The Crafty Cultivator

For 2016, I wanted to at least manage to do one update a month on the garden. There will be updates more often once things actually start growing… But I hope to give you at least monthly garden updates until around October. (Rather than space the photos out throughout this post, I’m just going to do a dump at the end with some captions.)

So here we are in January, and as I have said before and like every year before, I have Spring Fever. The weather hasn’t been too dreadful – we have been having quite a few nice Chinook days. But it is still January, and the growing season is still quite far away. Despite that, there are still some things I can get done on the gardening front.

Outside, things are a little sad. I never got around to cleaning anything up in the fall. Life got busy, and the garden fell by the wayside. So once it warms up, I will get everything cleaned up and ready to go. I’ll have lots of time between when it warms up enough to work out there and when its safe to put any plants out.

I think I will cut up the sunflower stalks and stack them up into the little bug hotel I have built. Any of the woody stemmed plant stalks will be used in the same way. The bugs should appreciate that once they are searching for a home or somewhere to hibernate over winter.

Everything else, will be added into the compost bin. What is in there now, should be good to put into the soil, so I will just start a new round of compost once the usable stuff is moved out. I will be adding in some pony poo too, since I have easy access to it.

On the “adding nutrients into my garden” front – Later in the spring, I will also check on my leaf mold piles back at my parents house and see how they went with absolutely zero help or attention from me. I’m hopeful they are good and ready to go, so I can bring them back home and stick it into my garden- At the very least, I should be able to bring it back and use it as a mulch.

Inside, I have started some seeds… Because I can’t contain myself. I sowed some ‘Northern Gold’ Onions back on December 27, as you may remember… and then I kind of forgot about them. So they are a little bit sad looking. Hopefully they perk up. If not, I sowed a few individual cells with the same seed on January 23rd once I discovered my neglected onions. I really want to grow at least one full onion from seed.

On January 23rd, in Jiffy Pellets, I started 2x Spearmint, 2x Lemon Balm, 6x Lavender and 12x ‘Patio Temptation’ Strawberries.

I have a few types of flowers that I want to start, but I am waiting until it is at least February so I have seedlings at different maturities and maybe can manage them a little better. AND then I will have something to write about in my February update. And we are roughly 16-18 weeks away from when it is generally safe to start putting things outside (depending on the year), so I’m trying to not get too ahead of the game. So I am sticking to seedlings that can stay a manageable size and not take over until it is safe for them to go outside.

January Re-cap: 

Finally Completed my Italian Seasoning Mix that I grew; Made a Bee Waterer; Sowed some Cactus Seeds for the fun of it all; and started some Onions from seed as well. I didn’t post about it yet, but I also got a little grow-shelf set up. AND I have only bought a few seed packets – So far I have added: Calendual ‘Pacific Beauty Mix’; Bean ‘Gold Rush’; Cabbage ‘Salad Delight’ (thats a purple one!); and Hollyhock ‘Country Romance Mix’.