So it begins! 2012's container garden

Yesterday I planted most of this year's container garden.

As you may remember, last year, we were living in a house in the 'burbs, with a huge backyard. I turned most of that backyard into a garden, planting all kinds of things. I ended up with a bumper crop of tomatoes, but I had to kill 31 chipmunks to do it, and it was an awful lot of work. I also spent $760 on everything (seeds, weedeater, hoe, rake, shovel, pitchfork, buckets, hose, seed-starting lights and equipment, potting soil, etc.), and you know, $760 will buy an awful lot of tomatoes.

Of course, last year I didn't know that I wouldn't be able to put in a garden this year--those costs, especially for the gardening equipment, would have amortized out. This year, since we're in the city, in an apartment, I'm back to container gardening. Fortunately, I have a ton of containers, and lots of seed left over from last year, so my gardening costs this year so far are a grand total of $21.60 (for seeds and Miracle Gro).

I dumped out the old potting soil, mixed it with some fertilizer, and redistributed it amongst all the pots, with a sprinkle of seed-starting dirt. I planted spinach and cilantro outside (the mild winter means that hopefully I'll have a crop of spinach in a few weeks), and herbs inside: basil (regular and purple), parsley, sage, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, marjoram, dill, lavender, chives, oregano, lovage, sorrel, and purslane. I had a few stragglers from last year, puny-looking but still alive, that I hope to revitalize with Miracle Gro. If not, I'll replant those too.

I'm hoping my $20 investment will bring me hundreds of dollars worth of fresh herbs (and spinach) in the months to come.

Gardening update: no more garden

Well, that's it, folks. The Great Gardening Experiment of 2011 is officially over.

We move out of our house, beginning on Monday, so this weekend I'll be ripping out the last of the tomato and pepper plants. Everything else has already been harvested and ripped out, and I've been removing tomato plants as they die/stop producing. It's a shame, I think I could get a few more weeks out of the pepper plants if it doesn't get too cold, but oh well.

Here's my verdict: tomatoes were the clear winner. I harvested bushels, all different kinds, all exceedingly delicious. Herbs were the runner-up. Out of everything else, here's what I got:

Corn: 2 spindly ears, maybe the size of a finger. I don't think they got enough sun.
Squash: Several zucchini, 3 baby-sized butternut squash. They were doing well until Hurricane Irene, but all the water killed them off.
Green beans: A few handfuls' worth, nothing of note, and they never got very big. Not sure what happened there.
Kale: Lots of baby kale in the beginning; the groundhog ate it down to the ground in August and I pulled it up at that point.
Cauliflower and carrots: Lost to the rabbits.
Cucumbers: Several baby ones. Ditto Hurricane Irene (see squash, above).
Peppers: Coming along very nicely. None of the bell peppers got very big, but perhaps that's just because I've been impatient and have been picking them as soon as they get bigger than a golf ball.

Lessons for next year: Well, next year we'll be in a city apartment with no yard (okay, there is a yard, but it's a bricked-in patio), so it'll be all about the container gardening again. But I will expand the container garden to include tomatoes, more peppers, and more types of greenery. I'll also keep some of the herbs inside this fall, to try and keep the basil and such alive as long as possible.

Gardening update (warning: with death)

I've declared war on all rodents.

I discovered, just as the tomato harvest was coming in, that squirrels and chipmunks were devastating the harvest. They were stealing and eating as many green tomatoes as they could carry. So far I estimate I've lost at least 25 big beefsteak tomatoes and who knows how many cherry tomatoes, and that's just counting the tomato carcasses I could find.

I mean, just look at those big beautiful heirloom tomatoes up there. Those are MINE. That I've labored over since FEBRUARY. Those squirrels and chipmunks can SIT AND SPIN, and that's putting it nicely.

