Wintersowing and playing with the plants on the light rack. I refreshed the soil in many of my containers down there this morning. I was having problems with the soil holding moisture. Some containers would dry out overnight while others would remain wet for days. I unpotted all of the pineapple sage and replanted it in very good fluffy soil. I'll take cuttings in another few days to increase my bounty.

I'm still a month away from starting tomato seeds. Last year I started too early. I want to have smaller transplants for the garden this year. Snow peas and cabbages have already been sown.

The ground here is so wet, it's impossible to dig or do anything. I need a break from rain and ice and cold weather. Soon, I hope.

I used to do a fair bit of seed starting but not so much the past few years as I only need to start a few annuals for planters and some tomatoes. I like to have winter garden related things on the go though. Some of the projects from the past few years include: 2006 - building a planter bench; 2007 - priming and painting the trim for the new shed so when the trim was installed in the spring, all the painting was done except for filling and painting nail holes; 2008 - planning changes to the backyard to create the rectangular lawn; 2009 - took the Landscape Design 1 course through the University of Guelph's Open Learning program (correspondence courses operated over the Internet). I would have like to take another course this winter but health issues have dictated no major projects for the winter. I am hoping that by mid-late March I'll be able to start building some tripod clematis supports I've got planned.

I've been wintersowing and also repotting my house plants. I've spent a great deal of time on GW reading everything I can and reading lots of gardening magazines. Tonight I will take a break from reading to watch LOST. Looking forward to getting my peas, lettuce and spinach into the garden next month.

I just bought my seed starting equipment. I will be washing my pots. Set up my lighting units. And then I'll be ready to begin my seeds in March.

I'll place my orders for plants.

I'm still pretty new to gardening, so I've been getting books from the library, asking questions on the GW, ordering seeds (lots of seeds) and some roses :)

I've been planning new garden spaces, which entails going through lots of graph paper and staring out the window for long periods of time. When I do get outside, I walk around measuring spaces, or take a tour of the garden with our little black kitty Jasmine and check to see if last year's roses are still in one piece. She's a great helper and follows me everywhere, as I mutter to myself about putting more hay around the plants (LOL)

She's a sweet little kitty that got dumped off by our house and decided to stay. My four year-old niece saw the kitty smelling a plant by the porch last year. She asked the name of the plant and I told her it was Jasmine, which she thought was pretty, so she named the kitty Jasmine :)

Unfortunately I have no proper place with enough sun (or space to set up lights) to start seeds. From November to March I basically take a break because once Spring has sprung the outside work begins. I go out with friends, play music and enjoy social events more during the cold months when I have more time.

I'm planning to teach myself stone carving (mainly letter cutting) this summer, so I bought some tools and a really good instruction book this winter and have been reading up on the subject. No studio to work in so I have to wait for warmer weather to work on stones outside.

Wintersowing here, potting up hellebores already started from seed, potting up erodiums started from seed and babying a seedling that developed from a seed that came off a Betty Corning clematis plant. Since Betty Corning is sterile (has no pollen), it had to be pollen from another clematis that pollinated her. Also have four or five baggies of clematis seeds going and am set to receive two more types of erodium seeds that a friend has obtained from a seed swapping organization that she has belongs to. Purchasing seed for those plants that I start in the traditional manner. Getting outside when it is not snowing, sleeting, or raining and keeping up with the weeding. Trimming shrubs/plants/trees that need so. Reading/perusing gardening catalogs for those plants that I will order.

I am also wintersowing. It really has helped me keep from being sad this winter! And i kinda still need a few more weeks to finish , so im not whining about when is spring coming!
I also have been working on plans for the garden. My dh and i are hoping to have a little one by the end of the year (or at least be expecting one) so i feel this need to expand my beds and get as much done as possible, so next year will be a little less work. (in the garden , that is!) I also have been buying garden ornaments for the new beds. I treated myself to a pricey windchime that is hand tuned and reminds me of distant church bells. I also got the cutest rabbit statue with a butterfly on his nose! And ive been scoping out fairys to make a fairy garden.
And looking for little garden things online. I love to hide little statues and things amoung the plants.
This winter has actually been kinda fun! I love that this board is still active and full of ideas!

