Forward Planning
So, it’s cheering me this week to start planning for my garden. It reminds me that eventually winter will have to end, and that I can get out grubbing in the dirt and making things grow again - with this year hopefully being more impressive as some of last year’s perennials will have had a chance to take hold. I am hoping for great things from my hydrangeas and roses, especially.
However this year I have also vowed to start more things from seed. It’s really fun to go the nursery and buy the pretty plants they have, but holy god is it expensive. Starting things from seed is more difficult, but I had some stellar results last year— from my Amish Broom Corn and my sunflowers (before the powdery mildew got them, dammit) particularly. So I have been ordering seeds from TinySeeds.com. They carry ‘Botanical Interests’ seeds that I very much like, many of which are organic. I am going to focus on a lot more vining plants this year, as I loved the ones I had last summer. I am also going to plan better for them and try not to end up with the hot mess of blob-like Moonflower like I had last year.
It lives! It grows over everything! Eek!
I am going to try to cover most of my fence in climbers, if I can. I am also going to try a few fruits too, particularly strawberries. And this Love Lies Bleeding looks as if it’s going to be cool. I am going to get a table set up in the basement with some lighting over it, and do a huge batch of seeds.
And I also bought this very cool thing which is not a sex toy, but a seed-starting pot maker. Apparently you can make biodegradable pots with it, out of strips of old newspaper. It’s all kinds of triple happiness since you:
- save money by not having to buy pots
- save the earth by recycling newspaper
- save more plants since you can plant the whole paper-pot and everything, thus reducing transplant shock and keeping more seedlings alive
I am very excited about it and the whole “getting seeds started” thing. I need a fun project like this, I need to be around things that are happy and alive and growing and not covered in some kind of of evil cosmic sludge, like I feel the rest of my life is.
I also vow to take many many more pictures this year to mark my progress. I’ve joined this garden site: MyFolia.com where I can track the progress of my plants and keep a record of what I have planted and if it’s working out. Last year the mosquitoes were so bad that they kept me out of the garden many evenings, and this year I am going to figure out how to battle them. I don’t want to use chemicals, so I will be planting some anti-mosquito plants and using lots more citronella candles and stuff - I need to find some natural repellents to wear too, I hate spraying myself with DEET - bleh.
Anyway, so the planning is making me happy, and when my orders start arriving in the next week or two I think I will be even more happy. OK, so I have to go down in the horrible basement for this project, but perhaps this will make me not hate the horrible basement so much?
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Personally I get hay fever and I’m lazy, so my idea of gardening is to get someone to come in and dig the whole lot up then surface it with concrete paving slabs so I can sit out in summer but not be bothered with bugs that are attracted to the plants, and also never have to mow the lawn again.
You do realise though that with your luck you’ll end up growing a Marjorie II type plant or a row of Triffids don’t you?
[...] I blogged the other week about the nifty pot-maker that I ordered from burpee.com. It came last week and I set to making [...]