The Best Thing About Winter - Starting My Seeds for the Garden

The last few weeks, I've slowly begun starting seeds. Once upon a time I lived in a much smaller house, I didn't have a greenhouse/sunporch, but I did have a sliding glass door in the dining room. Every year I had an amazing kitchen garden, right outside the kitchen door. It was diverse with herbs, veggies, and cutting flowers--just like my gardens are now. My family got used to the idea that from late February through mid-May, the dining table would be covered with trays and pots of starts for that amazing kitchen garden. Yep. That's how I roll. Only now, it's the sunporch that's covered with trays and pots, and that's just fine with me. It's my baby garden, enjoying its infancy, and I can easily take care of it, my job, my family, my house, and my crafty career! My motivation is that this:

Leads to this:

And that's what I call Garden Bliss. Reaching the point where I have enough fruit on the vines that I am able to fresh-preserve, toss a salad, make bruschetta every night, and have a good ole bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich that tastes like heaven! That's why I encourage everyone, whether they've dabbled in gardening or don't know a hoe from a shovel, to buy a few packs of seeds, get a couple of seed starting trays from Wal-Mart, and then all you have to do is fill the tray with warm water, the pods swell up, stick a seed in each one, put the clear plastic cover on it, and set it somewhere warm (even your dryer--it doesn't need the sun yet). When the starts pop up and you see those little green babies, take the lid off, and put it in front of a south-facing sunny window. Come May, if you don't have a garden, plant it in the sun in a big pot outside when the danger of frost has passed.

You could end up with fresh bowls of tomatoes and bunches of basil to enjoy all season. I live in the Ozarks, and this past season, I was picking tomatoes, herbs, flowers, squash and pumpkins right through November!

A bowl of bliss.

Eat, Write, Dream, Stitch, Grow