• shopping

    Seed Catalogues 2011

    I’m trying to keep my seed sowing within a reasonable range this year. I’ve made an inventory of old seeds that should still be viable, and I’m only ordering a sensible (in my mind) amount this year. I’m also trying to weed out (pun intended) the frugal and in the long run not so smart purchases, i.e. I’m going to buy plants or bulbs of certain plants that would be difficult and slow to raise from seed anyway. To keep things within limits this year, I’m only getting seeds from commercial sources as seed exchanges and seed lists from garden societies have the ability to make anyone go over the…

  • Kitchen garden,  winter

    The First Thing to Sow

    Even though some of the snow piles are more than 2 meter high, an optimistic gardener can still imagine what’s going to flower and grow during the coming summer. For most of us, me included this year, the first thing on the agenda are the globe artichokes. They aren’t hard to get to germinate; the only thing with them is then to repot them into fairly large, or at least deep, pots for further cultivation shortly after they’ve germinated. Globe artichokes have a pole root and need a deep pot with good compost in order to grow fast enough and large enough to produce crop the first year. This is…