Pushing Spring

One way I get through the final few dreary weeks of winter is by “pushing spring.”

I do this by starting to work in the yard as soon as my fingers can take the temperature outside. There’s always lots of cleaning up to do, even if it’s too early to put in plants.

I uncover bulbs—crocuses, tulips, daffodils, a few lilies, crocosmia, and irises—then I weed and add fresh mulch.

I put used coffee grounds around the new shoots to keep slugs and snails away. We have a heavy snail infestation in this part of Seattle.

My onions and garlic have wintered over, and I added a few more onion starts to the bed from a big bag that I bought last fall and kept outside.

Today’s job is to choose my seeds for the year. I like to grow vegetables and fruit (strawberries, blueberries, Japanese nashi, and this year I have a new fig tree). Starting seeds inside in February makes me feel like spring is just around the corner.

Last year I had great success with multi-colored carrots, tomatoes of various types, potatoes, green beans, peas, and zucchini. Also the onions and garlic.

Less successful were beets and pumpkins. Also melons—didn’t get a single fruit.

I have quite a few seeds left from past years, so I’ll start with those.

I need to buy green beans, climbing peas, and seed potatoes.

I have a few potatoes left in the ground from last fall that should start growing soon, but I need more. We never seem to have enough potatoes. Potato salad made with small homegrown potatoes and homegrown green onions is beyond delicious. Eat it warm.

On the flower side, I usually grow sweet peas on the front porch for the fragrance, and this year I want to try hollyhocks. They grow really tall, so if I put them in the ground in front of the porch, I figure they will grow to just the right height to enjoy when I’m sitting on the porch next summer.

I also want a couple more honeysuckles (I have two now) for the hummingbirds, and a couple more fuschia if the ones I left in the ground over the winter don’t come back. Hummingbirds like these too.

I have quite a few different lavender plants in my front beds, but I could always use more. There’s a lavender festival over in Sequim in mid-summer. Sequim is a ferry-ride away on the Olympic Peninsula. I think I’ll round up a couple of friends to make a day trip over there to buy more plants.

The last time I went, two years ago, I paid about $2 a plant for some really beautiful lavenders—one with white flowers, and two with pink—and we ate lavender ice cream and lavender cookies. Both were surprisingly tasty.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Comments

[Liz Kreger]

I'm with you. I cannot wait for spring to come and usually start a lot of my annuals and veggies under lights in the basement. Unfortunately, we're having a particularly nasty winter and the gardens are under something like two feet of snow. Little tough to sink you fingers into frozen ground.

We have a little city lot, but I'm amazed at what I manage to cram into the space available. I tease hubby because when we bought this house it used to take him about 45 minutes to cut the grass. Now he's down to something like 15 minutes. LOL.

[jeanne]

Liz--my grass is all gone too. And I have a small lot, so things are planted pretty tightly. But I like the way that looks.

And lots of my vegetables are in pots.

I'm going to start my seeds in the next day or two. I have one of those plastic trays with a clear plastic top. It functions like a mini green house and I just put it on the window seat. The problem is cramming all my starts into that one tray. I may need another one.

I got some great seeds yesterday, including "edamame"--which are Japanese style green soybeans. You eat them in the summer with beer--much healthier than chips!