A Gardener's Delight
Gently quelling my buzzing excitement for 2022
After my first dormant period of gardening in over 24 seasons, I am feeling the excitement of Spring deep in my bones. With 2021 being an incredible learning year with over 100 different varieties growing in my small ten by five patio garden, I decided to be more targeted this year. 2021 was the year of the dye garden with coreopsis, yarrow, and zinnias as some top growers of the year. Unfortunately, I missed out on indigo, something I do not plan to miss out on this year.
I love gardening so much the Virgo in me actually created a catalog of what I had in stock to ensure I didn’t purchase twice. Interestingly enough, I don’t tend to purchase duplicates but I do like to have a catalog to share with close friends who are local and motivated to start a dye garden or any garden of sorts.
After a failed couple of attempts with luffa, I am trying again this year. The seeds require a lot of extra care and attention that is not customary for my personality type (I am more of a low-maintenance gardener).
If you have any gardening woes, feel free to drop a comment and I can share what I have learned through trial and error. Keep in mind, I do live in a warmer climate and in my 9b garden zone where I can pretty much grow anything.
Gardening things I love:
This is a list of my personal favorites that I keep in my stash.
Seeds
I generally seed save from the prior year, but to manage my obsession with buying gifts and trinkets on trips and never actually getting them to friends, I started purchasing seeds. They don’t take up a lot of space, and it’s wonderful to take them home and reminisce on the good travel memories.
When I do purchase seeds, I buy from these trusted sources:
Flowers are a new keen interest of mine. I never had any interest in anything that was not edible or topical until the pandemic (due to space constraints) and now I appreciate the simple joys of enjoying color in the garden, edible or not.
For purchasing established plants
California Native Plant Society Local Nurseries
Bay Area Local Nurseries (or wherever you live)
Tools
I keep things very simple with my tools. I have two small shovels, one for scooping soil and one for helping me lift roots. I have a larger shovel and I only recently purchased hand pruners after my lovely scissors were unable to cut through twigs and friends recommended I upgrade to something more substantial.
I garden glove-less as I love to feel the soil in between my fingers, but as I have started getting more and more splinters, maybe it’s time for that to shift.
Japanese Garden Scissors
Niwaki Hand Pruners
Shovel
Egg cartons (I keep all our egg cartons for seed starts)
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Well, that’s it for this week and I wish you a happy transition to Spring as many of us are getting close to our last frost dates. In the Bay Area where I live, we had a cold snap and I was so worried about my flowers but they hung in there!
Reading
The Ultimate Guide to Growing Luffa
Listening to:
Johanna Warren on repeat. She has a Patreon y’all.
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Written under a Pisces sun and an Aries moon feeling so so thankful we had some rain this week.