Plant Seeds in March, That Should Have Been Planted in February

If you haven't started your seeds, not to worry.  Weather.com has freezing temps forecast through to the middle of March.  This won't be one of those years where you are convinced the cold weather is gone and then get another freeze.  This year, the cold weather is never going away.  No deception on Mother Nature's side this year.

Go ahead and get started.  The average last frost date is getting ever so imperceptibly closer. IMPERCEPTIBLY.  

Breath of Spring

The light at the end is Spring.

Did you feel that first breath of Spring?  Between the continuing sobs of Winter?  That is when you know it's time to start seeds.  If that's your thing. 

The seed selection at your local garden center or hardware store is overflowing with tempting experiments.  What more could you hope for?  Purple cauliflower?  Got it.  Yard long beans?  Got 'em.  Red  okra?  Yep.  Details on exactly what order to get those done? Tomorrow. 

First, every good garden needs a fluffy foundation.  By all means, get those seeds.  But don't leave the store with babies and no bedding.

The best thing about the pre-Spring days tempting you to plant things that can't survive that last cold snap, the cold snap that will come even when it's been warm for weeks and you are convinced this year will be different?  It gives you the energy to do what the plants need before they nestle all snug in their beds:

Traditional Valentines Day Breakfast

Almost any food can be cut out with a heart-shaped cookie cutter and made into Valentines Day food.  Check the internet for pictures of heart shaped fruit slices, eggs, toast, pancakes, waffles.

But only the best will do for my munchkins.

Here is the recipe for heart shaped Pop Tarts:...

Happy Chocolate Strawberries (Valentines) Day!

1/2 a king sized, nuke for 48 seconds

Chocolate strawberries are super easy to make.  Forgive my bluntness.  Here's the quick recipe to give you a jump on the directions before Valentines Day (That's VD day for some of you.)  I'll add pictures later.  Of the chocolate strawberries.

One half of a...

Stay Brave, Greenhouse Owners.

It doesn't seem possible when the monster heating bill just arrived and you've spent more time stuck on frozen roads than breathing fresh air.  This is the challenging part of owning a greenhouse.  Intellectually, obviously, Spring will arrive.  But the wait is long and lonely and so full of work with no reward in sight.  Customers rarely see this part.  The scary, up-to-the-eyeballs debt where everything is hocked and more invoices are arriving, thirty days net.  Then employees have to be paid.  I don't miss it.  Glad I sold that job to somebody else.

But there is a warmth in the humid greenhouse that can't be replicated with simple heat.  That warmth is probably...

Think Spring. But You Don't Have to Plant yet.

The carrots are dormant.  

The garden and field are an inch under water.

Spring is coming. Really.

The chickens have abandoned the coop and I can't find their new nest.

A little bit of sunny, warm weather last week almost made me crawl out of my den, but the sun scared me back in.  Don't be surprised if we have four more weeks, or months, of winter.

Vegetable selection in the garden this year is shifting noticeably.  I could pretend it's proper crop rotation and that's true, but here are the real reasons:

• Bugs and thieves really like tomatoes.
• I don't like processing tomatoes.
• Thieves really like watermelons too.
• Bugs love squash.  Hey, somebody must love it, right?  Bugs.  Squash bugs.  And squash borers.  Try to think of some boring jokes and imagine them here.

It is time to...