Gotta' plant!

Because of the unusually snowy weather we've been enjoying, I've had the luxury of doing more than my usual amount of armchair gardening this month. But there comes a time when browsing the seed catalogs, sorting through the seed stash, and re-reading my favorite garden writers just doesn't cut it. Tuesday evening was one of those times. It didn't help that I was looking at a week-long business trip in the frozen Midwest. I went out to close up the chickens and the greenhouse beckoned to me in the twilight, "Come i-i-i-i-in. You know you want to. . ."

The greenhouse was a chilly 32 degrees when I hauled a bag of seed starting mix out of the barn. The hoses were frozen solid as were the jugs of water I store in the greenhouse for watering the winter beds, so I filled a couple of watering cans at the kitchen sink and when that warm water hit the planting mix I swear it smelled like March in my greenhouse.

I've been looking at the WinterSown website (by the way, check out their free seed offers!) and while I don't see winter sowing as a good way to start tomatoes, it makes sense for onions and peas and other plants that can take a little bit of cold without going into a month-long sulk.
I had some free leek, onion, and shallot seeds from Thompson and Morgan, plus some leftover salad onion seeds from Territorial. And several pinches of Thumbelina carrot seeds, 3 years old but they were still viable last year.

Half an hour later the temperature in the greenhouse had risen to 37 degrees (hmm, those old Christmas lights put out quite a bit of heat!) and the first dirt of the 2007 Planting Season was under my fingernails. Back to the fire, and some more armchair gardening.