After a trip to the market today for veggies, duck eggs, meat for Brian and cheese for me (all local, or at least local-ish… I admit we did pick up some American strawberries… *ahem*), we made our first stop of the year at one of the nurseries on the outside of town. Pickings were admittedly slim, but we found some baby lavender plants (we only bought two, as I’m still hoping to find a good supply of different varieties of lavender seeds this year; we haven’t gone to the OSC store, but if worse comes to worst, I’ll buy them online from them. Shopping online makes me nervous, but lavender is important stuff!) and a whole bunch of OSC vegetable seeds.
Which, of course, meant that I immediately had to start a new batch of seedlings, using my Jiffy Greenhouse. This is my second attempt at mini-greenhousing… my first went reasonably well, but I’ve learned a few lessons from the first one:
1. Leave the poor things alone to sprout. Prodding at them isn’t going to make them sprout faster. (with apologies to the chives I accidentally unseeded, which ended up growing in a small clump of dirt that had fallen out, and which promptly died)
2. When the instructions say, “sow 2 – 3 seeds per pellet”, sow 2 – 3 seeds per pellet. (with apologies to all the plants that I overcrowded in the early stages, many of which promptly died)
3. When the instructions say, “do not over water”, don’t over water. (with apologies to the rosemary seedling I over watered, which promptly died)
4. Finally, when the instructions say, “gradually expose to full sunlight”, they don’t mean stick it in your sunroom for a full day, they mean gradually expose to full sunlight. (my apologies to both the oregano and dill plants, which are apparently the most tender in their youth. Those plants, incidentally, promptly died)
And so, actually following the instructions properly this time, I sowed bell pepper, broccoli, and leeks from my veggie seeds (the rest are to be sown directly outside, and I think I’ve learned something about following directions…), and sowed a second batch of thyme, oregano, sweet basil, rosemary, Italian parsley, curly parsley, and peppermint (depending on the plant, either due to the delicate state of the remaining plants or due to my percieved demand).
See?
As well, I learned something else very important in my gardening adventures of the last few days: if you’re going to be doing a gardening job that takes several hours, such as digging up an entire patch for your herb garden, wear sunscreen. And a hat. And cover yourself. It doesn’t matter if you *think* you’re only going to be out there for an hour at mid-morning. If you’re me, or at least like me, you’ll find yourself out there at mid-afternoon, not realising how much sun you’ve got, not realising how late it is, thinking “I’ll go inside in five more minutes… just one more root clump… I’m almost done, almost…”.
Then you’ll look like this:
And it will hurt. And your husband will laugh at you. It will also re-activate the really severe cold/throat thing that you thought you were almost over.
That last bit of grumping was meant as a PSA. Aside from my enjoying the odd bout of whining, the sun really is stronger than you think at this time of year. Please, do protect yourself.
