Day Ten: Starting earlier

It is March 10th – The sky is a dull flat grey. The ground is a dirty white with ice patches everywhere you look. This is 30 degrees feels like 20 and the radar says there is snow in the area. There is nothing heavy but still snow. It does not look promising or uplifting out there to a gardener.

I started the morning early reviewing the garden blogs that show up in my email on Saturdays. One from Oregon shared March duties of clean up – including pictures of some trimming green bushes in short sleeves. (I am hoping that is an old photo from when this person lived in Southern California since I know they had a bit of snow last week.) Anther from the northeast also talked about spring clean up in March. Then the podcast from Joe the Gardener showed up. I was excited about this one since he is talking about raised beds. I started to listen and then my eyes drifted out the window and I thought why?  We are a long ways from even seeing my raised beds this year.

My front garden has 4 raised garden beds and three flower or herb gardens with knee high fences around them. All you can see out there right now is white. Ok, so the fence close to the house you can see because I went out and trampled the snow to keep the rabbits from getting to the bushes but otherwise beds and fences are somewhere under the snow. It will be awhile before I see them and they thaw enough to even think about clean up let alone planning.

With all that said I am starting early.  Today the first round of veggie seeds are being planted to go under the grow lights. Last year I started them at the end of March. They grew but by mid May when I could plant them outside they were still tiny. I decided this year to give them a bigger jump on the season. I thought maybe starting them two weeks earlier might help. Here in the northland it is important to extend the growing season as much as possible.

The sweet and hot peppers will get started. Some of the tomatoes and herbs will also begin their journey toward growing in a summer garden today. It may be chilly outside. The sun may not be shinning but I am determined to find spring – even if it is only in my basement.

The pansies are doing quite nicely but they were started at the end of December – they are really the slow pokes of the garden world.