Heirloom Seed Haul Unboxing 2024 (garden plans & seed varieties we are planting, lessons learned)

Sharing our plans for our 2024 garden shifting to a new province, new growing zone and making heirloom seeds a priority. We will be utilizing our greenhouse to start our growing season here in Nova Scotia early since it is such a short growing season and then branching that growing out into ground and raised garden bed growing. We plan to grow as much food as possible to provide for our family (canning and preserving) as well as provide some food source for our animals year round.

Hi YouTube family my name is Alicia English and welcome back to my Channel today I thought it would be so fun to do a seed unboxing to be able to show you what we’re going to do with our garden for the 2024 season I have missed out on

Doing our vegetable and fruit Garden 2 years in a row since we moved to Nova Scotia two different life events have happened that have prevented us from being able to get our garden in on our Homestead and so nothing is going to stop me this year from doing our garden

Our first year Philip had his accident in this past year I ended up going in for emergency surgery and our garden never happened despite the fact that we had already built a beautiful greenhous to be able to start our seeds and get everything situated for starting our

Gardens we didn’t get our raised beds in or be able to till our land to get that done so this year it’s happening and I really wanted to order my seeds early so I could do some visuals to kind of make my map of how everything’s going to be

For our Dream Garden but it actually worked out kind of as a blessing because in the midst of having this time passed by I have done more and more and more research on growing here in Nova Scotia when we lived in Ontario you’ve seen previously on our channel that we had an

Abundance of produce grown in our garden we just had a Fen in backyard but we did about a 40 foot by 40ft Garden the first couple of years we lived there and we had so much produce we were literally giving it away in our town it was

Amazing we were brand new we had completely green thumbs and we just did the go big or go home put as many seeds in the ground as possible possible and started with some starter plants and had a very very fruitful garden and then we started to get a little bit of

Experience we built ourselves some raised beds and we kind of expanded our gardening Venture from there and realized how much the two of us love together to work in our garden along with our boys and so we want to continue doing that here and now that we’ve spent

A lot of time renovating the inside and you’ve seen that we’ve started working on exterior projects it’s finally time for us to really focus on our main goal being here and that is to do a lot of our own food growing so while we were doing all that research

Over the past two years I realized that I was making a huge mistake when ordering my seeds because I didn’t really think and really didn’t know the importance of being able to have heirloom seeds so that I can save my own seeds year after year rather than having

To buy my own seeds every year in addition to having Heirloom Seeds is a much better way to be able to go to things like seed swaps and be able to bring some diversity into my heirloom Garden as I go and so I did buy a whole basket of seeds for last year’s

Garden which obviously as I just mentioned didn’t happen so I have an abundance of really amazing seeds from literally something for everything some things I’ve never grown before many things I have but none of these seeds are heirloom and so while doing that research I learned how important the

Heirloom seeds were and so this year I ordered myself all heirloom seeds to be able to do our garden so I have a plan for what I’m going to do with these seeds cuz these seeds are obviously still good and viable seeds and I’ve kept them stored in a cool dry place and

So I’m not going to waste these seeds I’m definitely going to use them but I’ll share with you what I’m going to do with them later but I thought that it would be fun for me to show you what I ordered for our garden this year and

Talk to you a little bit about our plans for the garden we have a few Milestones to do obviously being our first year here we have some obstacles to overcome being that the climate and some of the weather conditions that we have here and many more aspects that we need to think

About to be able to have a successful garden this year so last year I ordered my seeds from a place called vessie here in the maritimes and I was really kind of I guess disappointed when all of our seeds arrived but it didn’t really have that many seeds in each of the packages

Especially for the price that it cost us for our seeds so I was pleasantly surprised when we tried a new company this year called rainbow seeds also here in the maritimes so I love to be able to support around our area if I can and oh

My word they did not dis Point Not only was their packaging beautiful they had a really amazing instructural package that was in it just to give me other information and websites to look at um growing calendars and things like that but I got so many more seeds for my

Dollar than I did the previous year so I’m definitely going to order from this company again next year in addition to ordering my own uh saving some of my own seeds so let’s look and see what I got so you can see it’s my websites and just

Instructionals and it was just so nice to be able to see that someone that’s growing in this area had a planting calendar that they found work for them that they included in my box so because we obviously live in a climate where we get hurricanes and we have really high

