Say Hallelujah! And Happy New Year!
The Moon will be full this Saturday, January third. I’m hoping your longest night, December 21st, was well lit (and without you being lit). The New Year begins Thursday. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a global spring healing!
As this coming waning phase of the Moon is “passive,” it continues to be a good time to do little and rest a lot. I have begun my exercise practice again in preparation for active gardening in a few months. I’ve gotten pretty soft and white since Thanksgiving.
The new seed catalogs are here and I’ve begun putting garden tasks on the calendar. Next week I’ll start my onions from seed. I was able to save seed in the fall of 2024 and will be planting them. Alisa Craig is the variety. It’s an open pollinated (OP) variety. I like Paterson onions as well but they are a hybrid variety. Hybrid seeds will not produce “true.” This means that they will revert to one of their parents. I make a practice of using OP seeds as often as possible, so that I can collect their seeds for future gardens.
Onions have a long growing season, taking an average of 120 days, so starting them now will give them lots of time to mature. They will need to sit in a window sill until the greenhouse warms up in late March. I start them in trays with many small cells and transplant them to three inch pots once their second leaves show. The next transplant comes in April when I put them in the ground. Onions are cold tolerant but will not germinate well in temperatures less than 50 degrees.
our greenhouse will start to warm up in March in part because it’s a Walapini; a sunken greenhouse. We dug down four feet and the glazing is most of what’s above ground. We’ve placed ten 55 gallon drums filled with water to serve as heat sink in the winter; the Sun hits the barrels, which we painted black, in winter months. The barrels also serve as water storage for emergencies.
Seeds I’ll plant this year that came from last year’s harvest, are gathered from the best performing individual fruits. I have pieces of paper towel here and there with seeds spread on them; primarily seeds that are moist and will stick to the paper towel (tomato, cucumber, melon, zucchini …). I usually squeeze out the fruit’s seed filled jelly and spread it with a knife on the towels. When they’re drying on the paper towel they are kept out of direct sunlight. I finally transferred the seeds from the paper towels to small containers about six weeks ago. The bin holding all of my little containers of labeled seed is kept in a cool, dark place.
Eggplant, tomatoes and peppers are also started early and put on an indoor window sill. I found out last year that by starting them earlier than usual I got harvestable fruit by mid-July. I had rarely gotten a ripe tomato before late August, usually September. Last year I started my tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse in early March. This year I am planning on starting them indoors by early March. Perhaps this will give me fruit by the Fourth of July?! Peppers and eggplant are very slow to germinate and will benefit from an earlier start indoors.
My saved seed includes flowers, herbs and many vegetables. I have spinach, arugula, radish, broccoli, kale, beans, peas, squash, cilantro, dill, parsley, borage, basil, well too many to list them all. By mid-April the greenhouse will be full of starts, the onions and potatoes planted and bulbs blooming. Can’t wait.
We have a lot of seed potatoes saved for planting in April, if the ground isn’t frozen. They were the small, damaged or sunburned potatoes from last fall’s harvest.
It’s snowing today (12/26), our first snow of the year. We woke up to a dusting on Christmas morning and it continued with huge ‘snow globe’ flakes until the night of “Boxing Day.” All totaled we got about a foot of wet snow. We’ve been spoiled by this unseasonably warm and wet fall. I was happy to see the Sun last weekend.
In the meantime remember, time spent by a creek or walking through a forest, (if only in your mind), helps you feel lighter and makes this troubled world look brighter.
One Comment
Awesome!