I thought it would be fun to give a little tour of what the garden looks like right now, in all its early spring glory. Looking around, it looks kind of like a little farm. Which, happily enough, is exactly what I want it to look like.

Coming out the side door, the first spot you see are the two beds at the back of the house. In the one closest to the house, our garlic has sprouted nicely.

Garlic!

And in the bed just in front of it, which was mostly an herb bed last year, the chives are sprouting as well.

Clearly, I did not clean up this bed yet…

Heading around the back of the house, past the other herb bed and the raspberry patch, we come to the side yard garden. The winter rye is the green stuff you see in the bed on the right. At the end of each bed, I sowed peas over the weekend. Under the low tunnel, I planted kale and broccoli starts.

The side yard garden.

Heading toward the back of the yard, the high tunnel is just in front of the garage. I ripped out the chard that had been growing in here and sowed mesclun in its spot. I also transplanted some beet and chard seedlings, and direct-sowed more beets, more spinach, and some radishes. The pots in the center hold the johnny jump- ups that I started from seed — they will go out on the front porch soon. At the back is my fig tree.

The high tunnel.

Past the high tunnel, through the picket fence, our original vegetable garden beds and composting area. The first thing you see when opening the gate are the two temporary compost bins we slapped together after the neighbor’s tree fell and crushed the wooden bins my husband made (along with our shed, our fence, and our older compost bin.) These two are overflowing after our spring clean-up.

Compost bins!

Here’s a wider view of this area. My husband and oldest daughter spent some time over the weekend repairing the raised beds and fixing and reinforcing our wooden compost bins. Now we can start loading them up! I also sowed some more spinach seed in our little cold frame in the bed on the left.

Original raised beds, compost piles, and tool area.

Here’s another view of our compost bins. These will fill up pretty quickly.

More compost bins!

So, there’s my garden at the beginning of April. Before long, it will be green, lush, and  bountiful. Right now, the groundwork is being laid for an awesome gardening season. I love this time of year.

I had to make a few substitutions. I didn’t have any buttermilk (which you’d think would make me bypass a recipe called “buttermilk donuts,” but you’d be wrong…) but I did use the trick I learned from America’s Test Kitchen’s cookbook: add just under 2 tablespoons of white vinegar to a measuring cup, fill the rest with milk until you get to the desired amount, and stir it together. Let it sit for at least five minutes at room temperature, and you’ve got a decent substitution for buttermilk. I also didn’t have nutmeg, and I knew I wanted a vanilla-ey flavor, so I added a splash of vanilla to the wet ingredients.

I also didn’t have two sizes of biscuit cutters to make the donuts. I don’t even have a single size of biscuit cutter. Again, I NEEDED these donuts, so I improvised. I usually use a juice glass to cut out my homemade biscuits, so I looked around for a cup with the three inch diameter that B.E.B. recommends in her post. Bingo! My little milkglass coffee mug was perfect.

The middle of the donut was a bit trickier. I tried a few little jar lids, but they were all too big — I needed something about an inch and a half in diameter. Then I remembered the wooden napkin rings we’ve never used because we’re not fancy enough to use napkin rings on a regular basis. Perfect!

So you cut out your donuts and donut holes until there’s no dough left. B.E.B. recommends placing the cut donuts on a parchment-lined baking sheet, but of course I was out of parchment paper. So I put some vegetable oil on a nonstick baking sheet and set them on it. It worked just fine.

I put the tray in the fridge to cool while my oil heated to 365. Then, it was time to fry. Each donut only takes about 2 minutes on each side. You just let them go until they’re golden brown and delicious. I timed the first batch, but after that I just kind of went by how they looked.

Oh. Yes.

Then you put them on a baking sheet lined with a couple layers of paper towels so the excess oil can drain. If you’re doing cinnamon sugar donuts (which was what I made for hubs and myself) then go ahead and sprinkle them with your cinnamon sugar mixture while they’re still warm.

Continue frying.

I should say here that it really bothered me to have to do one pan of donuts and holes together. Something in me wanted to do purely donut batches and purely hole batches. But it didn’t work out that way, and now you know a little about how my mind works. Scary, eh?

Around this time, the scent of cinnamon drew the kids, and they stood outside the kitchen doorway watching me for a few minutes. Emily asked, “Uh. Whatcha doin’?”

“Making donuts.”

Emily, (cue big eyes here): “You can MAKE donuts?!”

And now my kids think I am a miracle worker because I made donuts and “Timbits” (what the rest of the non-Tim Horton’s obsessed world calls “donut holes.”)

I added a vanilla glaze and sprinkles to the kids’ donuts. You just have to wait for the donut to mostly cool, just so the donuts are easier to handle.

And then….

