Seed Starting Time

According to Pat Welsh's Southern California Organic Gardening February is the month to start planting warm weather plants indoors to transplant outside later. So today (instead of studying for the CSET-I am so good at procrastination) I started my first set of plants for my summer garden.

Jason built me a nice grow rack and light set up with room for 90 plants. I started my first 45 this week and in another week or so I will start some more. That way there will be some staggering for my crops so hopefully I won't get all of my produce at the same time. For the last 2 years we have started seeds inside with limited success. This year we are hoping that the grow lights will help us get healthy plants so plant outside so that we can have a big garden with lots of different plants.

We get our seeds from Peaceful Valley, Territorial Seeds, Seed Savers, and Johnny's.

Here is what we have planted so far:

• Pruden's Purple Tomato
• Gold Medal Heirloom Tomato
• Bull Nose Bell Peppers
• Miniature Chocolate Bell Peppers
• Jelly Bean Tomatoes (our most successful last year-yummy)
• Orange Banana Tomato
• Thai Hot Chile Pepper
• Hot Pepper Blend
• Purple de Milpa Tomatillo
• Andy Hot Pepper
• Black Cherry Tomato
• Sweet Pea Currant Tomato
• Black Tomato
• Cherokee Purple Tomato
• Santo Coriander
• Brandywine Tomato
• California Wonder 300 Bell Pepper
• Monica Tomato
• Orange Blossom Tomato
• Granadero Tomato
• Celebrity Tomato
• Traviata Eggplant
• German Chamomile

We will directly seed beans, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, zucchinis, and beets in the garden in the next few weeks. In the meantime at the garden we are finishing up the winter radishes, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, and onions. I am looking forward to this year's garden and the preserving to follow!

Been busy, but not blogging

Ever since I started my new job (not so new now, I've been there 7 months), I have been using my free time for relaxing and crafting, but I always forget to take pictures, so I haven't put anything on the blog. Since I last posted I have made Jason another pair of pajama pants, I have sewn a bunch of Christmas ornaments and bags for gifts, I have made oodles of orange marmalade, and started a new garden.

One of the many Christmas tree ornaments I made from the tutorial here

Fun peeling apples for freezing and dehydrating while we were in Washington. We got a peeler for Christmas.

My new job kind of sucks the life out of me and I need a healthy release. Sometimes I am good at working out, going on hikes in pretty places, gardening, sewing, and canning-and then I can feel good about that part of my life. But sometimes the doldrums suck me in and all that I can manage in a weekend is maybe doing laundry and watching Netflix instant. It's a little late for New Year's resolutions, but I am going to make one anyways. I will do at least one sewing project a month in 2011. I got a bunch of sewing books and fabric for Christmas, maybe I will try to go through a book, doing each project, or maybe I will jump around and do lots of different projects. We'll see. I am also going to try to do healthy things that will make me feel better about myself every week. I don't know why it's so hard to do the things that I know will make me feel better. Does anyone else ever have this problem?