Winter seems to last forever to someone like me who is addicted to gardening. I confess I just love it! I go into withdrawal if I go too long without getting my fingers in the dirt. We keep things growing on a smaller scale during the winter, mostly just to keep ourselves in lettuce. We maintain a few beds for lettuce, carrots, kale, spring onion and other odds and ends. Just enough to keep something homegrown on the table. At the first hint of warm weather, I’m ready to till the garden, prep the raised beds and plant some seeds. But – we live in Georgia. For those of you who don’t have the privilege of living in our state, the weather here is fickle to say the least. It is a common saying here, “If you don’t like the weather today, don’t worry. It will be different tomorrow.” To my way of thinking, that’s an understatement! Cold and dreary one day, sunny and 75 the next. And every time that sun shines and it gets warm I am ready to plant! Fortunately since my husband built my little greenhouse, I can appease my need to plant by seeding for Spring planting. So on those lovely warm days of late February and March, you can find me outside in my greenhouse – filling trays with soil, setting up cell packs to seed, or experimenting with new and unique varieties.
Of course the seeds are so small and 100 seeds doesn’t seem like very many when you hold them in the palm of your hand. Of course, it seems like a little bit more when you consider all the trays you need to plant them. And it seems like even more when you have seedlings to transplant into the garden or beds. And it’s even more when the amount of time needed to harvest keeps increasing. One thing is for sure – we usually have plenty of work to do in the gardens. So I watch the weather and check the almanac. Investigate last frost dates for our planting zone and bury my nose in new seed catalogs. Browse through the bedding plants and vegetable seedlings in every garden store around – just waiting. Waiting for the day I can ask, “Is it Spring yet?”, and the answer is “YES!” So here we grow again…..