Winds and we have very very damp weather it’s going to be a challenge for us to have that really long growing season like we had in Ontario so we are actually zone six the same as when we lived at our old house but because we’ve

Lived here now for 2 years I can see just how different the climate really is and how is that going to impact my actual growing season so I think that things that we’ll be needing a longer growing season are going to be a little bit more difficult because we actually

Can not get anything outside here until after May 24th weekend I’m thinking the first week or even into the second week of June to ensure that we don’t have any Frost which is where my Greenhouse is really going to come in handy to get a lot of seeds started and have things you

Know getting going for the season a little bit earlier rather than waiting to be completely outside when we were in Ontario we were able to start growing and planning and doing things inside in like February early March and nature sure for sure our garden was planted in

The ground and really starting early May middle of May so I think we’re going to be really kind of set back for how much time we’re going to have to actually get things into the ground and then when it is time it’ll be crucial that everything

Gets in the ground at the right time to be able to have as many days for the growing season as possible and we do here in Nova Scotia sometimes get Frost in September unlike in Ontario and so I think that this is going to be a much

Shorter growing season which is going to have its challenges but I’m excited to see kind of how this goes and just learn by trial and error like we did when we began our journey beginning our garden back in Ontario okay so I’m just going to pull these out in no particular order

I was able to get some D dwarf curled Scotch this is a type of kale which I thought would be wonderful to have obviously these can’t really be preserved as much um but I’m going to be able to use these for some of the animal feed as well we have white pickling

Onion seeds sugar baby watermelon seeds this was requested by Dayton he absolutely loves growing melons so I thought that was really fun to do we have delicious melon cantaloupes we absolutely love eating cantaloupe Dayton and I so again another melon for his little category in there and then I

Really wanted to try something back in Ontario I really really wanted to grow pumpkins and Gores and do just a little pumpkin growing competition with the boys we did not have enough room in our backyard to have our large Gard Garden Room for the dogs and then also grow

Pumpkins you know on the sides they need so much space so I’m really excited that we’re going to be growing some gourds and pumpkins and things and so this is a package of small gourds on the same note as the pumpkins we ordered some Atlantic giant pumpkins these are those pumpkins

That you see when you go to the Fall Fair and they do the competitions where they’ve grown these gigantic pumpkins so I think these will be the perfect seeds for us to do that pumpkin growing contest between the four of us uh we have celery some red globe onion

Rainbow blend carrot seeds which I think are so fun photos of these online are so neat to have a variety of different colors for the carrots rather than just having orange so I thought that would be a fun project for the boys we have broccoli and cauliflower seeds of

Different flavors and we’re going to do an abundance of peppers so I have long stem cayenne peppers we have some small sugar or pie baking pumpkins Jack a’ Lantern pumpkins sweet bell peppers honey nut squash one of the things that we always LED growing when

We were in Ontario was to have a variety of tomatoes for different projects as you know obviously if I’m going to have a garden of this caliber and of this size I’m going to want to do a lot of canning and preserving and tomatoes are

A great great way for me to be able to do that and test some of my new canning skills so we want to be able to have a variety of different ones we can use for different types of cooking and preserving so we have um Roman Tomatoes

Hints Tomatoes we have a Nova Scotia seed tomato we have about I think 10 different varieties within this box and we have jalapeno peppers habanero peppers of different colors another type of bell pepper cucumbers these are just allpurpose general cucumbers we have cabbage seeds regular typical imperior carrot seeds so these

Are just your orange large variety we have summer spaghetti squash sweet potato squash scoa Tomatoes beef steak tomatoes and little cherry tomatoes we have early white scalloped type of seed squash seeds these looked so fun and I for sure was like I need to grow those just because of what they

Look like not sure what I’m going to cook or bake with them yet but I think they’ll be really neat to have and we have sweet banana peppers zucchini cauliflower we have um some cut flour mixes I want to have a little garden that’s set aside for the bees and

Pollinators so there’s a bit of some of our flower seeds mix into here which I’ll talk to you about in another video asparagus seeds which I know are going to take me about you know 4 to 7 years to have asparagus but I figure if I don’t start I will never have asparagus