I come to GardenForum to chat it up! I don't have as much time to spend on the computer when the weather breaks. I find that describing one of my gardens or ideas here makes it concrete or points out flaws to me. You are all so therapeutic. Will you bill me later?!

Mickie

I winter sow, and read seed catalogs, do research, read garden books and do handicrafts.

I make many lists of perennials, shrubs and trees I would like for the upcoming season. Then put it down. Go back to it 2 weeks later and cross off half because I realize how broke I would be. Go back 2 weeks later and cross off another half, etc. etc....LOL! I love perusing websites (most I've bookmarked after hearing about them on GW) and making LONG lists of cool stuff I want to try. But then have to come back into reality. Oh, I hope I win Powerball tonight!!

I also plan what public gardens and nurseries new to me I would like to visit for the upcoming season. Planning a trip to a couple nurseries in VT this year which should be fun!

I started doing some wintersowing for the first time and hope to be able to start some seeds inside too. Thanks to CMK I have a bunch more varieties to start!

And of course this group is great to chase away the winter blues! Especially when folks post pictures of things starting to pop in their gardens already!! Reminds me that spring IS coming to a garden near me!

LL-that's a sweet story about your kitty Jasmine.

Yes, it is therapeutic on this forum, and no, no bill - we will trade treatment for plants!!!! lol. I am fortunate in this house to have a room of lots windows that I have turned into a 'plant room'. I have set up grow lights, and heat pads for starting seeds and slips. Everything is on timers. I am fighting the urge to start seeds, as I will end up with skinny, 4' tomato plants, like last year. I will wintersow, slip, etc. to make up for the lack of seedlings.
Then I seed like mad!!!

Nancy.

Nancy.

I bought probably 20 gardening books and have been reading. Planning. I try to plan a new area every year. I started composting (again) with renewed committment. But mostly I have been working in the house - making new drapes, re-organizing my kitchen, etc. Even took a cooking class! But come spring, I'll be more than glad to put up my sewing machine for my gardening gloves!

I've been spending my time planning a new bed here and deciding on the right plants for it. It's kind of nice to do it over the winter because you have so much time to alter plans a few times.
Cher

Well usually I'm outside on days when its warm enough. I start new beds or like this year I'm still adding to the lasagna bed I started in the fall. However it has been so wet and the ground is so soggy and with more rain for Fri. who knows when I can get back out there to do anything. I still have a shrub to plant as it was the last one I didn't get too before all the rain came that we've had.

This year I am also trying winter sowing.

I also plan for all the things I want to do in this upcoming year in the garden.

I like a break from gardening but only about 2-3 months and then I'm longing for it again.
~Meghan

I would love to start a worm culture to compost kitchen scraps - but my husband will not want this. Already he freaks out at the thought of mice and other creatures that my creep in the house. He has good reasoning though.

What do I do? I pacify myself with pics of last years garden glory, run around with Christmas gift cards burning a hole in my pocket and no plants yet to spend them on, collect seed packets when the stores put them out (always way more than I can handle to plant), haunt thrift stores for garden related items, play nursemaid to sick looking plants I'm trying to CPR thru the winter indoors, scour tv program guides for nonexistent gardening shows and go to bed with garden plans spinning in my head! LOL
Jen

Thyme- Thank you :)

Jen- I'm with you on the nonexistent gardening shows...whatever happened to the "G" in HGTV....Home and GARDEN television??? I think it's become the "how to buy a new house" television network (LOL)

This is an interesting subject.

I always plant fresh daylily seeds that I have collected and put them under lights on the back porch. It is fun to watch them grow and see what they turn out to be. They are never quite the same as the mother plant, but they are beautiful to me....a long wait is involved but I am here anyway so I just do a nursery row in the garden and wait.

I did finally sort and clean out my many shoe boxes of seeds and list them on a spreadsheet. Now I MUST MAKE myself pitch some of the oldest ones. I know they are not good.