Here are the bullet points:

1. Squirrels and chipmunks will eat all your tomatoes.
2. Repellents, mothballs, cayenne sprays, and individually Ziploc-ing all the tomatoes will not stop the slaughter.
3. The only thing that works is to kill them.
4. Rat traps and Death Buckets work best for this. (As an added bonus, I've been getting some mice, too. The fact that there are mice around outside mean I will very soon be putting mousetraps back out inside the house.)
5. Death Buckets = fill a 5-gallon bucket about halfway with water. Float about an inch of black sunflower seeds on top. (They float.) Place a board running up the side of the bucket to the top. The chipmunks (and mice, apparently) will run up the plank, see the sunflower seeds, think it's a solid base, and jump in. Then they drown.
6. So far I've nabbed 10 chipmunks, 2 squirrels, and 4 mice. The tomato carnage has dropped precipitously (though it still continues).
7. Don't worry, I brought all the rat traps inside when children arrived. I've been relying solely on the Death Buckets since then.

Unfortunately, rat traps will not automatically kill squirrels--just slowly suffocate them. My husband, bless his heart, obliged by putting them out of their misery with several well-placed shovel blows to the head. That took a little piece out of both our souls. I was hoping to find a more, erm, efficient way to dispatch them, but in the absence of the rat traps, the squirrels are getting especially brazen. They chewed two big holes through a metal mesh screen to get inside the sunroom, whereupon they devastated the bag of sunflower seeds. They're also eating all the seeds out of the Death Buckets (even when there are, you know, bodies in there--ewwwwwwwww), and generally being a giant pain in the ass. I think I will have to put the rat traps back out, and just drown them after they're caught.

(And no, I can't humanely catch them and re-release them somewhere else. That's illegal here.)

The good news is that my cat killed a snake. My blind cat. Killed a garter snake. He was so proud of himself. He finally earned his keep.

The other good news is that things are finally starting to come out of the garden. Tomatoes, a little, but also zucchini and tons of herbs, including the long-awaited basil. The cucumbers and peppers are coming along nicely, I should have something from those plants soon, and the corn is starting to tassel out.

Here's part of the tomato garden, shored up with extra twine:

Here's part of the squash patch and some peppers:

More peppers:

A baby butternut squash!:

A baby pepper!:

Next year, to prevent this kind of wholesale carnage, I think I'll plant one big garden patch (rather than lots of locations all over the yard), plant onions all around the outside, and continue the trapping throughout the winter. If I'd known the chipmunks were going to cause such a problem, I would have done something about the exploding population a long time ago.

Other things I'll do: not plant so many beefsteak tomatoes. They seem to like those way more than the sauce/cherry varieties. Not plant cauliflower or carrots (I lost those to the rabbits first thing). Not plant so many peppers--it doesn't seem to get hot enough here. Plant more kinds of squash and green beans. Get a dog.

Another snake

I saw another garter snake the other day, alongside the garage. He slithered away before I could chop him with my snake-killing hoe.

But I also saw the first little green tomatoes on my tomato plants. So that was pretty exciting.

We're taking our first major vacation next month. ("Major" being defined as "more than a long weekend.") Granted, it does involve family, and a place I've been to many times--but hey, it'll be ten days. We're driving down to New Orleans for my niece's first birthday. We'll spend some of that time with family at my sister's house (my parents are coming down, too); and some of the time in an actual hotel room, exploring New Orleans.

I love the Big Easy, but my husband's never been. So I'm excited to take him around to my favorite spots. I've got a whole list of restaurants and bars I want to hit while we're there. We'll also stock up on all the Gulf Coast specialities I can't get in Boston (gator sausage, grits, Abita beer, Zapp's potato chips, and so on).

Maybe I'll have harvested some actual tomatoes by then.

Gardening lessons

Check out my guest post on gardening at Get Rich Slowly!

Here's a slightly different version of the same post (basically, more pictures and different captions):

Gardening equipment is expensive.

But gardening itself doesn’t have to be.

This is my first attempt at full-scale gardening. This is the first year I’ve lived in a house, with a yard; previous gardening efforts were limited to containers of herbs, and the odd tomato plant, on windowsills or apartment patios. To complicate matters, it’s my first year living in New England, so the climate is new (and frightening). We had an intensely bitter winter, in which my backyard was buried under five feet of snow from January through the end of March; and then an intensely rainy and chilly spring.




The container garden tradition continues...



