inkandpen's Journal

Late note.

In spite of the mold, 4 sprouts are up.

All of the flats are set up for sprouting, the big ones with tomatoes and fussy herbs are on a heat mat and the others surround those, picking up some radiated heat. The big trays are under locking plastic lids, while the others (onions, parsley, flowers) are under drapes of plastic wrap. This morning, peeking under the locking lids, found big round colonies of mold on several of the cells. I scraped them off, and deciding that a little more air circulation would help, replaced the locking lids with plastic wrap drapes like the others. I hope that helps.

Spent a few hours out in the garage today getting seeds into flats and pots. It was probably about 30 degrees, and I’m still chilled, but it feels good to know they’re going. It’s a week later than I started last year, which is good, as by the time they were planted last year my tomatoes were a bit leggy. I have the light-hanging structure assembled but no lights yet, as they’re ugly and I won’t need them for another week.

On Thursday I got the garage all re-organized, my gardening things sorted and the tools hung on the new wall. Today, darling husband Dave built me (in two hours!) a new potting bench. It’s all scrap lumber, though there was nothing broad enough to make the shelf I wanted, and fits perfectly in the space. Now all I need is enough warm weather for the snow to melt (or at least stop falling) and I can really start feeling the spring.

It’s the first day of spring, and what was forecast to be rain is icy blowing snow. Blech. Nonetheless, I’ll be celebrating the season by getting some gardening chores underway— in particular, by trying to organize my messy garage. After spending last season trying daily not to nick the car with my wheelbarrow and rakes, I decided to move the location of my gardening workbench in the garage closer to the back door. Sadly, I only got as far as dismantling the old setup before some health issues laid me up. Now I’m thinking ahead to the coming spring, and its time to get my tools in line. I’ll need to build a new bench, put in some shelving, and put some hooks in the pegboard to hold my tools. Exciting stuff.

With our late last frost average and our winter already on the long side this year, I’m not going to start seedlings yet. However, I’d like to make up a garden plan, maybe do some seed swaps, and brush off my seed-starting equipment so that I’m ready to go, maybe in a week or two.

This year, the first work on the garden was digital— I’ve just finished sorting through my seed stash and entering everything into myfolia’s stash organizer. Next, I’ll figure out which I want to swap and what I want to buy this year… probably no seed starting for at least a month, but it’s exciting to be thinking about how the season will go!