Brussels sprouts and we have a bunch of different lettuce like kale seeds um baby green lettuce multiple packages of these ones and winter squash and then we have red kidney beans couple packages um yellow Wonder pole beans stringless green beans Homesteader or Lincoln English peas honey and cream by color

Corn sweet sugar snap peas and my absolute favorite one that I ordered these are called Jacob’s cattle they’re a baking bush bean and these look so neat and when I show you these you’re going to know exactly why I love these and I think they kind of just speak for

Themselves but I think I’m going to order a little bit more of these because I think they’ll be so fun to grow and I’m just curious what they’re going to look like once they actually do start growing but these are my favorite ones that we got in the Box this

Year and then I was able to get a large information package here that included a bunch of butterfly and Bee pollinator seeds that we’re going to do for our garden for that so there a couple different kinds in here and they gave this great instruction package of

Everything that I need to know to get these started and to have a successful pollinator Garden we’re going to pick up some other things as well when the garden Center’s open so that the bees that will be welcoming in the spring are going to have everything that their

Hearts Desires in addition to our Orchard trees so I think that’s going to be wonderful to have them part of our kind of Garden area um to be able to pollinate not only everything that has to go in the garden and grow but also to

Our Orchard that we have that you saw as plant so all of these seeds that I just showed you out of this box here are my heirloom seeds and I want to grow my collection of these and make sure that it have a really diverse grouping of

Seeds but in addition to that I am going to grow all of the things that I ordered from last year and be able to know that I have you know such a large variety so my thought was is that I’m going to use some of this obviously of the non-air

Loom to be able to do canning and preserving and things but I’m going to do so much seed saving so that next year I can use my own heirloom seeds to be able to grow my garden which I think will be so fun to add that as an

Extension to my growing project but I thought that since our garden is going to be located in such a large spot over here that I can make a complete designated area where I use a and grow a lot of produce things that are going to be eaten by our pigs chickens and

Turkeys because I have so many seeds that are not heirloom that I think that I can make use of doing that so I thought I could build myself and grow myself a pig Garden to be able to feed them all year round where I can actually

Store and keep some of the squashes and zucchinis and things that can store longterm to be able to feed them through the winter months and make use of those seeds so I think that’s going to be really fun for me this large section A package that I have in my hand I have

Six eight 10 packages these are my giant gold sungold sunflowers last year we saw that we ordered a thousand sunflower seeds and we planted them out on our main area here by the Brook that we have and unfortunately we didn’t get a single sunflower because all of the birds ate

The seeds so it’s going to be crucial that I start these seeds in the greenhouse early to be able to get them outside I won’t make the mistake of planting seeds outside without getting them started CU I know that all of the crows and ravens are going to gobble

Them up and I’m not going to have any so I’m going to grow giant sules giganta sunflowers giant sungold there’s another Giant sungold and teddy bear dwarf sunflowers so I think it’s going to be fun to have a few varieties and I’d like to have these in multiple places around

The homestead so for the heirloom seeds that’s what I have in my pile and I want to just show you just a few of the seeds that I have here that are not I wanted to try growing peanuts last year and again because we didn’t have Garden I

Didn’t get to that part so I’m going to grow peanuts and I have multiple colors of different types of beans like purple beans and um these ones are called haircut Ruby Royal burgundies which I think are really fun lots of different snap peas and quick grabs for the

Garden um just a bunch of different kinds of Lett uses which I think are really fun oh and a few other varieties of peppers so this is a Caribbean red hot I think there’s a few other types of peppers sprinkled in here but I think having a large variety of different

Heats of peppers will be really neat for me to put into a lot of the Tomato canning stuff that I’m going to do to be able to make our own sales and sauces and things to keep throughout the winter so my goal this year is to not only get

Our raised beds built and our garden in the ground be able to make a lot of my own DIY natural trellises and growing apparatuses for some of the things that need some help to be off of the ground but my goal this year is to locate strawberry plants blueberry plants

Raspberry plants maybe some grapes and a few other things that I can start having established themselves on the property because we missed that growing season I could be a couple years ahead on some of that growing if I bought them from stocks but unfortunately they’re really

Far and few between here in the province to buy when you went as early as the garden centers open they only had a very limited number and they were sold out before I even got a chance to get any so this year my goal is to find a bunch of

