What's Sowing On

As February comes to a close, I sit here is a bit of foggy disbelief that March will be here on Monday. The elusiveness of time throughout this pandemic has been one of the things I’ve been trying to grapple with the most. The days seem to melt into one another and when you take a moment to poke your head up to take it all in, another month went by. Mind you, this has been great for having winter go past fast around here, but not so great when I think of all the needs to get done and prepped for the new growing season.

There were a few stolen moments over the past few months where I did find some time to dream garden planning in watercolors. That photo there on the right, well, let’s just say the garden plan still looks just like that several weeks later. Such good intentions to carve out quality time to work on it, but then peskier things like attending to everything else that needs getting done got in the way. But it was still nice to dream in color for a bit, especially because the garden is still sleeping tight under a blanket of snow.

I was chatting on Instagram the other day about how proud I was that I finally curbed starting some of my seeds too early. And while I will credit willpower for my last few years of doing this (please note, it took two decades to work up said willpower), I will say, this year just is zooming past too fast for me to do anything early. It’s going to be a wing and a prayer just to get stuff done on time, and I’m sure many of you can relate.

But tis the season to get sowing, and over the past two weeks, I gathered together all my seed starting supplies and started getting set-up. The first flats of seeds sown here for my zone 5 garden, were onions and leeks. Then last weekend in went the peppers, violas, pansies, coleus and cactus (Why cactus? Because there were seeds!).

Today will be all about sowing flowers…lots and lots of flowers. I’ll be sowing flats of petunias, impatiens and foxglove. I’m going to try my hand at winter sowing in milk jugs some delphinium, larkspur and rudbeckia. Very much looking forward to giving that a go as it looks to be a great way to start many flower seeds that love a good chill prior to germinating.

So curious as to what Spring will bring…of I should really say, so curious as to when Spring will arrive. Some years it stays cold and snowy for a solid two more months, or we could have a surprise warm-up and see actual ground by the beginning of April, or we could have just one long mud season that goes until mid-May. What I am hoping for though is some form of actual Spring. The past two years it felt like we leapfrogged right over it to summer, especially when we were hitting high 90ºFs in early June, when two weeks prior it was in the 50s.

Until then, so looking forward to welcoming in March! Between the increase in beautiful daylight, and the chorus of birds changing to a joyful sing-song, there is no denying that Spring is on her way.