old seeds, new growth

I wasn't going to plant anything this summer, but other blogs showing wonderful harvests have stirred my soul, and I've given in. In a very small way.

In years past, I've bought seeds from the Digger's Club. They have all the usual seeds plus an interesting variety of seeds from heritage or heirloom plants. These are the ones I'm interested in.

The spread below is the last lot of seeds I ordered. Some of these are now past their plant by date, but I'll cross my fingers....
I don't have the space to plant a large veggie patch, so only a few seeds from each packet has been used. Some packets have never yet been opened.
I found these packets a few weeks ago, when I was looking for something else, and decided to plant some to see if they were still viable.

These Baby Cos seeds were the first to show signs of life, but haven't made much progress.
I'm not surprised, I've never had much luck with growing lettuce of any kind.
But I'll keep trying.

The Mortgage Lifter tomatoes were the last to sprout, but seem to be doing well. I'm looking forward to tasting the fruit from these. The story goes that this prolific, meaty, beefsteak variety was developed by a farmer who was able to pay off his mortgage by selling seedlings of this extremely popular, hardy tomato.

Lastly, here we have the Lazy Housewife beans. At first I couldn't find the original packet, so I sowed a couple of seeds per pot from a pod that I'd dried and saved from the last season I planted. They've sprouted and grown remarkably quickly, the plants are now half as big again as shown here.

They are called Lazy Housewife because the beans are so prolific the housewife can sit only by one plant and from that gather enough beans for the family's evening meal.

I found this to be true and last season we ate beans almost every day, with the surplus being frozen and lasting well into the winter. So this time I have only four plants, but I'm pretty sure there will still be enough to freeze.

If left on the vine these beans grow really large, I plan on letting one or two pods develop fully and then drying them to save the seed again.

It's time now to move the beans and tomatoes to larger pots, so that's my plan for Sunday.

At the same time, I'll sow a ring of colourful heirloom carrots in another pot, some mini sweet capsicums, (the packet contains seeds of yellow, red and chocolate, bite size capsicums, on compact bushes), and a couple each of midget rockmelon and mini cabbage. I might even remember to separate the garlic bulb into cloves and plant those too.

If all goes well, that lot should keep me in salads for the whole summer.