Experiments in Winter Sowing

A few weeks ago, my mother asked if I wanted to be added to a winter sowing group on social media, and I said yes, eager to learn whatever I can about vegetable gardening in general.  We've recently moved to a more rural location, and I've been excited and enthusiastic about learning (finally) to garden and preserve.  The fact that the house came with a few tomato plants and a tangled cluster of Concord grapes thrilled me to no end, and resulted in a few extra salad toppings and low-cost jars of jelly.

Winter sowing appeals to me because I'm often hanging around in the winter, bored, indoors, without much to do, and filling containers with soil seems to be at just about the right level of strenuousness for post-holiday-season activity.  I hear that it can toughen up your seeds and make your plants potentially hardier, although I have no anecdotal evidence of this for myself yet.  That's why it's an experiment!

Earlier this week, my organic seeds came in the mail, and I had procured a bag of high-quality potting soil from our local farm store (they're starting to recognize me there from my frequent visits to fawn over their selection of Carhartt apparel).  I found my husband's sloth in not bringing the recycling to the transfer station to be of benefit, as I was able to salvage several empty milk jugs to use as my mini-greenhouses.  My daughter, who is already four, sat with me on the kitchen floor to help me assemble our emerging winter sowing collection and, for the sake of keeping her interest, we began with radish seeds.  

We proceeded to sow red peppers, green beans, cucumbers, carrots, and zucchini, as well.  The little plastic containers were originally going to take up residence on a table near our back porch, until a gust of wind blew two of them off the table.  I hope that they still have their seeds in them.  So now they are hanging out on the back porch, subject to the chilling winds of fate.  We shall see how things unfold, and more seeds will be planted as I gather more containers.

  

New Year, New Me! Kinda.

Earlier this evening, my beloved spouse hollered at us that it was time to go to dinner.  As I mumbled a half-hearted "all right" and urged my little one -- no longer a tiny baby, but a four-year-old, a full-fledged PRESCHOOLER for heaven's sake! -- into the dining room, I found myself struck with inspiration.

The blog!  I'll go back to the blog!  Even though blogs are so 2006, I'll go back to it, and I'll resurrect it with riveting tales of my adventures!

Oh, the enthusiasm that poured forth onto paper, all of my ideas and thoughts and scribbles and head shakings rendered into ink on the back of a watercolor pad!  It was joyous!

Then fear reared its lovely, lovely head again.  

That's all right, though.  My most popular post has 25 viewers.  That's almost a classroom full of students, and a classroom of students is a totally manageable audience!  Here's some of what I'm looking forward to sharing with all of you in my posts this year:

• My mother-in-law got me the most amazing socks for Christmas, but the tags on them were written in a language I do not recognize, possibly of East Asian origin, and I threw away the tags.  How can I tell everyone where to get these socks if I don't know anything else about them?  Well, as you all know from my overuse of Dr. Google, Secret Agent Google, Inspector Google, Google, LICSW, and His Holiness the Dalai Google, I have mad research skills and I WILL get to the bottom of this!
• I just got a box of art stuff from Sketchbox due to an amusing set of circumstances involving the holiday season, shipping, and my forgetfulness.  Is it awesome, or just meh?  I'll tell you all about it!
• Come and laugh along as I tell you my tales of physical prowess!  I promise, it will be fun.  Ever watched a middle-aged woman learn Parkour from the beginning?  Well, at the very least, you will get to read about it.  And by "beginning," I mean, I currently bench about 20 pounds.  As a special bonus, hear about how packing a set of double-D cups and a post-preggo belly impacts the journey (literally and figuratively).
• There will be more Feats of Strength, including my journey toward running a 5K in under 30 minutes, and moving on from there to my first 10K.  Will I be able to complete it without overtraining (from the first time I trained), or without acquiring shin splints that may turn to stress fractures (from the second time I trained)?  It's anyone's guess.
• Speaking of Feats of Strength, my sister has mentioned that she will host our first annual Festivus this year.  THAT will be a story for the books.
• Find out whether or not my experiments in winter sowing will be successful, and if I will uncover the Holy Grail of perpetual produce production.
• How NOT to clean the ashes out of your pellet stove.

Stay tuned!