Sunday, February 14, 2010

Mid-winter gardening

Planting day has finally arrived!  I'm getting so tired of grocery store greens.  I've been nagging; the seed stash has been evaluated, new seeds purchased, the garden plan has been consulted and, a pleasant day has miraculously appeared.  Hooray! 

We often have pretty mild winters here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.  Lately it has been feeling like Spring.  The daffodils are blooming and native plants have begun to leaf out.  It's easy to get fooled into thinking the bad weather is over. But it's not too early to start seeds for lettuce and the like - knowing full well that the time will come when we'll need to protect them from the elements - which mostly means long days of cool wet weather.

Today Reyn got out his starter pots and potting soil.  He starts almost all of our garden plants in pots, hoping to outsmart some of the slugs and snails that flourish in our neighborhood and avoid our sodden soil until it dries out a bit.  The pots live indoors until the seeds sprout, spend the daylight hours outside (weather permitting), then come in again at night.  Today he planted leeks, spinach, cress, swiss chard, onions and, several kinds of lettuce. Keep your fingers crossed.

*Feb, 14th - To our surprise and delight the cress seeds have germinated and shown their smiling faces this morning.

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