Back, anticipating

Well, hello!

I just wanted to peek in after having tried our first batch of winter sown plants today.

I didn't realize how long I've been away. I guess the big bummer of having our bonsai stolen, along with finally getting hit with blight on our tomatoes, I was feeling a little sour about things. But, lately the seed and plant catalogs have been rolling in, and we're getting inspired. It looks like we're going to be at our current home for another growing season (we weren't so sure there for a while), so we're able to plan for what we'd like to do here.

So, you're maybe wondering what seeds we planted today? I did lupine and foxglove, along with five different varieties of tomatoes that C. picked out among the free seeds we got from the Winter Sown website (see link above, it's a nifty site!). There's more to come, though. I've been dying to try the winter sowing since the beginning of the year but time has really gotten away from me. We have a wish list of seeds we'd like to get from Seed Savers and will probably place the order this week. Here's what we're going to try!

pepper, habanero red
pepper, joe's round
sunberry
watermelon, moon and stars van doren
carrot, scarlet nantes
lettuce, bronze arrowhead
lettuce, crisp mint
lettuce, rossimo
lettuce, yugoslavian red
pea, dwarf grey sugar
cucumber, Boothby's blonde

Sadly, I didn't get a chance in the fall to lay down newspapers and plastic in order to reserve more space for garden beds, but we'll be doing a lot fewer tomatoes and peppers this year in containers that we'll use for the leafy veggies and who knows what else. I'm really crossing my fingers we won't run into blight this year again. We were fortunate to be able to harvest quite a lot of our tomatoes, but who likes to see those sad, sad plants when they're dying prematurely? Not I.

I also bought a copy of Four Season Gardening recently and have really been enjoying reading about all the extended season possibilities. At the very least C. and I have decided that we definitely want to move to a home with more land than what we have now, no matter what. I'm hoping within the next two years or so we'll be able to do that. Who knows.

So, tell me! What are you doing while awaiting spring's happy arrival?

P.S. I want to grow hellebores!