter Garden behind us but it won’t be very long at all before this Garden is bursting with life and a

Lot of that life is going to come from the seeds that we opened together today so thank you so much for hanging out with me I’m really looking forward to spending this next gardening season with you to Growing these seeds together and finally getting to harvest a lot of

These delicious plants together so I definitely hope that you will join me again I hope that you are getting through the cold winter months and I hope that you are ready for an abundant Garden season Milo and I both hope you’re having a great day and I can’t

Wait to see you soon I’ll see you next time Time