A few days ago I finished putting the gardens to bed for the winter. I always struggle with this task because there are always one or two plants I have to pull up that still have the possibility to produce a few more gifts for me. I picked the best of the green tomatoes and a hand fill of green beans before I closed my eyes and pulled. The pain of yanking out the plants is softened a bit by the fact that most of those plants will be composted and stay in the garden. I always tell them I'm sorry (yes, I'm one of those people who believe toys come to life when I leave the room). But there is a silver lining to plant murder, planning for spring!
Too early to plan for spring you say? Nay! Gardening is a year round endeavor! When I finally get all the spent plants out of the way it's time for the manure! I love manure. It stings the nostrils. It makes me happy. My husband gets a kick out of my manure induced glee. My kids all walk around with their noses plugged up but I tell you what, manure is awesome. I can get a half ton for $15! Yes, $15 that is not a typo! I am also lucky to have friends who let me use their truck to pick it up. (If you live near horse stables it's worth it to ask if they sell manure!) I buy it in the fall because it's still a little "hot", meaning that the manure hasn't composted just yet. If you dump hot manure on your garden it will burn your plants. The stuff I buy is the mess cleaned out of the horse stalls. Chipped wood, straw and poo. I put it in a big pile to marinate all winter. It's a beautiful thing.
After I get the manure cleaned out from underneath my fingernails the snow isn't far behind. That's when the real fun begins! Seed catalogs!! Seriously, I call seed catalogs garden porn. The salacious photographs of plump melons, blushing tomatoes and long string beans. My favorite catalog is the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They have 40 pages of tomatoes! It's enough to make a gardener hyperventilate! As a peruse my catalogs I want to plant one of everything! The next few weeks, because it really will only be a few weeks before the onions, peas, and lettuces can go in the ground and even sooner for starting seeds, I will spend making and remaking lists of what will go in my garden. I'll use an environmentally irresponsible amount of graph paper planning and re-planning my gardens. There are important questions to answer like should we plant purple carrots? How many varieties of lettuce can we fit in the lettuce bed? Pink or blue pumpkins? Yellow Thai watermelons? It gets a bit ridiculous and I really do need all 12 weeks of winter to decide what will make the final cut.
Now that the snow is on it's way it's time for you to order some catalogs and start planning for your garden! Catalogs have so much information. Maybe my next post will be about how to get the most from your seed catalog.
These are some of my favorite links.
Annie's Heirloom Seeds
Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co.
Bountiful Gardens
Garden's Alive
Peaceful Valley Farm
Renee's Garden
Native Seeds
Organica Seed
Mountain Valley Seeds
No comments:
Post a Comment