Oh, baby.

These were so good. Crispy on the outside, moist on the inside, sweet without being cloyingly so. Perfection.

I asked Alex if he liked his.

I think he wanted to be left alone, to enjoy his donut in peace.

If you get a donut craving, you should really try this recipe. They reminded me a lot of cider mill donuts, especially once you sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on them. Go to Brown Eyed Baker’s site for her buttermilk donut recipe.

And now, I’m going to have another donut.

So, this pallet gardening trend…..

I see the allure of it. It’s cheap. It’s recycling (kind of … more on that later). It’s a way to garden vertically. It’s new and different (or it was before Pinterest got a hold of the idea). Not my thing, but that’s fine.

The first thing I thought when I saw a garden blogger growing herbs and salad greens in their pallet garden was: “Oh, I hope she has all of her shots. And an iron stomach.”

While I can kind of see wanting to grow flowers or succulents in a pallet, I would never, ever, ever grow food in one. Here’s why.

The “Oh, Ew” Factor:

Maybe it’s because I worked in retail through high school and college. I see a pallet, and here’s what I think of:

– Dirty shipping trucks (have you seen the insides of these?

– Storerooms. Some are cleaner than others, but all have their fair share of messes, spills, and other mishaps.

– Alleys. Most stores put their empty pallets in the alley. Usually next to the dumpsters. Dumpsters usually attract rats, which usually pee and poop when they’re hanging around looking for something to eat. Birds hang around stores, and poop on pallets. Think cockroaches, which stores (especially grocery stores) seem to be constantly battling to keep under control. Unfortunately, I know this from experience — my high school job was working in a grocery store. Just this point alone gives me the heebie-jeebies.

–Chemicals. Many pallets are treated with pesticides. Older pallets were treated with arsenic. More recent pallets, prior to 2010 (many of which are still around) were treated with methyl bromide (which has been shown to cause respiratory and nervous system  problems ). Kiln-dried pallets are the safest option here, if you must, because they weren’t treated with any chemicals. They are usually stamped “KD” somewhere on the pallet.

According to a study done by the National Consumer League, ten percent of pallets tested had E. Coli present, and Listeria was found on almost 3 percent of pallets. Care for a side of Listeria with your mesclun?

So, there’s that.

The “Green” Factor:

As for the “green-ness” of reusing pallets to “avoid sending them to the landfill!” which is what I often see touted as one of the great things about using them — not really. Very often, when you see pallets in an alley behind a store, they are not there to be thrown away. They are there for the shipping company to pick up to use again. Stores pay a deposit on these. If you take them without clearing it with someone in the store first, you’re stealing.

As for those pallets that are no longer strong enough to use for shipping, they often get shredded and turned into something else. Very few of them actually end up in the landfill.

The Pain in the Ass Factor:

I guess my final point here is really a personal issue rather than anything else. Pallets really don’t hold a lot of soil. You have to put some kind of liner or something in them to allow them to hold any soil at all. There’s not a whole lot of space there. In the amount of space it takes on your patio to stand up a pallet and grow a few pallet rows of mesclun or herbs, you can put a long windowbox or trough and end up with roughly the same amount of food. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

So, there you have it. I’m not the only one who thinks this is kind of a dumb idea (I feel the need to say that in my own defense against those who just think I’m being mean or whatever..). Here are other posts from around the web:

• TreeHugger: Be Careful Where You Get Your Pallets

• Cupboard’s: When Trends Attack! Shipping Pallet Edition

   

I went on a mini tirade on Twitter earlier today.  A popular blog posted about horticultural “crimes” — photos of shrubs trimmed in ways the blogger saw fit to make fun of. Posts like this bother me quite a bit. Giving the blogger the benefit of the doubt, I suppose they’re supposed to help gardeners avoid making these “mistakes” in their garden by showing them the wrong way to do it.

And maybe it’s just me, but these posts (and there’s a Facebook group, too) often just come off like a bunch of middle school jerks pointing and laughing at the kid who doesn’t conform to their idea of “acceptable.” That kid wearing the hand-me-down pants? What a dork. The girl wearing cheap sneakers? Puh-lease. That goth chick? The skinny boy? The fat girl? Losers.

The guy with the cube-shaped shrubs? Let’s point and laugh some more.

“Can you believe she planted orange daylilies? Ick.”

“Yellow marigolds? Those are so UGLY!”

I don’t know. It all sounds the same to me.

Any snotty middleschooler, when confronted and asked why they were being jerks to someone, will utter some version of “I didn’t mean anything.” Those being a bit more disingenuous will maybe say “I thought I was helping — she doesn’t know how bad she looks!” (And I’ve worked in middle schools — trust me. They come up with this and more.)

