Let's Start some Seeds!

I love March!! March means I can start safety planting my cool weather seeds (outside) and start my warm weather seeds inside.

This has been a interesting winter as we here in the Pacific Northwest have not gotten even a speck of snow all year. (At least where I am at 300ft above sea level). That means that there was some nervousness of starting early and getting that late spring snow but according to the weather forecast that doesn't seem like it's going to happen this year.

My cool weather seed technically can be planted outside right now (just throw a light cover over them at night if it goes below freezing), but my garden is going through some transitions right now. Therefore they get started in my recycled "egg carton" starts. (My hubby will be happy to have them gone from the garage). Then put to bed in my greenhouse that I bought last year.
Today I started:  Lettuce and Broccoli

It will be great to just put these straight into the ground

Can you see the lettuce seeds

Then for my warm seeds we did:
Butternut Squash, Pumpkins, Cayenne Peppers, and Tomatoes.

 

SATURDAY!!! LOOK LOOK LOOK

54F and sunshine! What does that mean?!?!?  Time to head out to your yard and garden and start to clean up.. ( Oh yeh, and get some Vitamin D!)

It just happened I was sitting here drinking my coffee, watching the news and checking out my new Martha Stewart FEB13 magazine. The first page is a calendar of the month of Feb. of what "Martha" does. Well, for week of Feb.3rd (yup, next week), it say to:

• Sharpen Knives, scissors and garden tools
• Organize seed packets
• START SOWING BROCCOLI AND CABBAGE SEEDS! (woot woot, I can start planting)

Then it hits me as I hear on the news, "Saturday is going to be sunny and up to 54F, get out and enjoy the weather" and read the calendar above, OH WOW, I need to plan to work on my garden Saturday.. Yippee!! but EKK!!!

As per my previous post, I want to tear apart my beds and make a new garden set up.. I have to do that all on Saturday. (Which happens to be the same day my DH is gone all day and my DS has hockey right in the middle of the day). Mmmm, what am I going to do?

Well, I might work on the clean up and start my seeds in seed starts.

Seed starts

Welcome to 2013

Well, here we go again.. Christmas is over, and now I can start dreaming of my garden.
I know we are not out of the woods for our first big snowstorm but hey when it gets up to 52F it's hard not to dream.

Here is a great link if you are starting to dream to know what Hardiness Zone we are in:
Seattle and Eastside Planting Zone  = 8a

What this will help you with is knowing what vegetables (and plants) grow well in our area, what their growing season will be and when to start them.

Another fact you want to know is when are the last and first frost dates:
Frost Dates

This is great on the calendar to know when it's safe to start planting certain vegetables as the frost can kill their tender leaves.


This year I am planning on ripping up my garden beds and going back to the original 12X12 plot that was there when we moved in. I have realized that I have a lot of wasted garden space with those raised beds and want to be wide open for gardening.

• This is what the original garden area looked like (after a summer season of being unattended as I had just moved in a week before in 2004).

 

• After a winter season my husband Michael and I decided to attack the backyard and make raised beds.

 

 

 

 Now, after 8 years of service it will be time to say goodbye raised beds.