I'm starting to plan my summer garden. As anyone who gardens knows, this consists of getting glossy catalogs with beautiful and fascinating plants, ordering the seeds. planting them, and becoming disappointed that one's results are not the same as in the catalogs. In my opinion, all catalogs should have "Your Results May Vary" in fine print next to the pictures.
I wish I had a warm greenhouse to spend the winter in. Instead, I have a magnificent grow room in the basement with shelves and fluorescent lights and heat pads. Not quite as nice as a greenhouse, but it's mine. I sometimes worry that I'm going to have my tomato plants confiscated by DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency, for my foreign friends). I've already been visited by an agent of the USDA (US Department of Agriculture, for all my foreign friends), who confiscated some seeds I could have sworn were legal in the US.
I'm just beginning seed-starting season. It's too early to start most seeds, but I have a few seeds with -- well, advanced skill requirements, such as "Violets: warm stratify for 60-120 days, then cold stratify for two weeks, then plant." I hope 60 days is enough warm stratifying, because I don't want to have to wait till September to plant them. So the cold stratifying seeds (yucca, semi-wild rose) are in the refrigerator in dampened peat moss, the warm stratifying seeds are in the grow room, and I'm waiting a couple more weeks to plant my first seeds.
If past years are an indicator, I will have everything from abject failure to stunning success to "why the heck did I do that?" An example of the latter was the perilla that I planted in a 72-cell mini-trainer (which I will not use again, even though I've used them for years) --they got nine inches tall in a root ball that grew out the bottom of the one-tablespoon sized root pot, and all the roots tangled. So I had One big 72-stemmed perilla that lacked leaves on the bottom six inches of the stems and that I coiuldn't get out of the pots. Note to self: You don't need that much perilla. Also note to self: bigger start pots and transplanting sooner.
I'll tell you more about the secret of my garden later.
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