Watch me clean: a look at the growing table (part 1)

Although it's not quite time to start seeds -- even the types that need a big head start on the season like cardoon and some other seeds that have long germination times -- my growing table is really about as messy as it can be, and I thought I should get started on it now, rather than waiting until I need it to be clean. Since there's probably nothing interesting about watching me clean a table, I'm going to turn this into the first half of a look at my setup here, as some people have asked about it.

It's a homemade two-shelf table in my basement, with the top shelf reserved for overwintering plants and the bottom shelf for starting seeds. The bottom light isn't needed yet so it stays off, so I tend to use that lower table as a "temporary" storage area. Then days, weeks, and months go by and it's completely out of control.

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A little update

A while back I wrote about some houseplants I was trying to save. Then more recently I potted up some clippings that had been languishing in water for too long. Today I'll show you what's going on with them. First up is this ZZ plant:

It's the last remnant of a good-sized plant I got a few years ago and completely neglected -- its single stalk healthy but all alone.

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A different look at catalogs

Chances are if you garden you get garden-related catalogs in the mail. This is a result of either buying seeds or plants via mail-order (or Internet), subscribing to a gardening magazine of some sort, living in a house whose previous owners gardened, or just being "lucky". I don't know if the feeling is universal, but I really enjoy getting these catalogs, especially since many of them come during the coldest, snowiest, "when can I start gardening again" days of winter.

Seed company catalogs are the most prevalent, but there are also many nurseries producing plant catalogs, as well as garden supply and tool catalogs -- this post is not about what's in the catalogs though. This post is about the catalogs themselves.

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Relieving some sleet-induced stress

After our recent day of ice and sleet, of course everything was covered in it and I've posted plenty of photos of the plants that were iced. I don't suppose I need to post a photo of a snow and ice-packed driveway, as pretty much everybody either knows what that's like, or lives somewhere where they never have to care. What I didn't post about is my temporary greenhouse. You know, the one that's built from PVC pipes and plastic sheeting.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "PVC and plastic sheeting -- that sounds strong!" Then of course you start laughing. Well I'm happy to report that the greenhouse was stronger than expected, and the other day I removed the 2" of ice and sleet from its roof.

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I started some seeds earlier than I thought

Although most of my seedlings won't be started for a while, I'll be starting some seeds soon (mid-to-late February) for the plants that take a while to get going, like Cardoon. Little did I know that my garden had other plans.

It decided that I needed to be growing some seedlings now!

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Another look at ice

I really wasn't planning on posting about ice again today, but on this crisp, cold morning the sunlight was just hitting the garden right. Everything sparkling, a thousand tiny suns. I just had to grab the camera and see what I could capture.

For the most part these were taken through the windows, but I actually went outside for a couple of them.

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$@#& Snow!

Although St. Louis was spared from the extreme snowfall that hit much of the country yesterday -- we just got a couple of inches of sleet at my house, with a couple of inches of super-fluffy snow on top -- snowfall severity is really relative, isn't it? A couple of inches of snow in Chicago is just a heavy frost, while the same amount in Atlanta means school closings and multi-car accidents.

The same goes for size. A few inches of snow and we humans are wondering if it's worth the effort of putting on boots, while for some other creatures it changes everything.

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I like this ice.

The front edge of a huge winter storm that was forecast to produce blizzard conditions in St. Louis came through today and coated everything in ice. As a grower of plants that don't necessarily enjoy being weighed down and stressed to the breaking point I'm not particularly fond of ice in general.

I do love looking at it though, especially up close.

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Amazingly, time to cut the grass

When I was growing up in suburban Chicago, the only summer chore we had that was even remotely garden-related was cutting the grass. Maybe you call it "mowing the lawn". Whatever. The act of pushing a mower over the turf grass that covered your yard. Not a favorite activity of pretty much any kid. I remember only two things about cutting the grass in the summers of my youth: the self-propelled mower with the handle that would actually fold over the top of the mower if you pushed too fast (how did I never lose any toes?), and the after-mowing reward of an ice-cold glass bottle of RC Cola in the almost-as-cold basement in front of the Cubs game on TV.

All of that has almost nothing to do with today's gardening project, except that grass is involved. And cutting. Not turf grass though -- ornamental "purple fountain grass". In fact, the small plants that I've been overwintering. They're thriving now, as I expected.

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