Spring is coming!
And never mind that snowstorm heading this direction.
This weekend was devoted to building a spreadsheet to organize my seed starting and planting-out activities. I'm certain the dates won't work out as neatly as they do on the computer, that's the nature of gardening, but figuring out how often to plant the different kinds of salad greens, all with different maturation rates and based on how much salad I can put away or how often I want to make this recipe or how early I can manage to get fresh tomatoes (not early enough!) has been kind of fun. I'm hoping that having a written-down schedule of when I want to plant things will help keep me from running out of steam in July when it gets nasty and hot.
I have high hopes for this year. So far we've been exceeding the normal amount of rainfall every month, unlike last year when we never saw any snow at all and it didn't rain all summer. Trying to keep a garden going when it was hot enough that the lawn became crunchy was just too expensive.
Too, this year I don't have construction crews tearing everything up. Last summer was horrible, both for the amount of heat/lack of rain and for the construction that tore up the entire street and part of my front yard and stressed me to the point of hysteria.
I'm really hoping for a quiet, rainy, warm summer where nothing interesting or exciting happens other than tomatoes ripening.
This weekend was devoted to building a spreadsheet to organize my seed starting and planting-out activities. I'm certain the dates won't work out as neatly as they do on the computer, that's the nature of gardening, but figuring out how often to plant the different kinds of salad greens, all with different maturation rates and based on how much salad I can put away or how often I want to make this recipe or how early I can manage to get fresh tomatoes (not early enough!) has been kind of fun. I'm hoping that having a written-down schedule of when I want to plant things will help keep me from running out of steam in July when it gets nasty and hot.
I have high hopes for this year. So far we've been exceeding the normal amount of rainfall every month, unlike last year when we never saw any snow at all and it didn't rain all summer. Trying to keep a garden going when it was hot enough that the lawn became crunchy was just too expensive.
Too, this year I don't have construction crews tearing everything up. Last summer was horrible, both for the amount of heat/lack of rain and for the construction that tore up the entire street and part of my front yard and stressed me to the point of hysteria.
I'm really hoping for a quiet, rainy, warm summer where nothing interesting or exciting happens other than tomatoes ripening.