So I knew this first year would be an experiment, and I approached it as such. In February, I began collecting seeds (heirloom and/or organic when possible), with the idea to plant one or two of everything and see what took. Here’s what I bought:

Tomatoes (several different kinds, including Jubilee, Amish Paste, Cherokee, and cherry)
Peppers (habanero, jalapeno, Thai, cayenne, Serrano, and bell: green, yellow and purple)
Cucumbers
Green beans
Zucchini
Butternut squash
Pie pumpkins
Cauliflower
Peas
Watermelon
Corn
Kale
Arugula
Spinach
Swiss chard
Sorrel
Beets (regular and striped)
Mache
Carrots
Brussels sprouts
Leeks
Onions

(Some of these I won’t plant until late summer/early fall, like the beets and Brussels sprouts.)

And herbs:
Rosemary
Parsley
Cilantro
Sage
Tarragon
Oregano
Marjoram
Thyme
Borage
Nasturtiums
Dill
Basil (regular, purple, Thai)
Lavender
Mint
Chives
Catgrass
Chervil
Hyssop
Strawberries

Ambitious, I know.

The seeds cost around $100 total, although I got quite a few tomato seeds from my sister. I had a lot of one-time start-up costs; I had to buy a hoe, a rake, a shovel, a pitchfork (for the compost pile), a hose, and four florescent shop lights to start the seeds indoors. I also needed quite a lot of potting soil and seed-starting mix. I still had all the plastic containers from my various container gardens, which I used to start the herbs.

But I also learned what I didn’t need to spend money on.

Due to the climate, I knew I would have to start most everything indoors. (Because of the very rainy/chilly spring, I didn’t get the last tomato seedling in the ground until June 4.) I have a sunroom attached to the back of the house, walled almost entirely in sliding glass doors. It’s lovely in the summer, but bitter cold in the winter. I closed off the heating vents and kept it unheated through the entire winter. It was the perfect place to start seedlings (lots of light, out of the way), except for the cold—at least twenty-five degrees colder than the rest of the house, far too cold for delicate seedlings. I put a space heater in there for the seed-starting project—which promptly doubled my electric bill.

DOUBLED it.

So next year I’ll wait a few more weeks, until things warm up slightly, and skip the space heater.

I kept the florescent lights set on stacks of bricks, just above the seedlings, so I didn’t need to install shelving.



Note the variety of containers the seedlings are in...



And the repurposed silver dinner tray.


The bricks were free—the house came with two random piles of bricks in the yard. I bought special seed-starting kits, but quickly figured out that I had plenty of things around the house that I could re-purpose for seed starting. All of these things can easily be used, most of which you probably already have, all of which I used at some point:

Yogurt/sour cream containers
Egg cartons
Grapefruit and orange halves (eat the fruit first)
Bottoms of milk jugs
Paper cups (these actually worked the best of anything)
Toilet paper tubes (fold the bottom under to make a little cup)
Paper towel tubes, cut in half (see above)
Cleaned out food and coffee cans (any size)
Cleaned out soda cans, cut in half
Those plastic tubs mushrooms and lettuce come in
Plastic take-out containers
I even repurposed some random, lidless Tupperware.

(Just make sure you cut/punch holes in the bottom of everything, for drainage.)

Instead of drainage trays, I used box tops. Instead of row markers, I used a Sharpie and extra bricks. Instead of purchasing nine zillion tomato cages, I used sticks and twine. (All those winter storms brought down a lot of big tree branches; I simply went to the piles of deadwood in the back of the yard and stripped out large branches which I stuck in the ground, one for each tomato plant. Ditto for pea trellises.)



Exceedingly high-tech stick method; but the tomato plant seems to like it.

The previous occupants had left a small garden in one corner of the yard, maybe six feet by six feet. Obviously too small for everything I wanted to plant! But renting a tiller to plow up a section of the yard would have been far more expensive than I thought it would be. So I didn’t.

Instead, I took a hoe to the lawn and chopped out additional rows. For the tomatoes, I chopped out one hole at a time, in various locations around the yard. I filled in the vacant flower beds with herbs. I planted edible flowers around the mailbox. Every square inch of usable yard real estate was reappropriated for gardening; and when I’d filled in the edges, I chopped out grass and planted everything else in the lawn.



If I had my way, I'd plow up the entire lawn and turn it into a giant vegetable garden. Less grass to mow.


Now, maybe this method will work against me. Maybe lawn grass growing between the rows will end up stunting the growth of my plants. But so far, everything is growing really well. And the grass will grow back, if it turns out this method doesn’t work.

One note: it’s far easier to chop up the top layer of grass with a hoe, and use a trowel to dig up the dirt, than it is to try to dig an actual hole with a shovel. Grass is tough to dig through, but surprisingly easy to pull up.

The only other costs have been Miracle-Gro and rabbit repellent. My yard backs into a nature preserve, so it’s like Wild Kingdom out there. I’ve seen rabbits, raccoons, skunks, snakes, groundhogs, foxes, turtles, deer, and any number of birds in the yard. It also appears that I have an entire chipmunk colony tunneling under the yard. I can't shoot them (I live in the 'burbs) and I can't trap them (too many). So I have to coexist, somewhat uneasily, and hope they don't eat my garden. The homemade repellents (typically a mixture of cayenne pepper or hot sauce sprayed directly on the plants) didn’t prevent my cauliflower and corn from being nibbled. So I’ve been spraying commercial rabbit and deer repellent around the yard, and so far, so good.

Not including the $100 for seeds, I’ve spent around $600 on gardening so far this year. But of that, I think I can safely budget no more than $200 total for next year, for seeds and potting soil (and possibly more rabbit repellent). I won’t need to buy a hoe, shovel, pitchfork or hose again, and I know I can start my seeds without special seed trays and equipment. I also have a lot of seeds left over, which I can save in the back of the refrigerator for next year, cutting next year’s seeds costs down to probably $60 or so. (And frankly, I won't be planting all of that stuff again next year; only what's most successful this year.)

For the rest of this summer, the only reoccurring costs will be the Miracle-Gro (which I can eliminate next year, as my new compost pile will be producing compost by then) and more rabbit repellent (stupid rabbits).

Will the garden turn out to be more cost-effective than my CSA? ($475 for weekly boxes, May – November) That remains to be seen, but it’s looking good right now. If the rabbits don’t eat everything, and we don’t get a freak tornado or hailstorm, I should have a bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers. The green beans are shooting up, the squash is coming along nicely, and the container herbs are getting close to the point where they can be harvested regularly. I’ll be sure to report back at the end of the summer.

The final plants are in the ground!

Which means the gardening prep work is done. All I have to do now is water, weed, and watch everything grow (I hope). It took longer than I thought to get everything transplanted, but hopefully next year a) it won't be so rainy, and b) I won't need to create new rows/gardening space from scratch like I did this year.

We're in the process of firming up vacation plans (which should include a week in New Orleans/Gulf Coast next month) and possibly a trip somewhere fun over Thanksgiving.

But these days, going into my backyard after work, looking at my garden, and having a nice cold drink on a hot day is enough of a vacation for me. ANY nice weather after the last nine months or so is like a vacation.

Summer's finally arrived

I think we had three Marches in a row, skipped April and May entirely, and went straight into June. After weeks of rain and more rain, it's been sunny, mostly clear, and in the 80s for the last week or two. We got a picnic table and citronella torches so that we can eat outside, and I'm scurrying to try to get the last of the seedlings planted (all tomatoes and peppers, at this point). Everything that's already in the ground is growing wildly; I swear I can sit and watch the green beans grow, they've shot up three inches in the last three days. I hope this means a really hot summer, and a bumper crop of vegetables.

Memorial Day weekend was very nice. An old friend from college came up to visit. The last time I saw her was at the wedding, and the last time I'd seen her before that was probably my college graduation, lo these many years ago. We had a great time catching up. Saturday night I had a dinner party with a bunch of people, Sunday we went into Boston and had a great meal (separate blog post on that later), and Monday we recuperated. I didn't get as much gardening in as I would have liked, due to hanging out with my visitor, but at least I managed to get the knee-high grass cut before she showed up.

I also got a credit card paid off. It was just a little one, but I finally feel like we're making progress with debt repayment. I cancelled it right away.

Gardening update



Tomatoes, squash, and cauliflower seedlings. Note inventive use of lawn as grassy garden patch.


Rain. That's the update.

For about two weeks straight here in Boston, it rained. Every day was cloudy, grey and overcast (when it wasn't actively raining), and late May temps struggled to clear 60 degrees. For several days, there was standing water in the garden, because the ground was too saturated to absorb it.

I'm really, really pleased to report that it looks like summer has finally arrived. The forecast is rain-free and sunny for at least the next 10 days, and temperatures are in the 70s.



Early morning shot of actual non-lawn garden. Note vigorous kale in far left row.

 Which is good, because I still haven't transplanted all the seedlings yet. I've been transplanting the tomatoes, a few at a time (the ones I transplanted right before all the rain started are on the verge of dying--they're all limp and yellow, so I'm holding some seedlings in reserve to replace them, if the sun doesn't perk them up). The rest of the garden is planted (green beans, corn, cucumbers, etc.), and the early stuff (kale, peas, spinach) is finally showing signs of life.

I'm hoping to get the rest of the tomatoes and all the peppers transplanted within the next two weeks. I'm hoping that's not too late.


Tomato seedlings, in lawn.




More tomato seedlings, in lawn.



Containers moved outside and finally showing actual greenery.



It's just Wild Kingdom out there

Now I have a GROUNDHOG, too. (Insert swearing here.)

The rabbit at least had the side benefit of being cute (and eating dandelions). I haven't seen an ant inside the house for a couple of days, so maybe the ant bait is working. But a f*%#ing groundhog has absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever--and is a lot harder to get rid of than a rabbit.

For the first time in my life, I wish I had a shotgun. (More to the point, I wish I lived in a place where I could actually fire it at a groundhog--there's a strict no-gun-firing rule in the 'burbs.)

Short of setting the groundhog burrow on fire (not recommended) or pouring concrete down all the tunnel openings (difficult, as I suspect his burrow is in the woods), I can't really kill him without a gun. And there isn't such a thing as groundhog repellent, like the rabbit repellent spray I bought. I'm going to double up on the rabbit spray and hope that the groundhog, being a rodent like the rabbit, will also be repelled. I'm also going to scatter various other smelly substances around the back fence, to include ammonia, mothballs, and cat poop (I read somewhere that the smell of a dog, or at the very least dog poop, will keep a groundhog away; all I have is cat poop, which may not work, but hey, it's not like I have any other use for it).

But if I find anything in my garden nibbled, I'm getting a shotgun anyway, 'burb laws be damned.

Call me the Tomato Queen

I've started transplanting my tomato seedlings outside.

It's a bit early still, but I have to.

You see, I realized I have 57 tomato seedlings.

57. Individual. Tomato plants.

If all those take, I'll be swimming in tomatoes this summer. I could start my own tomato factory.

And that's not including all the other seedlings--peppers, squash, herbs, etc. And all the other seeds that have yet to get started at all--corn, beans, cucumbers, etc.

You're probably thinking, "You bit off way more than you could chew," but no! I refuse to admit defeat! I will find a place to put all these plants, or die trying!

Oh well. It's a good problem to have. It was all an experiment, anyway; I wasn't sure if the growing-seedlings-indoors thing would work at all, given my limitations (climate, unheated sunroom), so I know for next year that I can halve the number of seeds and still come out ahead. If you guys want any, you're welcome to them.

But still, I have all these plants, many of which are getting root-bound in their little containers, so I have to do something with them. I certainly don't have the room (or money, or equipment) to plow up an actual garden, and I don't have the money to buy a bunch of large containers and dirt, so I will just dig up holes along the sunnier edges of the yard, stick a tomato plant in each one, and see what happens.

If they all die, I still have plenty to spare.

In other news, there is a bunny rabbit in my yard. We watched him eat up all the dandelions one night. I think that could be a great cottage industry, actually--training domestic rabbits to eat dandelions, then hiring them out to people who want to get rid of their dandelions. Cheaper than pesticides, and cuter, too. But then one morning I caught the rabbit hanging around my containers of herbs and greenery, and while I don't mind him eating dandelions, I mind very much if he starts eating my garden. So I got some of that deer-and-rabbit-repellent stuff. I haven't seen him since; not sure if it's because of the repellent, or for some other reason, but as long as my spinach doesn't get nibbled, I don't care.

And we have quite the carpenter ant population, some of which have found their way indoors. I'm pretty sure there's a colony in the woodpile, which is along one wall of the house. I was going to move the woodpile to the far corner of the yard--until I discovered that our chipmunk has taken up residence inside the woodpile. Remember him? With the snow tunnel? Now he's inside the woodpile, making friends with all the ants, no doubt.

So I got some ant bait, too. Stupid ants.

Mushrooms and Steve Martin

I spent most of the weekend repotting my tomato seedlings. You can see a full gardening update, with pictures, here. I also have a new shittake mushroom patch, which my husband is convinced is actually some sort of evil alien being.

Speaking of my husband, we went out to dinner Saturday night at La Laiterie in Providence. It wasn't in the budget, but I was feeling restless. We hadn't been out of the house on a Saturday night in quite a while. Cheese, charcuterie, wine, husband: all the elements of a good meal out. I'll write up a full review later in the week. I've been feeling particularly whipped for several days now; I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm trying to get my husband's cold, or maybe it's a seasonal malaise thing. Maybe both.

We're going to see Steve Martin tonight! Woo!

I have been doing things other than gardening, and thinking about gardening

OK, not really. My life's been pretty routine lately, which is why there hasn't been much of note on this blog. I go to work, work is good, I come home, I eat dinner, I watch a movie or something, I go to bed. Rinse and repeat. I'm ready for spring, but I think I've covered that. I'm hoping to get the cold crops planted outside this weekend; but the temperatures are supposed to drop into the 40s, so maybe that will have to wait.

We had the neighbors over for our first dinner party, which was very nice. Lovely people, and I felt so civilized, eating good food with fellow adults, using matching silverware and wine glasses. I spent all those years in New York building up sets of 12, in hopes of one day doing the kind of entertaining that would require sets of 12: china, red and white wine glasses, dessert wine glasses, champagne flutes, silverware, napkins, napkin rings, ramekins, espresso cups, steak knives, blah blah blah, not to mention the serving bowls and platters and pitchers and candlesticks and whatever to accompany all that. Naturally it all collected dust under my bed in New York, as I did not have the space for such entertaining.

But now! I do! With a table that will seat 12!

So seriously, please invite yourself over for dinner at your earliest convenience. I'll be tickled to use all that stuff, we'll all eat and drink well, and it's not like I have anything else going on these days.

A few updates:

I think the snow has now, finally, all melted.

Still taking the hormone-regulation pills which are supposed to lead to regular ovulation which may one day lead to pregnancy. So far as I can tell, neither regulation nor pregnancy has occurred. But at least I'm not having crippling stomach pains from the pills anymore.

My hubby went in for an invasive but routine medical test yesterday. Everything was fine. (We weren't worried, just one of those things you have to do when you get old. Still, glad everything was fine. I love my hubby.)

We have movement on the debt repayment front! I was able to officially cross two debts off the list this month, and God-willing-and-the-creeks-don't-rise I'll have another crossed off the list by this time next month. We were treading water for so long that even this small movement, with small debts, is very encouraging. I'm allowing myself to now daydream in earnest about the family compound, because maybe one day we'll actually be able to afford something of the sort.

(Granted, my daydreams involve buying a big piece of land and then inviting everyone to come build their own house on it, not buying an expensive Kennedy-esque thing with houses already built.)

I want my friends to come visit me.

That is all.

I have sprouts!

My little garden is finally showing some action! Check out pics here.

In addition, I noticed some action from the peppers this morning. Hopefully my cheap-ass, thrown-together system of shop lights on bricks, a heated mattress pad, and a space heater scrounged from work is doing the trick. I didn't want to have to sink money into a professional seed-starting setup.

I am finding that there are a lot of one-time start-up gardening costs. For example, I'm now the proud owner of a hoe. And a 100-foot hose, with spray nozzle. And a shovel. That's cutting into my budget more than I thought it would, although I guess I won't ever have to buy a hoe again.

The garden has begun!

It's still not quite spring here in Massachusetts. There's still (STILL) snow on the ground, and although daytime temperatures are now consistently above freezing, night temperatures remain mostly below freezing.


But spring is coming.

The days are longer, the snow is melting off, and next weekend will be Daylight Savings Time.

So, because I can't wait for concrete evidence of spring any longer, I started my garden this weekend.

It doesn't look like much. Several containers of herbs and cold-weather crops in my chilly sunroom, thoroughly watered and awaiting germination. I turned my downstairs bathroom into a seed-starting greenhouse of sorts, by jacking the temperature up in there and laying out flats of tomato and pepper seeds. Next weekend I'll rig up some cheap metal shelving with lighting, and move the tomato and pepper seeds under the lights.

Once the snow has melted and the ground has thawed enough for me to work it, I'm going to plant more cold-weather crops (kale, spinach, arugula, chard, beets, butternut squash, cauliflower, cilantro, leeks) right away. And in May, once the danger of frost has passed, of course everything will go in the ground, including all the herbs and seedlings.

In the meantime, I've got my container garden to cultivate. Kale, spinach and arugula, plus all the herbs except for basil and dill (oregano, thyme, tarragon, chervil, sage, parsley, chives, rosemary, etc.).

I hope I'll have a little army of sprouts in the next 8-10 days. I'll keep you posted!

I have a chipmunk

He's apparently made a little burrow under the snow. Every morning I see him poking his head out of his snow cubbyhole. Right outside the sliding glass doors in the den.

He's super-cute.

Of course, he's probably nesting inside my wall.

And he'll eat up my whole garden this spring.

And yes, there's still a good foot of snow on the ground.

But the good news is that the daytime temperatures are above freezing now, so I'm hoping the rest of that snow is not long for this world.

In the meantime, Mr. Chipmunk is super-cute.

Gardening

We're having a heat wave here in MA--it might get all the way up to 50 degrees by Friday. I never thought the sound of melting snow would be so glorious.

I still don't think I'll see grass in my backyard before April, but it's a relief to see the tops of the stone pillars and scrubby bushes again.

So this has got me thinking about gardening.

My sister sent me some leftover seeds from her garden last year--several different kinds of tomatoes and peppers, cucumbers, and various herbs. I filled that out with a seed order for the rest of the herbs, some additional tomatoes and peppers, greens (spinach, arugula, kale, chard, mache, sorrel), corn, peas, bush beans, beets, pie pumpkins, carrots, butternut squash, zucchini, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, leeks, scallions and strawberries. The full complement of herbs will include three different kinds of basil (regular, purple, Thai), oregano, sage, rosemary, chives, mint, borage, chervil, cilantro, dill, marjoram, tarragon, thyme, catnip and catgrass, two different kinds of parsley, and lavendar. I threw in blue hyssop and nasturtiums, as well. Blue hyssop will attract bees and butterflies, and the nasturtiums are edible flowers.

A good all-around garden, no? Plus I still have all those containers from my patio garden in San Diego, so the herbs can go in there for close-to-year-round harvesting.

So, my first question is:

Should I continue my CSA membership through the summer?

Logic would dictate yes, since if the garden doesn't take off, I'll still have fresh fruits and vegetables all summer long. (And the membership runs from May to November.) But it's an additional cost, obviously, and I fear being up to my eyeballs in greenery and vegetables by July. Perhaps I'll continue the membership for this year, see how everything does, and adjust accordingly next year.

And the next question is:

How and when should I start all these seeds?

The sunroom is the obvious choice for seed starting, since it gets the most direct sunlight and it's out of the way. But it's COLD in there this time of year. I'd either have to heat the room (an exhorbitant cost, given the three glass walls) or keep the seeds on heating pads constantly--and I don't know if that would be enough, given the 40-degree ambient temperature. Also, given that I couldn't put the plants into the ground until (I'm assuming) late May at the earliest, do I start those now? Or wait a bit, and hope the sunroom warms up a tad?

Either way I'm starting the herbs and the cold-weather crops now.

Any gardeners out there, feel free to weigh in...

Aislynn

In this picture she looks kinda like a cross between a dried-up monkey and a string bean with hair, but I have no doubt she's actually cuter in person. For being 9 weeks premature, she's doing exceptionally well, and may get to go home much earlier than expected. Whew!

In other news, it's only the second snow of the year, and I'm already sick of it. Also I have a cold. But I've started thinking about the garden I want to put in this spring; thinking about herbs and vegetables makes the snow (a little teeny eensy) little bit less depressing. If anyone has any experience with starting a garden in a cooler climate, I'd love to hear from you! Chance of last frost up here won't pass until the beginning of May.