01.15.09
Time to sow?
Planting a garden? In January? Well yes. You see the temperature has been very nice. About 70 degrees + for the past few days. There is a minor chance of rain next Tuesday.
This year I’m trying to start artichokes from seed. Yes, I know, hold your horses. Before y’all get up in arms I’m actually following the directions on the packets. Can you believe it?
First I harvested some moss from one of our trees, nestled the artichoke seeds in the moistened moss and put the wad inside a plastic bag inside the fridge for 2 weeks to trick the seeds into believing it was winter. When I took it out last week the seeds seemed to be plumper.
These sprouts were left in the moss and I found them left in the plastic bag. Hey, I guess these directions really work…go figure!
I planted the plump seeds in cells and guess what? They sprouted 5 days later. Now it looks like I’ll have 120 artichoke plants. Oops! According to the packet only 50% of the sprouted seeds will be viable. That makes 60 plants.
I’ll share with my friend and, hopefully, we’ll be eating artichokes this fall.
Today I planted Iceburg Lettuce and Red Sails lettuce seeds. Also some early peppers. Just for kicks I planted a flat of Glacier tomato seeds. These are fast, only 60 days to mature in ideal conditions. I figure if I can get them sprouted, keep the cats out of them and transplant them in the greenhouse in April I may have tomatoes by August!