The Promises of Spring

Gardening has become a real obsession of mine over the past decade. What started as a hobby of starting some seeds for a vegetable garden has grown into a yearly ritual of spending the dark winter months preparing for the return of the sun and all the wonders of the plant world.

For the first time in several years I'm not doing any vegetable starts. The seeds I have on hand produced acceptable plants last year but feel like they have aged out of having the real vigor needed for our short warm season. I don't feel like buying new ones and its already past when I would need to start pepper seeds so I'm opting to just pick up vegetable starts when the soil outside is already warm enough for them. They just got in the way and attracted too many shield bugs and black fly anyway.

This winter I've devoted myself to perennial industry. Now that I'll be a returning gardener in the Vanwa community garden program I get priority for securing a plot this year and I plan on using it for my dahlia program. If I can get two plots all the better (there were still a few abandoned plots last year even after I took over the one I managed to get late in the season.)

Im switching up my seed starting program too. Instead of using 72 cell plug trays to start I'm doing larger 4x4 germination trays and then transplanting successful seedlings into the plug cells or 2x2 pots. We'll see how it goes. My goal is to have a full 10x20ft dahlia gardens worth of healthy young plants ready when the community gardens open in April.

The other perennials I have going are cuttings of mahonias I took in fall that I'm rooting and attempting to grow in to vigorous plants to be planted out in shady areas of our yard in May. I have the go-ahead to take over as much of the front lawn as I wish (as long as I leave some paths) with flowers and shrubs and I'm running with it. Many of my "rejected but still pretty" dahlias from last season ended up in new garden beds in the front yard and I want to fill them out with native plants and flowers for a real pollinator haven.

To fill out the remaining beds I've been selecting a variety of native tall flowers. Nettle Leaf Horsemint which is an oversized kind of Agastache, Farewell to Spring, Sea Thrift, Sea Blush, Blanket Flower, and Western Coneflower.

One of the things I'm also trying to improve this year is labeling my seedlings. I've done stick in tags and other forms in previous years but at some point I just give up on labels and start guessing based on how they look. This year though I have a capable laser printer which I'm using to print up labels I can trim on a cheap-o paper cutter and label as needed.

So far its working.

I would love to figure out how to recoup the funds I put into this "hobby" but trying to figure out local sales is rough or breaking into the garden show scene... not that I am too eager to go back into the convention circuit.

Maybe I can figure out a little stand.