Fellow gardening blogger Elements in Time has issued a Growing Challenge and GreenArtz has risen to the challenge! She has encouraged us to blog once a week about gardening (yes, starting now in the off-season), to grow something we didn’t grow last year for our vegetable garden, and to start it from seed.

Since she encouraged us to add our own unique elements to the challenge, I’m going to go ahead and add that I’m going to use only heirloom seeds this year, that I’m starting asparagus (!!) from seed for the first time ever, and that I’m doing my darndest to turn our new backyard landscape into a hotbed of food production. How’s that for a challenge.

In case you’re wondering, the seedlings are growing like crazy and are about to take over the basement. Seriously. What was I thinking starting sweet peas this early? They’re enormous. And the native seeds I ordered from WesternNativeSeed.com is sprouting much better than expected.

One thing I will note, however, is that, if you decide to leave for a week’s vacation after starting some seeds, for the love of Gardening, turn off the seedling heat mats. Urg. Talk about fried green seedlings. It was ugly. So ugly I couldn’t even take a picture, although I might here in another week since things are starting to bounce back from the week of frying I dealt them.

What is gardening if not a learning experience?