Spring is coming

It's a funny in-between time in the garden.  It's winter still, but buds are swelling and birds are starting to sing. 

My onion sets arrived today, but I'm not supposed to plant them until 6 weeks before the last frost. Hmm. That means the 1st of March, but that's still 3 weeks away. I definitely don't want to be too early, but even dormant onion sets can dry out.... We'll see. 

My 'seed' potatoes will be coming soon, too, so I hope we continue to have moderate (eg. normal) temperatures for awhile.

But the beds are ready for both onions and potatoes, so I'm keen to get planting....

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Mountains, winter, and spring vegetables

Bare branches, open landscapes and remnants of snow greeted us in the mountains. The air was clear and the mountains visible, without the humid haze of summer.

With more normal winter temperatures, it's not frigid, thankfully.

But happily it's time to be thinking about spring and summer vegetables.

I just have an order or two to still put in; I've already received the tomato, pepper, eggplant, and tomatillo seeds for growing for transplants (most will be donated to produce transplants for Garden Fest, an event to promote vegetable gardening in home gardens at the botanical garden where I work). The rest are for vegetables that benefit from direct seeding -- also many will be offered at Garden Fest.

It's so encouraging to see the interest in growing vegetables and other edibles expand. It's part of a sustainable garden, for sure.

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'Spring' planting

Our local big box stores are raring to go, with hardy transplants (standard varieties) of broccoli, cabbage, and collards, as well as romaine, leaf, and butter lettuce (also pretty standard varieties) all just as easy to grow from seed. (At least the seed offerings are much more extensive than they used to be at these garden centers).

The array of tomato and pepper transplants available, as well as squash and cucumber seedlings, is certainly aimed at sales, not success; our average last frost date is April 15, a good 5 weeks from now.

An interesting new twist is offering up pots of arugula (at least they might be hardy), but growing arugula from seed is SO easy, a pot of a few young plants is an impulse buy, pure and simple.

But what really amazed me (I actually bought a pot as an experiment) was a pot of very young leek seedlings. Leeks? In a big box store? Offered by the mainstream purveyor of herbs and vegetable transplants? Hmm, maybe we're making a bit of progress in terms of vegetable varieties, or maybe it's really easy to germinate pots of leek seedlings (probably the latter). To the producer's credit, they have a very nice account of how you should transplant leek seedlings into the garden (suggesting that the ones in their pots would be a MUCH larger size).

They're supposed to be pencil-width by the time you transplant them, so these (having barely got past the cotyledon stage, and sporting seed coats, in some cases) are hardly ready for the outside world. But they were attractive, and obviously I bought a pot.

I transplanted the largest seedlings to several pots of potting soil enriched with compost. It will be interesting to see how they fare. I haven't had any success with leeks before, but I haven't tried very hard either.

I'm sort of remembering that germinating seeds in the summer, and overwintering leeks is the best method in our hot summer climate. But young leeks are tasty, according to the purveyor's website! All I'm familiar with is the huge, woody version in the supermarket, so maybe I'm in for a treat.

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Seeds and seed catalogs

I'm afraid that I'm probably a vegetable and seed addict; I love looking at seed catalogs and thinking about growing new (or heirloom) varieties of vegetables, trying new things (geez, it only takes 60 days for kohlrabi to mature?), or trying to figure out what odd things in foreign markets might be.

Anyone know what this is? We saw it in a South Indian market this winter break. It doesn't appear to be celeriac, nor jicama, but seems to be something that grows underground.

I ordered another flurry of seeds today, to have enough to get the early spring garden set (uh, actually I just couldn't help ordering them). We have really 5 seasons of growing here in Zone 7b (working on Zone 8), a concept that I'm embracing thanks to Barbara Pleasant, a great gardener and garden writer.

Gardening is a wonderful hobby; where else could I spend $25 that would provide such a wonderful promise of future delicious experiences (eating homegrown vegetables) to come.

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