I love these little snow gardeners. I got them back when I was working in retail gardening.
I am not sure if you can read the inscription on the “lady” snow gardener. It reads “A hopeful heart will see the waiting rosebud beneath the snow.”
And of course she is holding a pot with a rosebud in it.
Sometimes that’s what we norther gardeners have to hold onto, isn’t it?
I don’t remember how many years ago I had a post on Microgreens. At the time, they sounded like a good idea. I even went out and bought some seeds in preparation for starting some. I had organic seed starting mix. I saved some trays from take out food. I was all set.
Except it never happened. I may still have the seeds. I definitely still have the trays. I am using up the organic seed mix as I start seeds every winter and spring. What went wrong?
I think it’s my innate distaste for sprouts. Now, make no mistake, as this excellent article , Growing Microgreens 101 explains, sprouts and microgreens are entirely different things.
For one thing, sprouts are just that–barely sprouted seeds that are little more than roots and just the beginning cotyledon–but no true leaves. They are also not grown in soil, but are “sprouted” in water or some other moist medium.
Microgreens, on the other hand, are most often grown in soil. The have roots and two sets of “leaves”–the first set of leaves known as the seed leaves or cotyledon and the second set of “true” leaves.
It is once the microgreens reach this stage–the stage when they put on their second set of leaves–that they are harvested and eaten. And it is the true leaves that give them the flavor of the original plant (sometimes much more intensely so!) as well as vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.
So it remains to be seen whether I can get over my “squeamishness” about the microgreens. But I urge you to do so. Because they really are a great way to add some healthy greens into your diet in the dead of winter. And they’re easy to grow yourself in a tiny space.
Who, besides perhaps me, wouldn’t like that?
I spoke to a newly retired friend recently and she was lamenting the lack of structure in her life–and the fact that her retirement fell at the end of the gardening season so that now she had to get through the entire winter before she could garden again.
I am quite sympathetic to this plight since most of my periods of unemployment have also fallen in the winter (and to be honest, the one that did come in the summer wasn’t truly enjoyable enough that I could just sit back and enjoy it–who enjoys unemployment if it is not of one’s own making?)
So for all of us gardeners who find ourselves with extra hours in the cold and the dark this winter (or any winter) I thought I might offer some suggestions. I offer many of these same suggestions at the end of my “Putting the Garden to Bed for Winter” lecture because I suspect that garden club folks might need a little help getting through winter–as do I!
One of my suggestions is to count birds for Project FeederWatch–but that doesn’t work if you’re not into birds of course. If you are, it’s a great “citizen science project” and a great way to give back to the online science community. More information about that project can be found here. And it’s not too late to sign up for this winter.
There are many online volunteer science conservation and observation projects that you can participate in over the winter. I had my backyard certified as a habitat one winter through the National Wildlife Federation. Not only is that fun (and you’ll probably come out feeling better about your “yard,” however it’s defined. It can even be a balcony) but you’ll learn a lot too. And you can find out what you need to do to make your yard better as well. More information is here.
If online isn’t your thing, late winter and early spring are the time when lots of plant societies are putting on symposia and flower shows. Any group that I have ever belonged to was always looking for help in that area with their various shows and symposiums and day long series of talks. A little “Googling” around ought to help you find out plenty of places to volunteer in person depending on where you live–or stop in at a local garden center. They might be able to direct you. And if not, you can still soak up some warmth and maybe come home with a new plant or two to tide you over.
Finally, there are lots of books, blogs, podcasts and the like that are always putting out the latest and greatest ways to grow things. All of the early issues of the “horticultural” magazines will have the latest and greatest new plants that are coming onto the market. The plant societies have already introduced their new varieties for 2017–some old and some new. Maybe this is the year you decide to re-vamp a garden (or several) with some new–or tried and true varieties. Winter is for dreaming–spring is for planting.
And before we all know it, it will be time to get back out into the garden!
Is this a sad scene or what? (And “what” is not the correct answer!)
It seems bad enough there are the nasty, slushy, frozen ice blocks of snow at the edges of the street. But I always hate to see all the trees appearing at the curb.
In a way, it’s a good thing. Our town collects them and composts them.
But it’s still a reminder that all the festivities are over and there’s just months of gray days and snow ahead (if we’re lucky. So far, it’s been mostly freezing rain and ice this winter and it’s sleeting as I type).
Oh well. Bring on the house plants and the seeds!
I like to make garden resolutions so much more than I like to make resolutions in other parts of my life. For one thing, they are generally easier to keep. And for another, they are selfless (I would say “more selfless”, but that isn’t even grammatically correct. But here’s what I mean by that.)
A “regular” New Year’s resolution is generally focused on yourself. It goes something like “exercise more,” “lose 10 pounds by summer,” “drink more water,”–you get the idea. It doesn’t benefit anyone but you, the resolution maker. I am not saying that that’s a bad thing at all. Where would we be if we didn’t vow to improve or change?
But gardening resolutions are generally different. No, they’re not going to achieve world peace (far from it) but many of them are going to make the gardener’s little plot of land a better place.
Take my own resolution for this year. I want to do more education here. In order to do that, I am going to have to learn more myself, grow different things perhaps, certainly plan better and show you different things on the blog than I have in the past and even come up with themes for months or series of posts. That’s a decent amount of work. But if I do it right and do it well, all of us should come away at the end of 2017 with some new knowledge–and ideally I won’t have insulted or offended anyone, which would not be my goal at all!
As we all know, organic gardening can mean many different things to different people. And the challenge is to talk about it respectfully so that we all learn–because as I always used to say when I worked in retail gardening, we are not born with this knowledge.
So here’s to a happier, healthier, greener 2017!
You may remember that back last January I made some “gardening resolutions” (for those of you who would like to read the whole post, you can see it here).
My number 1 resolution was to “garden and let garden:” in other words, to try to do less garden shaming here. I think I was better at that. I am not really the one to judge, however. That would be up to you. But I don’t recall expressing any really strong opinions like I did in 2015 that got everyone all riled up.
My second resolution was to try new things. That was more of a mixed bag. I did more of that earlier on in the season, before I realized just how bad our drought was going to be–or should I say, how much the continued drought was going to affect how I wanted to garden.
So the first thing I did was to rip out my David Austin roses–and that was still probably a good thing because I replaced them with easier care Drift™ roses. And while they still needed more water this season than I wanted to give them, should they survive the winter, they’ll be far more drought tolerant than the Austin roses were in coming years. And that’s a good thing.
But once I saw how bad the continuing drought was, I didn’t try much else that was new or innovative. Most of that would have required water, and water was too much of a precious resource to waste on mere “novelty.”
So as this year draws to a close and the next year dawns, I will have to think of some more gardening resolutions. Stay tuned.
This is sort of how everyone feels around our house right about now, except perhaps the humans are not quite as festively dressed!
