Thursday, February 18, 2010

Time to Start the Garden

No, really, it's not too early to get going again. We're almost out of vegetables from last year and it's really very sad. I've come to the conclusion that the supermarket, all supermarkets, kind of suck. Produce that ships over long distances just doesn't taste good. No wonder no one wants to eat their vegetables.

On the bright side some of my favorite things are also the earliest ones. Starting as soon as march I can be planting peas, chard, lettuce and spinach. I'll have to be careful if it's going to frost and run out there with some coverings but we had to do that last year and it's not much of a pain.

I finally finished cleaning out the basement over the winter and I decided this year to be a little more organized with seed starting. Flipping though seed catalogs after Christmas I kept seeing the most amazing looking lighted stands for plants. Of course amazing comes with a hefty price tag that it just was out of my budget. So I decided to make my own. I already had a couple 4 ft fluorescent lights so all I really needed was some kind of support shelving. I found a large free standing shelf on sale at the warehouse store and bonus it had a coupon. It was a mere $65 and it fit the lights perfectly. My Papa had a couple more lights he wasn't using in his basement so I slapped those fixtures in as well. I did have to buy bulbs but those aren't too pricey. For less than $100 bucks I now have a large and organized space to start all my plants.


I know I haven't blogged all winter but it's been incredibly busy around here. I do have a fast and dirty list of what's been going on around here since September.

Apple Picking
Making and Canning Apple Sauce, Apple Butter and Apple Cider Jelly
Making and Canning Cranberry Sauce
Christmas Knitting
My Niece Turned 4
Christmas with the Family
Snow
Teaching My Niece to Use the Big Toilet
Pet and Baby Sitting My Niece, 3 Cats and 2 Dogs all at Once
Getting a Pressure Canner for Running a Zoo for 3 Weeks
Splitting Half a Steer with My Sister
Pressure Canning Beef Stock
More Snow
Ordering Seeds
You Guessed It, More Snow
Valentine's Day
Ordering Seeds

Well that pretty much sums it all up.

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