This is a tough time of year for us gardeners in New England. The anticipation of the next growing season is at its peek right about now in late February. The smallest little things like comparing sunrise/sunset data on the calendar, or simply observing the angle of the sun and how it now shines through certain windows keeps me optimistic that Spring may indeed get here one day.
The seed catalogs keep me going too. The first catalogs to arrive in the mail amazed me by showing up just before New Years Day! Some seed companies have been resent 3 times since, promising better & cheaper bargains each time.
I need to be careful not to over buy though. Being surrounded by snow and frozen tundra; very little color other than white snow and bleak grayish mountains, the catalogs explode with color! It's easy to get starry-eyed viewing rainbows of tomatoes, greens, flowers, herbs & more.
I can't believe that there has been so much back & forth with rain storms and snow storms this season. The snow has taken over for the time being, with it nearly to the top of the fence of one of the herb gardens.
I need to be careful not to over buy though. Being surrounded by snow and frozen tundra; very little color other than white snow and bleak grayish mountains, the catalogs explode with color! It's easy to get starry-eyed viewing rainbows of tomatoes, greens, flowers, herbs & more.
I can't believe that there has been so much back & forth with rain storms and snow storms this season. The snow has taken over for the time being, with it nearly to the top of the fence of one of the herb gardens.
This is also the height of flu season. I believe in eating raw garlic each night and taking an AIRborne effervescent tablet each morning - this does wonders for the immune system. Which leads me to my latest catalog order...
You see, I was curious of the ingredients on the Airborne box and I read about 4 herbs that I had never heard of before; Lonicera (Japanese Honey Suckle), Schizonepeta (Japanese Catnip), Vitex Negundo (Chinese Vitex) and Isatis Tinctoria root.
Well, off I went to Google and learned all about these new plants. I then found 3 of the 4 on Richter's web site (of course I found about 5 other new plants in addition to ordering those this morning!) which is a fantastic herb resource located in Canada. Their selection is the best I've seen and they give substantially more seeds in their packets as compared to US seed catalogs.
Not much else to log for this entry, but one last note. I cut about 20 or 30 Forsythia branches for forcing indoors today. I saw a snippet about forcing on HGTV a few weekends back and decided to give it a try. If it actually works, I will share the steps that I used on this blog in the near future.
:)
You see, I was curious of the ingredients on the Airborne box and I read about 4 herbs that I had never heard of before; Lonicera (Japanese Honey Suckle), Schizonepeta (Japanese Catnip), Vitex Negundo (Chinese Vitex) and Isatis Tinctoria root.
Well, off I went to Google and learned all about these new plants. I then found 3 of the 4 on Richter's web site (of course I found about 5 other new plants in addition to ordering those this morning!) which is a fantastic herb resource located in Canada. Their selection is the best I've seen and they give substantially more seeds in their packets as compared to US seed catalogs.
Not much else to log for this entry, but one last note. I cut about 20 or 30 Forsythia branches for forcing indoors today. I saw a snippet about forcing on HGTV a few weekends back and decided to give it a try. If it actually works, I will share the steps that I used on this blog in the near future.
:)