Thyme, I hope you win too! I do the same thing. I make lots of lists from various nurseries and then delete them. I remind myself that I am cutting back.....not expanding. I do not need one of everything! So I will restrain myself and just divide what I have. I still long for an Indian Giver daylily though.

I spend lots of time on the internet visiting various forums and Blogs. I can kill a day doing that.

I have worked on a plan for a new orchard/open pollinated corn area that will have to be broken this spring. I have ordered the fruit trees and the corn and squash so it must get done! DH will help me. I am planning an area 80 by 60 feet at first and will slowly expand it for the orchard.

Woody, I need some more clematis supports. I would be very interested in seeing your plans.

Non garden related: I knit, crochet, cook and read a lot.

Sorry to be so long winded.

glenda

I know what you mean about HGTV---very few shows on gardening anymore. The only time I see anything on gardening is on a Saturday morning when I'm WORKING in my garden.

I vote they start an all-gardening television network! LOL

Lavender_lass, I have to agree with you about HGTV. What a disappointment. I completely agree with you, if I wanted to buy a new house or move to another country I would love that channel, but the G has just about disappeared. Although, I have to admit, I would love for Ahmed and his team to come to my house and redo my backyard and start over again! I always look for him at my local big box stores, but he's never there. Sigh!
Carol

Glenda - OK - these are first draft drawings...

A 15"x 6' and and a 20" x 8' column; The triangles are actually copper wire running through screw-eyes so the clematis would have something to wrap their petioles around for support:
{{gwi:640244}}

This one is a tuteur 3' x 8'. The diagonals are intended to be 1/4" copper pipes - that should be a small enough diameter for the clematis to latch onto I think...
{{gwi:640245}}

I'm still working out construction details re support, bracing, etc. The columns would probably be painted white and the tuteur a mid-dark olive green. The colums are intended for a narrow bed against the garage, which is why they are so narrow - the bed is only 2' deep!

We haven't had as much snow this winter so DH and I walked out and measured our entire new garden area so I can plan it. He's made a site plan and when a few more ideas have jelled I'll put them to paper. A couple of weeks ago we dumped 20 bags of leaves (which I had saved for compost) on one of the big beds as insulation where the snow had completely melted. I may have to rake them up later but I'll see what it looks like in May. We also went to the lumber mill and shoveled a pick-up load of fine wood shavings which I'll use to make paths and for compost/mulch. Will need many more but it's a start. We compost all year altho I haven't turned it, just added to it. I nearly went out today to start marking paths but decided to wait til more snow thaws.

I've been reading, planning, and dreaming about how to design my new garden and renovate the old. I don't do wintersowing or sow seeds inside any more as we're not home enough to tend them. I'm planning our April trip and will visit a few nurseries then, mostly for fun. I'm trying to decide which perennial seeds I'll direct sow but there are so many it's difficult to choose. I hope I've learned by experience not to plan to do too much or buy too many seeds! I'm no longer trying to be Super-Garden-Woman! LOL Just plodding along til it gets done.

I have other interests besides gardening so winter is a time for other hobbies altho gardening is never far from my thoughts. I've taken out many gardening related books from the library. Other years I've made glass garden totems and glass flowers but have so many I'm not doing that this winter.

So I guess I'm in semi-hibernation as far as gardening is concerned for another couple of months!

Ladies, anyone feeling deprived of garden shows should check out youtube. You'll find tons of show online. Hope at least it will ease the pain.

You know what I love to do during spring is to build my tutuers or my trellis out of bamboo. I buy lots of bamboo sticks and twine and form many interesting shapes with these things. I also get those old bottle caps or perhaps small pots which I would use to cap the top of the bamboo. I get my inspiration looking at japanese bamboo fencing styles. So each year I get to experiment with new styles.

I just started to sort out my stash of seeds, clean out my gardening kit, set up my seed trays, test my lights. In a couple of weeks I will start off my seeds.

thyme2dig, your post made me laugh because I sort of do the same thing. :)

I make lots of lists of all the plants I want, narrow the list as time goes by; then I buy what is on my "most important" list.

