This Year's Gardens: Chapter 1

What my kitchen looked like Saturday

Hope springs eternal. At least when it comes to gardening.

It is mid-March and while it is still too early, even with climate change, to plant outside, my mind has turned to the coming year's potential. Warren has thoughts and ideas about our flower beds and the two front beds; my focus is on the possibilities in the vegetable arena. I have been making mental notes, looking at seed catalogs online, reviewing past years, and dreaming about this year's gardens.

So following through on my eternal hope, I just started seeds. Well, to be truthful, I started a lot of seeds. After last year's lackadaisical gardening performance due to my still recovering from the fall/winter medical messes, my just not being up to it, getting to my favorite go-to garden center, totally local and community-committed, for the garden (Miller's Country Gardens) way too late to get the good stuff, doing a mediocre job of even taking care of the garden—forget the weeds, I'm just talking about the plants, dealing with moving my dad into assisted living, and having the gardens WAY TOO CROWDED (again, always, even more so), I am set to make this year different and, I hope, better, 

I spent a chunk of Saturday starting SOME (SOME!!!) seeds inside. For the most part, I had stopped doing a lot of seed starting inside, other than zucchini, some years ago. So what was different about this year? A few reasons. One, there were some varieties I wanted to try that the likelihood of my finding them potted at Miller's or anywhere else was slim at best. I ordered a particular sweet pepper that caught my eye, and an heirloom zucchini and heirloom cucumber that had waved to me. (I had also saved some seeds from some sweet peppers that I'd bought at Aldi in the winter. Why not try them?)

The sweet peppers I am eager to try

The other key reason to starting them NOW, ignoring the timing issue with the last probable freeze date, is I am early enough that if the seedlings don't take off and thrive like they need to, Miller's opens April 7 and I will be a regular visitor as the spring opens up. Usually they bring out their "cold" plants out first, like broccoli, cabbage, and then their warm plants, the tomatoes and peppers, a few weeks later. I will get my tomatoes at Miller's because they are a pain to grow from seed at least for me. 

Zucchini-to-be, I hope! 

While I was dabbling in the dirt in the kitchen, Warren came in from the shop and expressed surprise. "I knew you were planning to do that soon, just not today." When I told him it takes 10+ days the seeds to sprout before I could see what I have to work with, then I can figure out what to do at Miller's, he understood immediately.

Warren and I will be tilling, spreading some compost, and tilling again in the next few weeks to get the vegetable beds ready. (Okay, we'll deal with some of the flower beds too. I love flowers, but they are not vegetables!) By late April, I hope to have some plants in the ground. (We're in Zone 6b here, so that is about the earliest that the USDA charts say to plant without fear of deadly frost.)

Hope springs eternal. So do gardens. 

I can already taste that first tomato!