When I got back from Phoenix the house smelled like dirt. In a good way: While I was gone DF had started dozens of seeds in egg cartons and repurposed pots.
The containers completely cover a table in the utility room and a three-shelf unit that has displaced our dining table. We can eat anywhere, but baby plants need the south sun.
After a week of seeing flowers and orange trees and fully leafed trees, I came home to a typical Alaska breakup: gray skies, brown lawns and bare branches. The scent of soil helps make up for that.
So does the Renee’s Garden media kit, which arrived shortly before I left to visit my daughter. The 2016 New Introductions Sampler kicked off a response most Pavlovian. My mouth actually watered as I looked at things like Five Color Rainbow beets, Italian Pandorino grape tomatoes, Ruby & Emerald mustard, French Mascotte container beans and Harlequin Mix rainbow carrots.
Oh, the Climbing Phoenix heirloom nasturtiums, Endless Bouquets cut flower mix and the Dancing Ballerinas poppies were lovely as well. But when it comes to gardening I prioritize things I can eat over things that are pretty.
This year I’ll have the best of both worlds, since Renee’s Garden sent a long a packet of those heirloom nasturtiums. Edible flowers: What a concept.
Frugal seeds
Some of DF’s pots are already sprouting: red Romaine, cucumbers, head lettuce and something he called “weird beets.” Still to come – we hope – are seven kinds of tomatoes (all from seeds we saved), winter squash and a ton of carrots.
About that last: Carrot seeds generally aren’t started indoors but DF is experimenting. If it works, I’ll probably write about it.
Sugar Snap peas and spinach will go directly into the ground once things warm up a bit more. We’ll probably put some turnips out there, too, to be eaten fresh since we still have a dozen jars of the canned 2015 crop. Some potatoes and cabbage, of course – wouldn’t be an Alaska garden without them.
I have high hopes for the Tendergreen Improved green bean seeds I bought for a quarter in Phoenix (thanks, Dollar Tree!), which I hope will get enough sun and heat to set fruit. While there I also bought Parris Island Cos lettuce (similar to Romaine), Detroit Dark Red beets, Bloomsdale spinach, Marketmore cukes, Danvers Half Long carrots and those Sugar Snap peas.
DF loves flowers, so he’ll have the hanging baskets up and the windowbox filled by Memorial Day. He’s already retrieved last year’s wintered-over begonias from the basement and put the tubers in pots next to the veggie starts.
I do appreciate the color. But for me, the miracle of growing food is the real reason to garden. It lets us eat well during the summer and encourages us to expand our reach as low-maintenance preppers.
A nursery stampede
Last year DF built a greenhouse mostly out of scrap wood and windows given to us by folks who were remodeling. It also needed something called Suntuf panels for the roof, but we got those frugally as well. With luck all those tomato seeds will germinate (holding out for the Cherokee Purple variety in particular) and wind up under glass, but even if they do we’ll hit Bell’s Nursery for seedlings that are further along in the process.
We won’t be alone: Alaska gardeners are committed, or should be. Long winters and slow-to-come summers make them really, really anxious to buy seedlings. Come early to mid-May we’ll be part of a stampede down the nursery aisles, buying more starts than we should because, as Oscar Wilde put it, nothing succeeds like excess.
I used to write about gardening for the Anchorage Daily News, and a nursery employee told me that people would come there to drink coffee, inhale the scent of growing plants and dream. Some would surreptitiously stick their fingers into pots and poke around in the soil, she said.
Probably that was for the cool, damp promise of spring. But I bet it was also for the fragrance. When I got home early Friday morning the faint smell of garden soil felt like an assurance that life would be much, much better soon.
It’s pretty darned good now. But what DF and I call “playing in the dirt” makes us even more ridiculously happy.
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We will be starting a few plants here in Michigan next week. Snow blew yesterday reminding me how wild spring can be. To have a green house would be a dream..you are so lucky!
It really is wonderful. I never thought I’d have a greenhouse. Although it doesn’t have a water source, we’re OK with hand-watering. While my dad was visiting last summer he ran a power line out to it, so at some point we can consider heating it.
I’ll try to get a decent picture of it this year. When I describe it I call it a Frankengreenhouse, because it’s made from variously sized windows and two storm doors. It ain’t pretty but it gets the job done.
Perhaps not classically pretty, but beautifully functional! I can’t wait to read of your sprouting successes. It is still a little early to put anything outside here, so I’ve got starts on the kitchen windowsill. In a few days they’ll be begging to go in the ground.
It’s plenty early to put things outside here. The recommendation is the end of May but I expect we’ll want to push it abit.
I’m longing to start some plants and seeds, but a weeklong cold spell makes me see the error of my ways; last night into noon today is a freeze warning. I might have to take a trip to Hanover Home and Garden to smell the dirt and buy a bag to start some inside.
It’s always tempting to put things out early. A couple of days ago it hit a record high of 51 degrees and people were drooling over the idea of spring. But it was 26 degrees when DF got home from church this morning. Lesson learned.
Hooray Spring! Hopefully the Alaskan peas I planted survive our 24 inch snow dump we had a week ago here in Denver. I so enjoy reading about all that you and DF plant and harvest – I am still a beginning gardener, so it’s inspiring.
What a neat story. I too have started plants from seed and the crazy thing is the tomato seeds I saved from last year are doing better than the seeds I bought from the store. I hope to re-double my gardening efforts this year as I was able acquire a roto-tiller on the cheap. I have been hand tilling for about ten years…I’m told this will be a “game-changer” for the plants and gardening. For me it seems therapeutic to work in the garden. Do you guys get that same benefit?
Oh, yes. As noted, we call it “playing in the dirt” and find tremendous personal and gustatory satisfaction in the process and the result.
Now that DF’s granddaughter is closer to four than to three, she’ll understand a lot more about the process. Last year she was impatient to eat things that weren’t ready to pick. (As were we!) This year he’s going to take her to the nursery to choose a cucumber plant and we’ll put it in a tub labeled with her name. Cukes were a big hit with her last year, so we want her to have the pleasure of picking one from her own plant.
She’ll be here tomorrow for a couple of hours, so DF can show her the sprouting seedlings. Between then and her next visit they will grow noticeably, so she’ll be able to form the connection between tiny plants, larger plants and seedlings that are big enough to put outside. That is, when it warms up; it was 25 degrees this morning.
The rototiller will save a lot of wear and tear on your body. I know some gardeners fret about the worms and the “soil web” critters, but I think your soil will survive. Not so your back, if you keep doing it the hard way.
I was late planting my inside crops this year so will resort to the nursery to get those. However, Saturday was a lovely day for me so I planted peas, two kinds of lettuces and radishes, peas, arugula, spinach, carrots and beets. It felt great!