My March plans had initially included the beginning of my sunchoke harvest next week and putting in the first rows of peas mid-month... which could easily still happen. Given that we're getting our best snowfall of the year right now, that may be postponed... or require a little top-undressing before I get to the harvesting part. Sunchokes are a remarkably forgiving crop, but not necessarily worth shoveling snow to harvest, and I have no delivery obligations till Easter week-end. It's truly spring in the hoop houses now, but even they will be a bit cool come Sunday.

Well, you know, I HAD all kinds of plans. Between the weather conditions, and the kitty cat who somehow got tangled up in the barbed wire fence (necessitating a trip to the vet), my plans went all to pieces. The kitty is going to be fine and I can plant today in the (hopefully) better weather conditions. The wind was so fierce, though, that I didn't plant a darn thing outside or in containers. By 3 p.m., it was 83.3 degrees here at our house, the wind was blowing like crazy (although it would, in fact, get drastically worse after dark) and we had 10% humidity. I'm going to try today to get the plants into the pots, but might not plant into the ground until Thursday. It depends on what the wind is doing. I can't put them in the ground if the winds are too high or the winds will beat them to death in just a couple of hours. Young plants are very prone to wind damage. Since I couldn't work outside, I "potted up" tiny tomato plants from their peat pellets (6 to 16 plants per pellet) to small Dixie cups filled with dirt. I got 40 or 50 done in between monitoring the fires and keeping DH and DS apprised of the temp/humdity/wind speed, etc. I also carried out all my baby plants and let them get a few hours of real sunlight during the morning hours BEFORE the worst of the winds arrived. Then, I carried them onto the screened-in back porch, where they had filtered sun, and finally I carried them back inside to the plant shelf shortly before sunset. Today I also hope to pot up basils and peppers into their paper cups as they are outgrowing their peat pellets. Dawn

YEA! I just bought Chamomile tea - so that item is checked off the list for now, I pretty much have everything but the Thermometer and a marking pen. I'll be putting the set up together myself, so figure it will at least be an all day project. Dawn, yeah, I usually put my seed trays on top of the fridge until they germinate. Right after I see a few pop up, I move it to the lights and let the rest follow suit. I have grown African Violets before, and they are also easy to propagate from leaf cuttings. Regular AVs are small plants (can get pretty wide), but there are also some very small, tiny even, AVs that are super cute. As a former avid Begonia grower, I also used to grow a lot of them under lights, growing from seed (very tiny, dust-like seeds), and some will root via leaf cuttings like the AVs, pieces of rhizome for the Rhizomatous varieties, and stem cuttings from the canes, shrubs, semps, Rex (which I don't grow because they are just more finicky than I care to deal with), thick-stemmed, a few tuberous (not the large-flowering ones that like to grow in the cooler Northern climes). I used to show my begonias at the local, regional, and national show levels. But that is a very long time ago. I recall one of the entries was a fish tank in which I put plants I had grown from seed - about 10 different ones, that were meant for a high humidity environment, and it was gorgeous. I may get back into some begonias in a very small way. Begonias of this category really do like light gardens because they are shade loving plants and lights don't emit anything close to the intensity of outdoor sunlight. There is a local begonia show around March or April here in the city, of the Barkley Branch of the American Begonia Society, and they always have a plant sale along with it. If I can remember, I may go and p/u some there. The small Rhizomatous are better suited to light gardening. The fluorescent tubes that come with the garden are T-5s. Apparently this is a good blend of the red and blue spectrums for good growth. Mmmmmmmm, a Mesclun or microgreens mix sounds very, very good. Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I am thrilled - I always put everyone else in the family first - I don't buy clothes or shoes, except when I have to, or anything special, other than my coffee beans, so it's kind of a guilty pleasure I'm indulging in. But, life is short, and it only took be approx. 30 years to make the decision to go for it. I'm sure I have tons of seed in my "seed box" that will be suited for growing this time of year. I'm attaching a link to an image of several different rhizomatous begonia leaves just to show that there are so many more types of them than what we see used as bedding plats. Susan Here is a link that might be useful:

Allison, I love your laundry room! I wish I had a bigger laundry room but just having one across from my bedroom and not in a tiny little closet and not having to go to the laundry mat is one of the nice features that sold me on the townhouse I bought a little less than 11 years ago. Where are your hampers? I just love your taste of knowing where everything should be in a room to create rooms with both class and beauty. I just bought two white wicker hampers with two compartments at Fran's Wicker & Rattan Furniture Store and were amazed at the just about no smell. They have velcro cotton drawstring bags inside and are very well sealed. I aired them out for a week so they will have no smell at all. I am glad I went with such pretty hampers that were reasonably priced for the quality. Now I have to take the suggestions I got from others on making the rest of the room nice when I have time.