The landscape designer posting a photo of an unsuspecting homeowner’s landscape on Facebook and calling it a crime against horticulture will likely say the same things.

Here’s what I think:

The only crime against horticulture is the one committed by scaring people away from gardening before they even start.

We humans are fragile creatures. Our egos are easily bruised. Not everyone is as well-adjusted as I am, after all. (Haha!) I can just picture someone who bought their first house, or is considering doing away with the lawn and putting in a little foundation planting coming across a post like this, or that “well-meaning” Facebook group.

If that’s what they have in store for them should they make a “mistake” with their shrubs or plant choices, what’s the point? They have not been infected by the gardening bug yet. They are considering gardening to make their yard pretty. Is this what they need to see, when they’re considering taking that first step toward getting their hands dirty?

Who does this help?

Well, landscape designers, obviously. And publishers of certain gardening magazines. Because the unspoken message here is “you will screw it up, and we will laugh at you. Just let those of us who know what we’re doing handle this.”

That’s not what gardening is about. If you want a perfect landscape, and you have no desire to create it yourself, then fine. Hire a designer and a crew and go for it. If that makes you happy, then I am happy for you.

But if you want to garden…if you want that visceral, exhilarating and addictive experience that only comes from nurturing a garden from the soil up, from making mistakes and killing things regularly, from learning as you go… then perfection has no place in your future.

Gardening is not perfect. We are not perfect. No one is.

Gardening is personal. If you want spherical or cube-shaped shrubs, then go ahead and prune them that way. It’s not everyone’s taste. So what? If it makes you happy, go for it. If you want to plant something that some designer has deemed “too common” or “garish” or whatever…do it. Who cares? That person is not the one looking at your garden every day. They’re not the one whose heart is invested so deeply in watching it grow. Forget them.

I almost used another “f” word there…you get my drift.

Life is too short to worry about the garden police. Plant what you want. Prune how you want. Combine any colors you want. Gardening is not a clique. Anyone can do it. Don’t be scared off by the know-it-alls.

Get your hands dirty. Garden your ass off. Be amazed by the magic that happens in your garden every single day. Even (and maybe especially) when you’re doing it wrong.

UPDATE: Thank you so much to everyone who entered! I LOVED reading about what your garden has taught you — I’m considering collecting some of my favorites into a post later this week.

The lucky winner is commenter #87, Helen, who said: “I’ve learned to do things in pieces or steps, that I can’t do everything I want to do in a day, and that’s OK!”

—

I have recently cut back the number of garden blogs I read. Not because they aren’t good, or interesting, or worthwhile, but simply because time is limited, and I have a tendency to lose track of it. Something had to go, and a majority of my blog subscriptions went.

There were a handful of subscriptions I couldn’t let go of. Gayla’s. Friends and work pals. And Margaret’s.

It says something that no matter how busy life gets, when I see a post from Margaret pop up in my reader, I grab a cup of something warm and settle in for a good read. I learn SO much from her, and feel, with each post, that in many ways we are kindred spirits. I’ve gotten to know Margaret a little via Twitter and email, and she is an inspiration in so many ways. The woman writes in a way that would make me green with envy if I didn’t like her so much. And she obsesses over plants and seeds with a curiosity that just draws you in and keeps you there. And she loves her cat. That’s all I need to know.

When she asked me to be part of the blog tour for her new book, The Backyard Parables, I was honored and excited. Getting my hands on another of Margaret’s books (if you recall, I absolutely adored her previous book, and I shall have some peace there) was cause for celebration. But getting to interview one of my garden writer crushes? Priceless.

Before we get to the interview portion of our program, I need to say this: when you read Margaret’s writing, whether on her blog or in her books, you feel like you really KNOW her. She is genuine, and honest, and she doesn’t sugarcoat anything. When she finds something difficult, she tells you about it. When something doesn’t work (as it often doesn’t in this garden-obsessed life) she unflinchingly looks at why. What I may love most about her is the fact that she doesn’t inflate her own importance. For example, in writing about her  rare  Japanese umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata, for the geeks among us) she confesses that she did not know what she was doing when she transported it in a bushel basket from New York City and plopped it into the ground in her garden. She confesses to being surprised that it has survived this long, and is just thankful to the plant for being its regal self for the past 25 years.

I love this. 

In this day and age, when everyone is trumpeting their “expert” or “guru” status, here is an accomplished gardener and garden writer who is freely admitting that, as she puts it:

“Blind faith apparently has it hands-down over expertise in some aspects of horticulture.”

And

“I never did anything, really, except to give it a decent home with the basics, and then delight in it. Maybe that’s the best approach.”

