Winter one more time?  

If you don’t like the weather here in Minnesota just wait a day or two it will change.  Today’s high of 69 with a chance of thunderstorms and winds at 25 mph, rain after 4pm.  Tomorrow, rain possible mixed with SNOW.  Temperatures falling to around 40 by 10am.  Wednesday night, rain and SNOW, becoming all SNOW after 1 am.  New SNOW ACCUMULATION of 1 to 2 inches possible. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!   Seriously this isn’t funny anymore.  Who can I talk to about this?  As much as old man winter doesn’t seem to want to leave the party, mother earth needs to explain the situation to him.  Do you think he’s gone senile? 

59 milk jugs & 22 misc container

So when winter refuses to leave the party when he should what do gardener’s in Minnesota do to keep themselves sane?  This year I Winter Sow.  Sow Digging it Meredith, turned me on to it this winter, and I have gone crazy!   My husband was complaining this winter when I was hanging around the street corners asking for milk jugs, but he’s starting to see the benefits.   With today's weather forecast an as it is April 30th, I am very glad I found winter sowing.  Sow Digging it Meredith knows a lot more about it than I do, and is really a good source of one on one information and wrote a bit about in earlier.  

One of the great things about Winter Sowing is once the snow is gone, the neighbors and the neighbor kids are over to see what going on.  I have had more than on little girl ask me if she can help me plant the flowers.  The boys well they just want to know if I'll need toads this year.  They have neighborhood toad hunts for my garden, you have not seen anything until you've seen a several ice cream pails full of toads.  Luckly, for them I live pretty close to the pond.  So even though it a week day, the kids saw me out moving my jugs off the grass (I’m starting to kill it) and onto my driveway.  They were walking to the bus, and lucky me I suddenly had lots of helping hands and questions.  “Will the snow hurt the plants?”  I don’t thinks so but I hope not.  “Did you drink all this milk?”  Nope, you guys did.  “Are you going to have tomatoes again this summer?”  Yes, I should have lots of tomatoes to share.  “Are you going to need the toads to help?”  Yes, I am. 

So don’t despair, Summer is on its way!  In the meantime as Rebel is telling me now, “Mom, get off the computer.  Let’s go outside” 

Indoor herbs

I experimented this year past by transplanting herbs from my summer garden into pots. I placed the following herbs in the same pot and found not only did they make it through the winter, but they grew and flowered. Sage, Rosemary, Mexican oregano.
The different growing habits complimented each herb. The culinary advantage of using just picked herbs all winter has spoiled my taste buds. I will put them back into the garden this summer. I wonder how long I can recycle these same herbs?

Winter Sowing Jugs 4/11/2013

So where is Serial Tiller Pat?  

So, did I fall off the end of the earth/garden?  No, I’ve actually have been a busy ole lady in the garden.  Well not the real garden, but getting my winter gardening issues ready to be put to bed for the summer.  Huh?  One of the things I do to get me through the long Minnesota Winters is belong to a Garden Club.  I actually belong to the Champlin Garden Club (which is my cities garden club); however there are more garden clubs to belong to then there are weeds in a first year garden plot.  There are community Garden Clubs, there are Garden Clubs for Ponds, Garden Clubs for Rose growers, there are County Garden Clubs and there are State Garden Clubs.  If you are interested in something specific they got it!

What do we do at the Champlin Garden Club?  Well, we met from August through April once a month.  At the monthly meeting we have guest speakers who talk about a variety of topics.  We have had speakers on “Planning, Planting & Tending a Rain Garden”, “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT EATS?”, “Orange Punch” and my favorite  “Top Ten Gardening Mistakes”, by speaker Don Englebretson.  All of them were informative; some had more useable information for me than others.  But learning is never a waste of time, and I learned a lot from all the speakers. 

We also do Community Work.  I enjoy the community work but with my job I’m not always sure I can get certain dates off, so volunteering gets to be a bit of a challenge for me at times.  Never one not to carry my share of the load, I tend to volunteer for the organizing part of things and hope I can get time off to do the fun stuff.  Our Club has about 30-40 members and have several projects this year.  They have their 23^rd Annual Plant sale to raise funds for community projects, we are in charge of decorating the Cities Christmas Trees, we take care of Doris Kemp Park and this year we are doing our inaugural Champlin Garden Tour during Father Hennepin days. 

I’m a part of the Champlin Garden Tour Committee and I’ve seen the picture of the gardens on the tour, and all I can say is WOW!  These are truly inspirational gardens that make you want to step up your game and do more!  Now, I’m a vegetable gardener at heart amongst flower gardeners for the most part, and a weed is a weed is a weed.  But I think I could benefit from incorporating both ideologies into my backyard.  With the snowfall still on its way, I am continuing to look out my windows and plan, draw and envision my backyard piece of paradise and the front yard will be next year.  I would encourage everyone to look into joining a garden club; it has been a great educational experience as well as an inspirational experience.  Most Garden Clubs do not meet in the summer (because we all in the garden) but as you spend time in your garden this year.   There is so much more we can all learn and so much more we can teach each other!  

Container Gardening/ Make your own

I love all the different methods of growing vegetables in containers. I'm not a real fan of all the containers used. its okay to use buckets or Rubbermaid containers but why do they have to be so unattractive? I say they don't. see the examples of containers I made below. The buckets ,(2 for $5 Menard's) were covered with duck tape. I removed the vendor markings with nail polish remover (acetate) so I could stencil some sort of design on them but changed my mind. the point is you can be as creative as you want.
Pdf flyer used to create my self watering container pictured below.