Plann(t)ing for Spring

Today is a gloriously sunny Saturday in January.  A rarity for Northwestern Ohio.  Not only is it a sunny day, but it is warmer than average, it hasn't snowed much at all this winter, and we have had a stretch of sunshine that would rival any week in the springtime.  Needless to say we are all walking around with bated breath, telling ourselves the "big one" is right around the corner.  Snow blowers at the ready, loaves of bread and gallons of milk stocked.

We have issues, clearly.

But today I am not thinking about snowstorms, blizzards, or even snow days (those thoughts are reserved for my 5am alarm call, screaming into my perfectly peaceful and cozy sleeping time...but that is another post entirely.)  No, today I am going to snuggle down onto the couch with a few of my favorite seed catalogues, a notebook, and my garden planner.  Today I will start the process of planning next season's vegetable garden.  Last year I did relatively well until the fall when the wheels of life came off and I forgot about such things as heirloom tomatoes, perfect peppers and winding vines of butternut squashes.  I will have a big mess come spring.  But for now I am in a blissful mode of gardens without weeds or tomato hornworms.  (those things make me squeal and squirm...gross.)  Today I will make lists of fish peppers, Cherokee purple tomatoes, purple zinnias, sweet peas, and more.  Sooner rather than later it will be time to start seeds in the dark of winter.  Before I know it I'll have a basement room filled with the scent of baby tomato plants.  If there is anything that combats the doldrums of winter, it is starting your garden early.  Happy planting friends!

One of my favorite sources Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

On the Discovery of Miracles

This morning is gloriously sunshiney, filled with puffs of springtime breezes, and perfect.  Much like the past two days.  The only difference?  Every single muscle, joint, tendon, even my skin...hurts.  I feel as though I aged 50 years overnight. 

Owwwwwwwwwwww.

Why, you ask?  Well, yesterday, after the most delicious mother's day brunch at our favorite Italian restaurant, we headed home.  At first, I intended to sit on our porch and read (I'm in the middle of Planting Dandelions: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life by Kyran Pittman. It is fantastic.  Go get it now).  Then we stepped out of the car and the garden beckoned me.  So off went the dressy clothes and on went the t-shirt and denim.  I grabbed the wheelbarrow, shovel, rake, and gloves and prepared myself to only divide a few black-eyed susans and be done.  Ha! I pulled, yanked, shoveled, and spaded up countless stubborn weeds.  I transplanted a hydrangea that has failed to thrive.  I divided those black-eyed susans and made four new spots for them.  I raked out bits of ornamental grasses left over from our assault on them last week.  I neatened up the beds.  Then I fertilized.  Oh, did I fertilize. 

In the process, our son Jack was my partner in crime.  He rotated between shoveling his sand under his playhouse and helping me.  This is the first year he really is 1) interested in it and 2) able to be of any real assistance.  He wheeled the wheelbarrow.  He picked up sticks.  He pulled easy weeds out.  And, he was there when I found the rabbit nest.  I moved aside what looked to be a lump of straw in my vegetable garden.  Well, it was a lump...of straw covering four baby rabbits.  I literally squealed as the four rabbits hopped out and scattered.  The glee in Jack's eyes was immeasurable.  He giggled over the rabbits and my scream.  Of course, I had to explain that rabbits did not hatch from eggs.  Then we had to catch them because they were trapped inside the vegetable garden walls.  This was his favorite part...because both my husband and I were holding these tiny bunnies (he named each bunny "tiny"). 

Later I found a toad.  Remembering his joy over the rabbits and the fact that he remembers toads from two springs ago, I called him over.  I had the toad in my gloved hand.  Jack reached out, wide-eyed, grabbed the toad in his palm and whispered things to it only the toad and Jack will know.  Secrets between a pre-schooler and toad.  I love it.  He named it "Henry Toad." 

For Mother's Day I received many gifts...new beads for my bracelet, a handmade card, brunch with my boys...but the best was the look in the eyes of our son as he witnessed the miracle of nature right in our very own yard.  When I was giving him a bath last night I asked him what his favorite thing was that day, and his response was "the animals."  Mine was simply, to be his momma. 

Planning for Growth

I'm a gardener. 

My Microfarm-Summer 2010

Not a particularly good one.  Not one who wears big floppy hats, has a cool gardening apron with pockets for well-kept tools, and perfectly sloppy gardening clothes.  I'm a total work-in-progress type of gardener.  Here's what I mean about that:


I try very, very hard to be an organic gardener.  I believe it is the best way to take care of our little corner of this earth and of my little family.  I also know it is really hard to poison myself with organic gardening methods.  I try to do everything from start to finish-start each annual from seed around March and preserve veggies in late summer, early autumn.  That sentence sounds awfully presumptuous, but I have had some specular failures with this.  I've learned more about powdery mildew than I care to ever know, and how it can kill months of work on a beloved cucumber/zucchini/squash/melon crop.  I've learned that composting isn't always easy, and needs a special balance of moisture, green and brown matter-which I still haven't mastered.  Each year I've grown things, I've had grand plans around January/February (you know, when the gardens in our imaginations look perfect, are disease and bug free, and rains come predictably) and sometime in July my spectacular failures begin.  


That's where I've learned things.  


That's also where I usually end up heading to local produce stands to get what I need to make pickles, preserves and sauces because I have yet to grow enough to provide for my family.


However, I am good at two things for sure.  


I grow spectacular peppers.  Beautiful, strong pepper plants from seed that produce prolifically until frost.  Heirloom, organic, clean, delicious peppers like you've never seen.  Last year I grew pimento, hunky hots, and hikelhatz.  The year before I had sweet orange, jalapenos and hunky hots.  I don't know exactly how or why I do so well with these, but I do.  I guess pepper plants are idiot-proof.


I also have found luck with sweet peas.  I grew them the first year my husband created our fenced-in veggie garden as a way to decorate the exterior for the neighbors.  I'd never come face to face with a sweet pea before that, and now my summer won't be complete without them.  I can't kill those vines.  (don't want to either)  If you've never smelled that scent wafting to your nose on a humid summer day, you haven't lived.  It could bring world peace, of that I'm certain.  


I have many other failings too...I am a terrible slob...my garden tools are a mess.  I always promise myself I will do the smart thing and make a storage bucket for them with sand and oil.  But no, they languish in messy piles all over the place, rusting and dirty.  I have stashed various soil amendments everywhere in our garage so that I can't find them and sometimes will purchase something I already own (read: bone meal).  Last summer, I made a powdery mildew milk spray up, took it outside to put on my plants and had to run in.  Totally forgot about it for a few days.  People, that spray is 10% milk.  It sat in the blazing July Ohio sun.  You can only imagine what that smelled like.  


Barf.


But on the bright side, I haven't poisoned myself, or my family, with plant chemicals.  I have made some delicious meals with our veggies.  I have lovely bouquets made up of native Ohio perennials all summer long.  Maybe this year I will crack the tomato code, get my basil to grow taller than my ankles, and find a mulch that holds moisture.


It is winter after all, and right now my garden is pretty much perfect.