Serious thoughts of gardening begin when the hardware store downtown gets their onion sets. These little dandies planted and left in the ground about 6 weeks give you the best little onions. Pick them, clean them and yum! It’s muddy now but by the weekend there will be a little comer of my fenced area planted with onion sets.
Time to start some hot pepper seeds! There are 6 hot chilies and 6 jalapenos in this pot as of today. Hopefully, MaChatte won’t feel the need to interact with seedlings as they come up here, the way she did last spring with some collard seedlings. https://sarasinart.net/2013/04/06/proof-that-machatte-is-smarter-than-me/
During the winter, I plan out what will be planted where outside. Every gardener should have a plan and a map of some sort to know where things will be, and later, maybe which things are which as they start to come up. I have a hand made book that was given to me as a gift years ago, and that seems a very appropriate place to make garden notes. I also write notes in there as to what did well and anything important I learned during a gardening season. (And maybe what not to do again………)
And, for any beginning gardening conversation, I’d like to share a wonderful resource. Mother Earth News, an old and valuable resource for so many things natural and earthy, has a great site to tell you what to plant when in your area. You can choose the area of the country you live in and count on this information since they have researched climate, temps, etc, and know when the best conditions are. I love this site, and refer to it every year to be sure I’m not rushing things, which, oh yea, I have a tendency to do, lol. Check out this great site: http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/mid-atlantic-gardening-region.aspx#axzz2yJYKeE2d
More later, as we all ask each other, How does your garden grow?
Sarasin's thoughts....... 
Well, Mr. Bowie’s only interested in planting catnip… 😉
Yes, that is a serious gardening issue for him!
Yay for gardening! That planting guide that Mother Earth News has is really nice. 🙂
It IS, Jackie. There is a lot of good info on their site other places too. Old time wisdom from Mother Earth News.
I’m definitely going back to read more! 🙂
Hope your onions grow as big as baseballs! I see your sets are white. We can’t find white sets around here, only yellow and occasionally some red. If we want those we have to grow them from seeds or plants. Mine are planted too. Onion time is a sure sign of spring yay!
I don’t let them get big Sam. I pull them up after 6 weeks and have the most tasty scallions, sort of, sweet and a little hot; clean them and eat them that way, maybe the size of a silver dollar. We can get yellow sets too, to grow big onions, but I’ve never seen any red ones. It takes too long to grow onions from seeds here, since we have to wait a while yet to plant most seeds, cos the ground isn’t warm enough yet for sprouting. I’ll put these in the ground over the weekend, and in about 2 weeks I’ll try some collard and cabbage seeds, cos they are more forgiving than some other seeds are. Beans, peas, tomato plants and some other things have to wait till probably the middle of May. We can still get frost here occasionally till then. Good luck with your growing!
Have you ever tried warming your soil faster using clear plastic weighted down on all the edges. It really works especially if you clear all debris first and if it’s in the sun. Or starting your seeds inside to get a jump start? I don’t have any experience gardening in colder climates, I’m sure you know all those tricks but just in case…today is cool and rainy 😦 no gardening for me
I’ve started some seeds inside and that helped. It would be hard to warm the ground up outside tho cos nights are still pretty cold sometimes, so I’m not sure that would work very well. Thanks for the ideas, cos you always have good ideas!