I read and reread everything I can on cottage gardening and general gardening.

I also walk around my borders when the weather is nice and plan for spring.

I have drafted my front yard and planned my "new and improved" garden. Boy do I have my work cut out for me starting next week!

And lastly and most recently, I have been enjoying coming on this forum and interacting with other cottage gardeners. =)

This is the time of year I wish we could import all you frozen-ground gardeners to come out here and help. December-March is one of the busiest times of year in coastal California. Wet leaves to rake, bushes to prune, weeds to pull, citrus fruit to pick, new plants to put in, etc. etc. etc.

New growth is already appearing on the roses which were pruned back just recently, near the end of January. The freesias are a month ahead of themselves - we had an early hard rain in October that woke things up - so those flower stalks have just begun to raise their heads. It'll be another couple of weeks before they start to open, though. Freesias are my favorite spring flower - fragrant and return reliably!

Last year I grew a bunch of freesias in a pot and didn't realize the colors would cross. They were supposed to be neat waves of red, white and purple. But some of the purple became streaked with white, sort of odd but pretty:
{{gwi:640246}}

Goodness knows what the freesias will look like this year, LOL. If I get anything interesting in the color mixing, I'll post a 2010 photo in a month or so.

Ianna, I can't believe I never even thought about going onto YouTube to check out garden videos. For kicks I put in Chanticleer which is a garden in PA I visited this past summer and there were plenty of short videos. What a great idea! Thanks for sharing.

Floweryearth, well, I pared down my list and placed my online orders. I had sworn off mail order just because I have some really good local nurseries and I do prefer to support the locals, but I did find some cool stuff that I had been on a quest for over the past couple of years so I couldn't help myself. Even when it's snowing outside, shopping for plants online somehow makes it all better!!!

Jkom51, I'll take you up on your offer if we get to eat the fresh citrus we pick!! LOL!!

Woodyoak, thanks for posting your plans and detailed info. What a couple of very nice ideas you have. I love your use of the copper. My DH and I aren't very handy...but my dad is! I might have to sign him up for this project.

Yes, woodyoak, your projects look gorgeous from the drawings! Please post a photo or two when you get them done, so all of us can admire them!

I got outside today and pulled the leaves back from the perennial bed. I'm hoping to dry the soil out a bit over the next few days with the warmer weather we're going to have. By Sunday, we'll be back in the 60s. It won't last long, but it's better than the 30s.

jkom51 - I envy you having outdoor freesias which return each year. They are a greenhouse treat where I live.

You said, "Last year I grew a bunch of freesias in a pot and didn't realize the colors would cross". Did you plant freesia corms? If so the colours couldn't 'cross' - that can only happen if you are using seed ie the result of sexual reproduction. Corms are vegetative reproduction and can only produce clones of their parents. Either the purple corms were not from pure purple freesias or possibly there has been some virus introduced. This happens with tulips - it's how the Rembrandt types appear but I'm not sure if it happens with freesias.

flora, it could be a virus, I don't know. But these are freesias which had been in the ground for several years, in a clump of corms that was getting larger over time. I have them in several places but this group was getting large enough that bigger plants were putting too much shade over it.

Although I pick most of the freesias for the vase, I always miss a few here and there. So it may be possible a few of them hybridized, and when I dug up the clump to put it in the pot, some of the color crosses were included.

According to a search on the web, freesias are very easily raised from seed, so after the corms have been in the ground for over five years it wouldn't be surprising if they began crossing colors.

thyme2dig - those were firsts drafts and I'm working on changes. The tower one I'll probably substitute thin copper pipes running from top to bottom instead of the 'busy' sections of copper wire. That will keep all the main lines vertical which will give it a cleaner look. The triangular one was based on a one I drew for the LD course I took at the University of Guelph last winter. It was intended to be made from wrought iron. A couple of weeks ago I checked to see that Mario - the craftsnman who made my wrought iron arbour for me - is still is business. He is but busy until mid-March. So between now and then, I will modify the tuteur I planed for the course a bit and get him to make it for me. Here's the version I drew for the course:
{{gwi:640247}}