I haven’t shared a lot about my garden in years past on the blog. You can see our 2017 garden here and a post about our backyard here. If you’re interested in our gardens from the last two years you can check out my highlights over on Instagram. Since I was a kid, I have loved the idea of a garden. My dad always had a big garden in our backyard and the moment we bought this house I was planning our garden. I am learning more and more each year and I really want to share more in this space about what I’m learning!

We are in gardening zone 8b here in this part of Western Washington and starting summer veggie seeds indoors a few months before the last frost is something I have been trying out for the last few years. We used to buy starts from the garden center but we found that the costs to buy these compared to seeds were significantly higher. I think starting seeds is also a great way to see how seeds behave and what each kind needs to become a strong seedling that will eventually go out in our garden to bear fruit for us!

In years past we have gone very tomato heavy but we decided to turn the tables this year and start a bunch of different peppers. This year we have gone for bell peppers, jalapenos, a mix of different kinds of hot peppers, and also a mixture of other sweet peppers. We are also planning to separate the tomatoes and peppers into different beds as well so they are not having to compete for nutrients. In our research, we’ve read that we should get a greater pepper yield if we separate them from the tomatoes so we’re going to test the research this summer!

For tomatoes this year we started a mixed pack of heirlooms and then also a type of cherry tomato (my personal favorite tomato to grow). If you’ve seen my garden highlights from last year you’ll understand why we are going to be giving away a few of our plants haha!

Something new we decided to try this year is artichokes! I planted nine seeds and all but one of them sprouted! Really excited for those and I believe they come back every year so fingers crossed they work out for us!

To round out the starts, we went for some bundling green onions and then three herbs; Parsley, Oregano, and Tarragon. I have oregano out in the garden already but the plants have never gotten very big so I am hoping these ones will take off. Tarragon is a unique herb that not a lot of people use and I am very interested in figuring out how to use it in my cooking! And in my opinion, parsley is the best finisher for so many dishes so it will be very useful to have out in the garden!

I plan on getting some lettuce and some large type onion starts in the ground in the next few weeks as well!

Have you got a garden plan for this year? What are you planning on growing?