I made my first planting of 2015 last weekend: three trays of microgreens. It felt good to get back in the gardening saddle and take my mind away from office concerns for awhile. * * * * * * * I actually do a fair amount of garden stuff during the dead of winter. I grow sprouts (using two nifty Victorio systems (expensive, but they're exceedingly easy to use, should last me years, and reduce bacteria risks)), I tend to my small worm farm (I should have nearly 200 pounds of vermicompost by early May; I ended the 2014 growing season with zero after emptying my vermicompost on my asparagus bed last Fall), we cook non-gmo squash from the 2014 growing season, and I do a few trays of micro-greens. * * * * * * * One of the best things about gardening: Now that I have a small store of knowledge and supplies, such things don't take up much time at all. I was able to set up and plant those trays in about twenty minutes. It took nearly thirty to retrieve the grow lamp and set it up, so that kinda sucked, but that's a once-a-year hassle. Now that it's up, I'll leave it up until Memorial Day (much to Marie's delight). * * * * * * * I'm thinking about starting full-blown lettuce or spinach in a few weeks, then put them into a portable greenhouse on my front porch, with heat maps under the trays. The heat mats will raise the temperature in the greenhouse from, say, ten degrees to 35, which works well. But if temps drop below zero, things start to get grim for the greens. I don't mind bringing them inside once or twice, but if it becomes a quotidian thing, it becomes a crappy thing. I'll see.
