Optimism and High-Altitude Gardening

I cannot tell you how much I need a break on just about every front you can imagine. So, last weekend, rather that work / write, I dealt with some family matters, played with Lilly, and got the gumption up to go ahead and plant this year’s vegetable seeds. It’s WAY early. This may be my best year yet, or my biggest flop. Only time will tell.

In 2011, we had consistently cold temperatures and even snow through Memorial Day Weekend. While everyone else already had visions of summer, I still had flannel sheets on the bed.

Like many other places in 2012, spring that looks like summer is already here. Don’t get me wrong. It’ll still be crazy cold. It’ll still snow (we hope) on the mountain. And, yes, I’ll continue to have flannel sheets on the bed for at least another month or two, but I figured I’d put last summer’s best garage sale find — a whole bunch of wall o’ water for $5 — to good use by starting all my seeds a full TWO MONTHS earlier this year.

It’s sort of like making  a little greenhouse / insulator, even in my greenhouse, which is unheated.

It’d be nice to harvest something — anything — before August.

{Check out our 2011 greenhouse harvest report.}

Observe.

best dog blog, champion of my heart, my favorite baseball cap
My favorite hat
best dog blog, champion of my heart, greenhouse photo
My double-decker greenhouse planting beds. The back half of the top is unplanted for now. The back half of the bottom has cabbage seeds, which tend to do better in the "cold."
best dog blog, champion of my heart, greenhouse photo
Much of what I plant / grow is done in pots of various sizes. I have them on the floor now, rather than the shelves to the right ... mostly because they are heavy, including the wall o' water.
best dog blog, champion of my heart, straw bale gardening photo
Once again this year, I'm planting some things in straw bales as makeshift raised beds. So far the winds have knocked the wall o' water off several times, but I have them staked now, so we'll see.

If you’re an early planter, and you see anything amiss, please let me know. I do have plastic drop cloths at the ready, if nighttime temps get crazy cold.

 

***

 

P.S. If my week doesn’t improve, there might not be any blog posts for a few days. Since I didn’t work last weekend, I’ve been behind all week. The price I pay for *trying* to do just a few things I want to do, instead of only everything I have to do.