I'm a Summer person. Once it's cold out, I find things to occupy my mind to relieve my misery. Usually I spend December carefully counting my vacation days and planning my Summer trips. Once I've figured that out, I move on to my garden. I start with my seeds. I go through my inventory and make a list of what I have. By the time December is ending, I've received a few seed catalogs in the mail.
Our family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve, so on Christmas Day I curl up in a blanket with my stack of catalogs and make a Wish List from each catalog. I compare that list with my inventory, select my wish list favorites for the things I need, and place my order. Merry Christmas to me!!
Why so early? Well, in my part of the country I need to plant a few things in January - primarily all of my onions, parsley, and pansies. Pansies are always tricky because they need to germinate in the darkness. My onions and pansies always do best with fresh seeds. By now, I've given my onions a few "haircuts" and they're looking pretty strong. Behind my shelves I hung the shiny bags that come with meal delivery kits to reflect some light and warm up my basement growing area.
A few times a week, I bring the tray upstairs and let a fan blow on them - a great tip I learned from GrowfullywithJenna - check out her YouTube videos, especially if you're in Zone 6A or 6B. Soon I'll just have to put a fan down in the basement because the lettuce, Swiss chard, Cilantro, and spinach my grandkids planted a couple of weeks ago are growing. The spinach is a bit slow, but it's starting to make an appearance. My colorful pots and trays (reusable) came from Bootstrap Farmer (online store).
This weekend I have a lot more to plant - broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, more lettuce, and daisies. Today I started my first batch of peas. I'm doing a little experiment. I'm starting them inside in empty toilet paper rolls placed in some trays we throw away at work. In a couple of weeks, I plan to plant them outside in a 5-gallon container and protect them from the cold/wind to see if I can get an early crop. We'll see what happens.
This year I've decided to give myself a break. I've assigned all of my planting dates to either the 1st or the 15th of each month, and I am allowing 2 weeks to get each job done. I think that will be better than my previous planning, which was more specific and frustrating when I didn't do it on time. One thing that really helped me with this was an online garden planning app. I use the growveg.com app. Not only does it help with timing, which you can personalize, it also helps me plan out the spaces in my garden. It even gives me a monthly view so I can see when open spaces are there to be filled. That feature will help me extend my gardening season because I can specify "in ground" times. Maybe I can go the whole summer without buying lettuce, since I'll know where I can stick a plant in here and there. I think that's a good goal.
So, with winter officially half over, this is where I am with my garden. Every little green sprout or leaf makes me feel happy, and chases away the cold
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