THE GARLIC AND RHUBARB ARE UP!

Today while I gave an early spring gardening talk at Bozeman’s Winter Farmers Market, Bob sowed tomato and pepper seeds for this year’s transplants. We’re seeding our very favorite heirloom tomato, ‘Black Sea Man’ and also ‘Bloody Butcher’ because it works for us in our garden. I simply must have ‘Sun Gold’ cherry tomato—the sweetest treat in the world, but it cracks horribly if you don’t watch the watering later in the season. We’ve had great success growing ‘Big Bertha’ sweet peppers so we’re repeating them, along with ‘New Ace’ which is blockier and ‘Pepperoncini’ for something new to try.

We figure it takes six to eight weeks to grow a good transplant of peppers and tomatoes; we’re soaking okra seeds (aids germination) and will sow them tomorrow. Bozeman is definitely not the best location to grow okra, but we like to try new things each year. Our onion and leek seedlings are doing nicely, and I’m keeping them trimmed to 4 inches until we can set them to the garden.

The foxglove is huge, and the catnip…ah the catnip. I planted some free seeds from the bottom of a container of catnip I purchased at the pet store, along with some newly purchased, fresh seed. What a huge difference. I’ve harvested enough catnip to put my cat into la-la land for a year from the fresh, and the barely living plants from the old seed hit the trash.

Our fall-planted spinach is up and looks good…we had good snowc over so we didn’t mulch or anything. The September/October-planted garlic is up and we can see it from the kitchen window. Our salsify overwintered and we’re looking forward to saving seeds from it this year as it’s a biennial. I’m anxious to see the blue flower since the only salsify I’ve ever known is a yellow-flowered weed. Edible salsify is different. The fennel overwintered nicely and I’m really looking forward to saving seeds from those plants!

The rhubarb is up, and we have our first crocus flowers this morning.

Don’t you just love it when the earth awakens in spring?

Cheryl Moore-Gough