1st Day of Spring = Seed starting

Gardens planning for both indoors and outdoors?
Yep, I used a spreadsheet.   Like I'd use anything else?

While spending the last couple of months dreaming through seed catalogs, I catalog all that I wanted, the name, the price, the number of seeds per packet, the days to germination, guessed when I wanted to have produce and worked my way backwards to when I'd need to start the seed.

My biggest catalog order came from http://www.seedsavers.org/

  

Now that the seed packets have arrived, let the fun begin!!!

According to the spreadsheet, sorted by planting dates, I have my list of which seeds to start this week:

Broccoli, Romanesco

Pepper, Hinkelhatz (hot)

Pepper, Mini red bell (sweet)

Basil, Lettuce Leaf

Basil, Lime

Basil, Mrs Burn's Lemon

Basil, Purple Dark Opal

Bean, Sultan's Golden Cresent (snap) -[rare]

Bean, Sultan's Green Cresent (snap) -[rare]

Thyme

Tomato, Blondkopfchen (indeterminate)

Tomato, Current Sweet Pea (indeterminate)

Tomato, Ukrainian Purple (indeterminate)

Pepper, Bull Nose Bell (crisp sweet)

Dill, Bouquet

Over Easter weekend, I'll be visiting with my Grandparents and a couple of Aunts.  As I get ready to plant the seeds, I'm setting a few seeds of each type in some envelopes for gifts.  I used the cover of another seed catalog for the gift envelope.

Sprinkled the bottoms of take-out trays with cinnamon then poured in a thin layer of perlite.  Gently poured in warm water and let it all soak.

LittleMiss helped spread the seeds in the perlite.

Another layer of perlite, spritz, and covered.  

The lovely take-out trays are blending in nicely with the glass collection in window. While snapping the picture, my little assistance insisted that I include her garden too.  Thus, the can of crayons that she's growing has been added to the foreground.  In the background, you might get a glimpse of the take-out-box mini greenhouses.

Most everything that I've started so far are for containers & deck-level planting.

Next week will be most of the north hill side and the west hill side.

For the north hill we've got the three-sisters sprinkled with sunflowers and an end cap of butterfly weed.  Hoping for patches of sweetcorn to be used as trellising for sultan's crescent beans and the hillside to spill over with pumpkins.

 

For the west hill we've got all this planned, but haven't mapped it all out yet.

ooohhhh.... I'm very excited and can NOT wait for the snow to melt

He can call me Flower, if he wants to...

I love flowers. 

Sunflowers are my super favorite because they are big.

No, wait, Tulips are my favorite, because they look waxy like crayons & are the first flowers of the season, & they are Dutch.

No, wait, Roses are my favorite, because they smell like, well, roses!

No, wait.... who am I kidding?

Let's just say that I like flowers.

The truth of the matter, is that as much as I like flowers, flowers & plants do not like me... Until recently.

I have found that if I convince the plant that it is in LittleMiss' garden, they don't realize that she's only three, and that I'm really the one tending the garden.  shhhhh.... don't tell the plants or LittleMiss.

Since the snow is forecast to fly again this week, next year's garden planning can officially begin!

special seed storage box

Here's who made my special seed storage box sometime before 1903.

Most of our local stores have the clearance sections of seed packets - from which I now stock up.  Packets that were $2 are now $0.25 and that makes me a happy girl.

We had major clean-up landscaping done this summer to our yard which now has provided me LittleMiss with ample gardening space.  (no worries, the bbhoop does not remain in the garden)

The Focal Garden

The Focal Garden is almost centered in front of our home at the edge of the yard.  I call it our Focal Garden, because it can be seen from all rooms (except the bathrooms).   It's a bright & sunny spot that grows weeds very very very well!

2013 Focal Garden shall be TULIPS & LILAC !!!!

then SUNFLOWERS & Roses & other stuff too!!!

Focal is flanked by two lilac bushes, that will probably NOT bloom this year.  We had carved out intertwining vines from them, that resulted in some significant trimming back.  Since we've cut most of the new growth off & next year's buds are part of this year's new growth, we will miss out on lilac flowers this round.  But watch out 2014!  There will be some serious Lilacing!

Over 200 tulips & daffodils are strategically scattered through the focal garden.   There is one rose bush that was part of a divide-conquer-transplant project during the landscaping/clean-up battle.

So far all of the seed packets have been collected, sorted, organized, selected, and arranged.  Most, if not all, of these seeds will be wintering over in a lovely box with zip-bags of seed packets.   Then when I just can not wait any longer, the seeds will be planted in seed trays indoors & sprouting into little baby plants that will be ready to grow big & strong in LittleMiss' Focal Garden after the tulips finish blooming.

Drum roll please.....   queue the Skunk from Bambi....   "ahhh.... he can call me flower if he wants to..."    

           The 2013 Focal Garden!

Everything here is pickable for bouquets!  Maybe the sunflowers seeds will be edible too!  I have the tallest sunflowers nearest the birch trees.  I'm thinking that if I need to help prop them up, I can rope around the stalks to the birch trees for support.   The layout is intentionally not symmetrical.  I have a hard enough time dealing with the abstract spacing of the birch trees.  If I had tried to be symmetrical, I would have gone even more crazy since they won't grow at the exact same times & sizes.  My poor Monk-brain.  

Speaking of obsessive, I've already marked my calendar to seek out some good mulch, compost, fertilizer, and dirt to work into the garden as soon as the tulips start to bloom next spring.  I then have a couple of weeks for that amended soil to settle in, and get ready for the baby plants.

Ooohh, I'm so excited for next year, that I'm going to do laundry & make myself some hot cocoa!