The past month or so have been very busy at work, with a conference in Atlanta and a two-day meeting in Virginia, so I used a vacation day today. It was delightful to have a weekday off without any need to visit anyone, so I thought carefully about how I could use the day to the best advantage. My decision was to shovel compost. The city only sells compost on weekdays before 3pm, so it's quite difficult to manage it when I'm working and this seemed like a good solution. The only catch was that we were hit with a winter storm on Tuesday, and it's still pretty wintery. (My Minnesota family will laugh when I say that our 3" shut down the city, but that's what happens when you live in the almost-south.)
The good part was that shoveling frozen compost meant it wasn't too muddy, but hauling the wheelbarrow across the snow was difficult. It's a bit jarring to see the fresh brown compost laying on top of the snow, but I figure that in a few days it will warm up, the snow will melt, and the compost will be right on top of the beds where I want it.
My basement is filled with tiny pots of soil under the grow lights, where I soon expect to see tomato and eggplant seedlings. Today didn't feel like spring, but it's tantalizingly close.
5 comments:
You are going back to your ancestors farming roots. Seems we can't quite breed it out! I am sure you will enjoy the end products in the fall.
you must feel a great satisfaction in the knowledge you're now starting to build up and able to experiment off of in gardening.
And to be in an area where the ground and the climate encourages good results. Dealing with the heat, dryness, and the very poor soil of our mountain desert environment made vegetable gardening very frustrating.
You're all right - I'm lucky to have a good climate and soil, and it's fun to experiment. I may have gotten the bug from my farming ancestors, but I still have no desire to get up and do chores at 5am - aka real farming.
Giving the seedlings a head start makes so much sense. Our small greenhouse is packed with seedlings, courtesy of B. Now we need some consistently milder weather to get them planted out - a late frost would do so much damage.
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