Reassurance

I've gotten a lot of questions lately from concerned customers and friends about plant starts. "What do you mean, you've moved the farm?!" said the guy ringing up my purchase at Costco the other night. "I just got my garden all sorted out and ready to plant this year, where am I going to get those tomato plants?"

It's going to be OK.

We have to take a short trip to visit family this weekend, and as soon as we get back, the seeds are getting started. (It seemed a bit much to ask the lovely person staying with the cats to also babysit several hundred seedlings as well.)

It won't be as big a selection as we've done in the past, but all the North Coast tomato favourites will be there: Stupice, Sungold, Paul Robeson, Black Cherry, Yellow Pear, San Marzano, and several others that I am blanking on right now. It's terribly hard- the seed catalogs have been SO tempting this year, and I am trying hard to maintain some self control.

We'll have lettuce, spinach, peas, beans, greens and an assortment of other veg plants, as well as the flower and herb favourites- calendula, poppies, nasturtiums, cerinthe, cilantro and basil too.

It won't be the same, but it will be better than no plants at all. I've got to get poppies and calendula growing here as soon as possible to start building up the seed bank in the soil. Things were just getting perfect at the old farm with plants sowing themselves (mostly ones that I wanted) and I just cannot imagine not having poppies growing randomly throughout the farm. I am interested to see what comes up here this spring, but I fear it is mainly going to be some morning glory right around the house, and Canada thistle in the pasture (right where we want to put the orchard). Ugh. I don't see many bulbs at all- I will miss Mrs. Ostman's daffodils.

We've been spending time walking the property, figuring out what will go where, and if that makes sense from a work efficiency viewpoint. We've marked out where the greenhouse will go, and as soon as we get a stretch of dry weather our friend Dan will come over with his tractor to scrape down the site, and we can get it re-built. We're dreaming of adding on to it, on the theory that it was already feeling too small. We'll see if our budget can squeeze out an extra twenty feet of growing space- I will happily live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches if it gives me more room for seedlings!

Stay tuned.

Eddie the Cat can't wait until we turn on the Indoor Sun again