Friday, February 6, 2009

Chasing the ghosts of winter

It has been a gardening bonanza of late. The past week has held temps in the 50's, complete with clear skies. We've been getting everything ready for the Great Garden Extravaganza of '09. I started on Saturday by getting a little seed starter tray and some tomato seeds, thinking the Pacific North West isn't the best place for growing tomatoes getting them started indoors nice and early would produce the best plants. Then Sunday Eric wanted to get the garden really going. $100 later and we have 5 - 50 pot seed starter trays going under 2 - 4' florescents upstairs. This includes untold numbers of corn zucchini squash lettuce spinach peppers herbs etc. I thought we should start them at different times according to their planting date but Eric wanted to start them all at the same time and he's done this before. So I guess the plan is to plant them outside according to their planting date, until then the light cycle is supposed to keep them from flowering and allow them to get really big and strong. I'm thinking this is going to easily get us 2 harvests out of a lot of things. Things haven't just been getting all fired up inside, outside we planted strawberrys, asparags and raspberrys. The goal is to have as much eddible landscaping as possible. Strawberrys as ground cover with blueberrys as hedges. Asparags shrubs with lettuce as decorative plants. Peas and beans that climb over fences...