Two little stevia plants were peaking up out of the dirt this morning, about 4 ½ days after planting, and by this afternoon 2 tomatoes were poking up, a week after planting. Yippee!
Some of the most beautiful things in the world:
Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category
Seedlings Up!
10 March 2009Seeds
9 March 2009So no seedlings are showing their faces yet. This is always an anxious time: Did I plant them too deep? Are they rotting? Did a soil organism previously unknown to science devour them all?
Yesterday we bought a heating pad for them and I put it under the flat and plugged it in last night. It only draws 17 watts.
I hope they come up soon. Nothing symbolizes spring like tomato seedlings. And although we’ve had warm weather for a few days, an overnight low of 3°F is forecast for the day after tomorrow, so I could use a little symbolism.
Doomer Porn
6 March 2009There comes a time when you have to stop looking at the web sites and stop reading the books and blogs. Once you’ve decided that some combination of climate change, peak oil, and financial catastrophe is going to end the world as we know it, all that stuff becomes nothing more than pornography. If you believe it all, what you doing? You’re not going to get some early warning — by the time anything shows up on the net, it’s going to be too late. You’re just getting some cheap doomer thrill.
Once you believe it, it’s time to prepare. Spend your time and energy and creativity preparing, not fantasizing about apocalypse. If you keep your focus on the decline of civilization instead of preparing for the decline of civilization, you won’t be as ready as you could have been.
Your focus needs to be on getting your home and family as self-sufficient as possible, on strengthening your tribe and your tribal connections, on using only your fair share of the world’s resources (which, for us Americans, means cutting consumption by something like 90%), on keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by shutting out lights, living with less or no air conditioning, and driving as little as possible. It’s a huge task that demands all our attention.
Planting
6 March 2009Planted several different kinds of tomatoes (red cherry, yellow cherry, full-size red and yellow), peppers, stevia, echinacea yesterday. DW planted some tomatoes on 3/3.
I feel the need to plant more of everything. I want to plant big flats of seeds, not 4s or 8s of things. We should have the room this year, so why not? I want to have surplus to preserve — and that’s what it’s all about. If we don’t have surplus, we won’t have any to store for the winter.
DS4 and I saw a robin in the back yard on 3/4.
Pruning Apple Trees
1 March 2009Pruned one of the 3 big apple trees and the smaller one.
Ending and Beginning 