The Garden in January

The winter was quite mild for the last couple of months with not a lot of snow, then this past week a huge storm hit. The temperature has since been in between the single digits and lower double digits. Layers of ice covering the garden beds and howling winds have knocked over all the deer fencing that I put around the tulip beds.

Beautiful bright purple crocus bulbs that I planted in the fall have yet to peak out of the ground but I am constantly checking daily to see if they will make their way to the surface. I’m hesitant to even check on the bees because the covers have mounds of snow and ice on top of them. I will have to go in and give them some sugar patties in the next couple months in hopes they make it through this long winter.

A slew of seed catalogs have filled up the mail box but before I dove into these beautiful catalogs I had to take a moment and see what I already have in stock.

I did my own seed inventory of all the packages I had folded and taped up from previous years. I wrote down everything that I have still in my seed box from last year and all the seeds that I harvested at the end of last season.

I was so excited to go online and imagine how I can get closer to spring, however I was very shocked to see that a majority of seeds were already sold out across multiple companies in mid January already! I was reluctant to grab what I could get from those who still had what little left in stock.

Checking the mailbox almost every day, finally, a couple weeks later the seeds I ordered had arrived! I started a fire inside and sat down to organized all the brand new packages one by one. Noting the indoor start dates and which ones were direct sow. From there I organized every packet in a line up from earliest start date all the way until 2-4 weeks after the last frost.

My next step is to patiently wait until I can sow the first seeds in the line up which were eggplants (10-12 weeks before last frost).

I cannot wait to get my hands in dirt again!