February Goals and Other Topics

I believe I successfully signed up for a garden blogger's project set up by Mr Brown Thumb (check out my blogroll if you want to read his blog). If I did, Renee's Garden will be sending me a packet of Spitfire Nasturtiums. I'm not quite sure if I signed up in time (they only take 50 and there may be a million garden bloggers), but it will be really cool if I get a packet of seeds in the mail some day soon.

To participate in this project, I will be blogging on the first Sunday of each month about the nasturtiums. It sounds like a great idea: have garden blogger's around the country share their experiences with the same seed. Education is a great thing.


I have some good news and some bad news about my starters. The good news is that the chard and lettuce are looking good. The first true leaves of the chard are coming in and you can see the growth with each passing day. The bad news is about the basil. I torched them. Trying to create a miniature greenhouse, they got too hot, shriveled up, and died. :( So sad. Oh well, I planted them again and they should start to come up in a couple of days.

I started thinking about planting an obnoxious (my sister's favorite word) amount of starters, so much more than I could ever use myself and giving them to friends. Kind of on the lines of Johnny Appleseed, I could have plants all over Boulder. I wish I could knock on everyone's door and ask them if I could dig up part of their yard and plant a few things. Who wouldn't want fresh produce in their yard that they could enjoy??? They world would be a better place if...

I read somewhere that 90% of the energy used to cultivate crops goes towards transportation and packaging. Only 10% goes to actually growing the crops. Think about that the next time you go to the store and buy something wrapped in plastic. Even Whole Foods will shrink wrap a couple ears of (local) corn because they have found that it sells better that way. Instead of having a marketing team figure out how to sell more produce, why doesn't Whole Foods spend that energy (money) elsewhere, perhaps trying to educate people NOT to buy food wrapped in plastic?

Anyways, its almost February. Some goals that I have for this month:
-build a fence around the garden so that the eight dogs who call my front yard their home do not completely destroy the onion and garlic crop
-start more plants inside
-figure out how to utilize the cold frame better (though the chocolate mint and strawberries are loving it right now)
-gain employment, perhaps on a local farm
-read and learn more about horticulture and sustainable agriculture
-spend the month of February eating everything in the cabinets. Julia completely organized our cabinets (labels and all) and we have challenged ourselves to eat what we already have.