That fruit produce stuff that were we’re going to want to have and get our trellises and stuff ready to grow those things so I need to make sure that I do that early um rather than starting some of that stuff from seed it’s really important for us to be able to get those

Things to have as much sustainable food growth on our property as possible and you know it takes quite a number of years to have those things be really fruitful for you and so I want to get them in as soon as possible I’m really excited to see what happens with our

Orchard trees this year last year was kind of like the break year because we planted late in the year the Year before so I’m hoping that this is the year that we’re going to start seeing a little bit of production on our trees they’re still pretty young but I I’m hopeful that

We’re going to get some because I think it’s going to be so neat to have our own apples and our own pears as we have several varieties planted on our Hill here over by our Greenhouse area that we have so I think it’s going to be really

Exciting to be able to do this I want to know what you’re growing in your garden and any tips and tricks that you have for me I don’t know how early I’m going to be able to start things in inside and get them out to the greenhouse I’m

Hoping that in April I can start planting some seeds I have the gardening itch right now just coming from Ontario this is usually the time of year where we’re starting to get our seeds started inside and put them by the windows and get them under some lights inside but I

Know I’m so far um way too early for being here in Nova Scotia to be able to do that so I’m holding out and resisting all temptation and so I’m keeping myself occupied from drawing some visuals of how we’re going to lay out the garden mapping some things out right now our

Fruit trees are under about 42 in of snow sure you can see snow behind my window here and we’re supposed to have a freezing rainstorm tonight so it’s kind of a funny day to be doing a seed haul video but I’m so anxious and eager and

Excited to get this next step of our Homestead kind of put together and started and show you all of the progress along the way so I picked up some really fun things to be able to store my seeds this is a perfectly fine and acceptable

Way to store store your seeds but I you know I love to work on Creative projects and being a creative person this is just not how I want to store my seeds and so I picked up some really fun ways to be able to store these that I can reuse

Year after year and make labels and do that so if you want to see what I’m going to do for that let me know and I was thinking of building myself a custom seed shelf that I can do sort of a visual display and have my own seed bank

And be able to put my new favorite thing to collect is seeds so I thought it would be really fun to have have a really nice creative way to be able to actually have them out somewhere and I thought that this homest setting Pantry room that I’m in which is our food

Pantry and baking pantry and laundry room slash you know um Homestead Pantry storage that this would be a great room to be able to hang a shelf like that design it myself so it fits custom in this space and then have my visual stored for all my seeds so if you want

To see that then let me know and I’ll make sure to film as I’m creating that I think it’s a perfect project to work on when it’s pouring rain outside and there’s so much snow and I’m just itching for the garden to keep myself still thinking of the garden but keep

Myself busy in the meantime so let me know what you’re going to grow in your garden this year and let me know any suggestions and tips that you have for me if there’s something that you notice that I’m missing from this list that you’re like why are you not growing this

You need to get these then let me know there is a seed swap coming up locally in my area which I thought would be so fun to attend and there’s a few other kind of um heirloom seed sales coming up sort of like a craft show but you can go

And buy seeds so I might hit up one of those in the middle of March and see if there’s a few things I can pick up that I don’t have in my collection here and I’m definitely not going to stop my seed collection at this as I kind of get some

More seeds I’ll let you know as I go and I I just feel like this is my you know complete new obsession where I just keep looking at seeds everywhere and as I’m learning more about it I think it’s only going to help me to make my garden that

Much better year after year I also ordered a seed saving book so that I can you know properly learn how to save my seeds because that’s something that’s an aspect of gardening that I have never done before was to save my seeds from my garden yel and then be able to use the

Seeds the following year so I think it’s going to be really interesting for me to do this whole process preserve my food save my seeds and really make this the goal that I had in mind when buying this property and how much life this is going to add to everything we’ve already been

Doing so I hope that you enjoyed today’s video seed haul for 2024 and I will update you as we go and of course as soon as our spring here in Nova Scotia happens you’re going to see tons of gardening content The Good the Bad and the Ugly as I learn about growing here

In our zone 6 and again I am used to growing in zone 6 but you’ve seen the weather we have year and things are just not quite the same as they were in Ontario so I love you if you’re new here please subscribe and wait for the

Content coming out for our gardening and enjoy what’s already here on our Channel I love you and I will see you on the next episode