01-09-12 Seeds

01/09/12 Seeds

Today’s raining, not much, just a gentle drizzle. While I am a big fan of open blue sky, especially at this time of year, I know this rain is perfect for the garden, to keep those roots cool and moist.

Rain is life!

Well, after spending time with garden catalogs and choosing which ones to order, seed packs have started coming in. Each one full of promises!

First thing I do is to mark each packet clearly with the year I receive it. So now, each one is marked with a blue “12”. The main reason I do this is that I do not always use up all my seeds and I sometimes go back to using unfinished packets from years past. The date helps me pick up the freshest one with the best growing chances.

Second I organize my seeds by alphabetical order and keep them in an airtight plastic container. I do not want bugs to access them at any time.

Care: seeds keep best in a dry, cool dark place but mine spend the year in garden shed that gets pretty hot in summer and they seem to do fine. Nature does not easily give up its fertility.

                      Our next step will be sowing and planting.

Around the Triangle, we can start spring seeds in the ground the first two weeks in February (coming fast!): lettuce, spinach, onions, leeks, potatoes, carrots, radishes, etc…the cool crops.

By mid-February, you can also start, indoors with good natural light or a grow lamp and a heating pad, some of the summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and the like.

End of April, beginning of May, outdoors, you can transplant those summer seedlings and start corn, beans, squash, and other summer crops. Annual flowers can also be sown outdoors at this time.

By September first, it is time to start your fall/winter garden: a last crop of bush beans, onions, leeks, endives, escaroles, lettuce, cabbages, kale, collards, Brussels sprouts, etc…

December: time to get catalogs in your mailbox again and start dreaming anew about the perfect tomato, the crunchiest cucumber or the most delicious bush beans, unless you already found them and already know what to reorder.

Next week's topic: our garden's natural wonder fuel: compost.