Test Garden

Welcome to the Grow Indie Test Garden!

We’ve been busy getting the 2010 Grow Indie Test garden ready and planted, and we’re super excited about it. It’s all part of the master plan—Grow Indie will be debuting a brand new site this summer, including seed reviews and grow guides for the diy grower, urban dweller, suburban homesteader, country peep, you name it.

So, we are planting, growing, reviewing and photographing more than 300 types of heirloom, organic, non-gmo, and hybrid seeds for the 2010 season. Quite an undertaking, but we are delirious with getting the chance to grow so many varieties of vegetables this year.

: Peaceful Valley Tendergreen Mustard starts

We’re planting on a half acre plot at the beautiful Kutztown University Heritage Center, and it’s the perfect partnership—-we get to use their space to grow and research and harvest our Test Garden, and they get to benefit from having educational programs and fundraisers to raise awareness of heirloom vegetables and homesteading. We are also planting an heirloom pumpkin patch for the Center this year as part of their Harvest Fescht featuring more than 30 types of heirloom pumpkins and winter squash.

The Center is a beautiful space, celebrating Pennsylvania German culture, complete with an original one-room school house, a stone home and barn from the 1800′s, and chickens (!), like this one:

We already have some lettuce coming up, along with radishes, mustard greens, lots of onions (from seed and transplants), broccoli raab, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and more.

Update: Things are growin’

: grow indie test garden, May 24, 2010

It’s the end of May, and the test garden is in full swing—it’s all pretty exciting. And kind of amazing what a group of 8 or so of us can accomplish by meeting just twice a week. In our 1/2 acre test garden, we’ve planted more than 75 varieties of tomatoes, 9 types of heirloom spuds, more than 30 varieties of pumpkins and winter squash, 17 types of summer squash and cucumbers, a plethora of greens, and that’s just a start. We also scored a bunch of bamboo off of Freecycle (thanks Cindy!), and are experimenting with growing vertical cucumbers, squash, and of course, pole beans.

Since March, we’ve been getting the plot ready, and are already harvesting lots of heirloom radishes, mustard greens, lettuce, broccoli raab and Ching Chong Baby Bok Choy. I used all of the extra Bok Choy to make kimchi, so stay tuned for a recipe soon as it’s ready. In the meantime, here are a few pics of what we’ve been growing: