It's that time of year again; time to start the new seedlings. Actually, I probably should have started them sooner, but I think I jumped the gun just a little last year. It seemed like it took so long before I could finally get the seedlings into the ground last year that this year, I just felt like waiting a little longer before starting them. I'll be doing that this weekend, so I need to make sure I have all my pots ready and my whole setup ready for them. I'll need to buy a new gooseneck lamp to hold the sunlight bulb, because the other one fell or something and broke. Not looking forward to spending the money for a new lamp, but since we don't have any south-facing windows and the best window to start plants in is an east-facing one, I don't see another choice. I'll just get the cheapest one I can find that will do the job.
The younger daughter is going to help me plan and care for the garden this year, and she'll be helping plan local produce meals as well. We sat down one night and picked out which varieties of heirloom tomatoes we'd try this year, and sent off for some free tomato seeds from a wonderful website called www.wintersown.org. All it cost us was printing and filling out a form, and sending it to them with a SASE included. In return we got a decent number of tomato seeds of different varieties, and if even most of them sprout, that will be fantastic. With money as tight as it is right now, I'm just glad we already had so many seeds left over from last year. I needed to spend as little as possible on seed this year. Spinach seed, at least, is not a problem, as I saved seed from last year's plants and it comes up beautifully. I was also able to save a little winter kale seed and some radish seed. I had a couple different varieties of spinach seed and a couple different types of radishes, but I don't really care if the seed turns out to be a hybrid between the two varieties. It's all good, and it's naturally pollinated, not Frankenseed.
Also, I just pulled out several good carrots from the garden spot. They're perfect; no problem from having been kept in the ground all winter. So the problem of how to store carrots all winter isn't really a problem at all--I just have to get them whenever the ground is soft enough to dig them out without damage to them and the garden implements. Yesterday, they came out of the ground with just a smidge of wiggling, and I'm really looking forward to some of that good carrot/dill soup. There aren't any tops to speak of, but that's okay. It'll still be great.
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