My personal plug for onions!

I’m a firm believer in growing onions and here’s why. Of all the other vegetables I work with during the regular growing season, the onion ‘set’ has them beat in a couple of ways! First, you can buy them cheaply at the store in a form that is already a growing plant! Second, once they are plopped into the ground they require very little in the way of maintenance. (I’ve harvested onions from one section of my garden that was overgrown with weeds and which received little additional water other than what fell from the sky one year and they were great)! I even did a video some years ago, ‘Onions are easy to grow’ that I think captures some of my enthusiasm for this most wonderful veggie.

Is it too early to start peppers?

I dunno. But, seeing as how I had some bell pepper and cayenne seeds that were leftover from the previous two seasons, I decided to give a few of them a go.  I figured that this early in the year, it they don’t germinate then it’s no big loss. Then again, if some do, I’ll have some early transplants to put out in the raised beds.

I prepared two 6 cell starter trays using some Miracle Gro potting mix that was left over from 2011. The mix was bone dry so I re-hydrated in the sink using warm water. Since it is so high in peat moss content, it took forever to get moist and even then, it doesn’t seem to want to held moisture very well!

In tray A, I planted two seeds each of cayenne seed in the front two cells and Cubanelle seeds from a 2009 batch in the back four.  I had collected from plants that were grown last year. Tray B has 2 seeds each in the front two cells and Sweet Hybrid Experimental pepper seeds from God knows when in the back four. I’ll be surprised to see anything come up in this tray although all these seeds were maintained in the fridge in a sealed container! Still, I feel it’s worth it to try. Especially, after paying a dollar a piece for bell peppers at the grocery store this week! Now, while my approach may look haphazard (it was), I feel it’s better to do something than to sit and think about it for so long it never gets done!

An orchid?

I'm not really sure what kind of plant this is. Maybe a member of the orchid family? My sister bought it a couple of years ago from a store when it was in flower. It then took me two years to get to flower again. Still, I think it was worth the effort!

Someone told me today that it may belong to the Phalaenopsis family!

Time for the planting of the onion sets!

By gosh and by golly! It’s getting near time for me to plant out some onion sets! I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I see a display of these at my local grocery store I know spring is just around the corner!

I bought this small batch for about a dollar ten (there’s about a pound) and think that may just be enough for an early planting in one of the raised beds out back. Course, I’ll have to wait until the cold front they are advertizing for the weekend comes and goes. Temperatures are supposed to get down to the teens and I even hear talk of a little snow. If that last part’s true, then I’d say bout time!

Later in the month of March, I’m hoping to install a new cold frame in my front yard! I plan to order one of those ‘fancy’ store bought jobs that will look appealing for being in such plain view. This 4 x 8 foot bed will also get some really good soil, sand and amendments to insure a bumper crop.

Why the front yard? Well, truth be told, the deer round these parts are a pain in the rump when it comes helping themselves to my back beds. So, this year I hope the new location will work a little better as they tend to be shy of the street traffic. That’s the plan anyway!

I think I just caught the feeling of Spring!

Maybe you can’t tell from this picture, but it is happening! Ever so slowly, sol is creeping more to the north every day as February is now nigh. Now, with global warming taking a firmer hold, a beautiful day in the upper sixties became a reality this date as I wandered out and about my yard checking to see what might be growing and what is still in winter repose.

My small planting of Romaine lettuce is hanging in there. From past experience, I know that as the days lengthen, these small plants will have a growth spurt. A short time later, I should have some pretty decent heads to harvest.

Also, up and growing are the tulips I planted last August. Some of the plants are now about two to three inches high. Wow! I wonder if I can have blooms even in February? That would be a real jolt and a further confirmation that the climate is a changing. A subject of a recent Scientific American article that discusses how past changes in climate have brought down entire cultures!

Check out my webcam at WUnderground.com!

Check your seed packets! It's getting warmer!

For the first time since 1990, the feds have updated and released a hardiness growing map that has added two new zones and which has seen a shift to the north for many area of the country. While not admitting to global warming they felt something had to be done when folks in locations like Illinois began to observe bushed beginning to flower in January!

Here in southwest Missouri, I'm getting ready to welcome spring in late February by planning on working my raised beds a full month earlier than normal. I want to get onion sets planted as early as possible to give them a proper chance to bulb up. According to the new map, I went from Zone 6 and am now flirting with Zone 7. Wow!

Tulips I planted in the fall are already up!

And you know what? I think, it being the first week of January and all, that it’s a wee bit early for that sort of nonsense to be going on! We still have a ton of time yet to go and I’m a fearing that these bulbs will get hurt when the weather takes a real nose dive.

I was given these bulbs by a lady who drove by my house one day and offered them to me, saying that she had these as leftovers. I thanked her and planted them in both the front and back yard in selected spots. Then forgot about them until one afternoon a day or so ago, I spotted them coming up. My thinking it that the weather has been a lot warmer than it should be. December was warm and January has been warmer still! I have to wonder. Is this due to global warming? Or, it is just Mother Nature being her flaky self? Well, we still have eleven weeks of winter to go and time will tell.

On a positive note, my romaine lettuce and kale have done well in the small cold frames I maintain out front. Even a small patch that was planted on the ground is still growing nicely. And, while the harvest will be sporadic and small, it still is nice to get some fresh greens this time of year. While at the grocery, yesterday, I saw heads of iceberg lettuce that were selling for $1.69 a head. Eee gads!