That is the magic of gardening. We don’t REALLY know how something will turn out. We can read, and take classes, and think we know…but we don’t. Anything can happen once seed meets soil. All we can do is our best, give a plant what we think it needs. And, in time, it will tell us whether we were right or wrong.

And the entire book is filled with stories like this, little bits of wisdom sprinkled throughout like seeds strewn on a garden bed. This is a must-read, and has earned a place of honor on my bookshelf.

The Interview

Now, onto the interview! I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to ask Margaret about her creative process. Here’s how it went:

1. I adored your previous book, and I shall have some peace there.  What can fans of that book look forward to in the backyard parables?

I sometimes think this book is the sequel, and I love that the publisher designed the new one so that it feels like a companion to the first, too.

In “Peace” I arrived in the garden; in “Parables” I have really landed here for real and forever. The garden is my life partner, my guide, and my constant source of entertainment and learning, as it was in the first book (and has been for 25-plus years!). But it’s like the difference between newlyweds and lifers, from one book to the next: I am not so unfamiliar with its sounds and peculiarities and wild goings-on–nor so afraid of things (snakes, storms) as I was in “Peace,” which chronicled my first fulltime year here.

The birds, frogs, plants, weather—all characters in the first book—and of course Jack the Demon Cat are all present and accounted for again.

I think the new book is a lot about a journey, as “Peace” was, and about taking your cues from the natural world’s rhythms, and about having a sense of humor and hopefully humility in facing the fact that—oops!—we have no control whatsoever over most things. Both books are about being quiet, quiet enough to see all the things I spent much of my life missing out on, because I was moving far too fast.

2. In the intro to the book, you talk about how accepting the assignment to write a book about your garden heightens your “crisis of confidence” that you might be a fraud who just doesn’t have what it takes. I am there every single time I write a blog post, not to mention books and articles. You’ve been gardening a bit longer than I have. I find it depressing that it looks like there won’t be a break from my own crisis of confidence. How do you deal with it and move forward, and write anyway? Are there ways in which your garden pats you on the head and says “there, there. You’re a good gardener!”? (I ask because my own writing/gardening symbiotic relationship is a series of highs and lows.)

Well, I could give you the phone number of my long-time shrink! Kidding aside, this really is the $64,000 question for so many of us, isn’t it: Are we really who we hope we are, are we “good enough”? (And this twist on that question: How come everybody but us thinks we are? How’d we fool them?)

I know a lot of things about gardening, and nature, and so on—but I don’t know everything, or even most (many?) things. For a Type AAA person like myself who’s also so inquisitive and also likes to “get things right,” that’s tough to accept.

And this is precisely why gardening is so good for me—or at least one reason why: Because every day out there, with every lost plant or other disaster, I am reminded that I am not omnipotent, or even marginally in charge. As I say in the book: I’m just another creature in the food chain of life, looking for her way through.

3. Can you tell us a bit about your writing process for the book? Did the organization come first (the idea of structuring the book around the four seasons of water, earth, fire, and wind) or did you write, and find that the things you wrote naturally seemed to fit into this structure? What is the hardest part, for you, of writing a book? Is it the decision to do so in the first place? The writing? The taming it into something readable? All of the above?

 I had no idea I’d ever write another garden book until my editor asked me to.

Then the parables thought came first, in reaction, because my editor said, “We want a garden book, but it has to be a memoir.” Hmmmm, now what? And then I thought of my slogan on A Way to Garden [dot] com: “Horticultural how-to and ‘woo-woo.’” And I thought: two levels, that’s what I am always about when writing about gardening: the practical and philosophical, science and spirit. Ah!

And then from there I ricocheted to the fact that “parables” are often spiritual (as the garden is for me) and also metaphorical—having two levels of meaning (again like the garden). So I started reading up madly about parables—in Islam, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, ancient Greece, among other unexpected places, and of course in the Bible. And guess what: All those teaching stories, those parables, were often about mankind’s interaction with the elements of nature.

So that’s where the idea to structure it elementally came from.

And now you know just how oddly my brain works. Tee hee.

As for my process: I love to write, but I never write a word until I am really ready to write the whole thing. So for me the fidgety, uncomfortable part is beforehand, when I am ruminating and pondering, as I call it. Once I have my concept (in this case, the parables and then the elements), whoosh! Out it comes pretty fast.

Thank you so much for your time, Margaret! And, lucky readers — Margaret’s publisher, Grand Central Publishing, is giving away one copy of Margaret’s book here on In the Garden Online. To enter, just leave a comment telling us what you’ve learned from your garden! 

I’ll accept comments through midnight Sunday, January 27th, and will pick a winner via random number generator on Monday morning. We can only ship books to U.S. residents. Thanks for reading!

I was unprepared for how hard losing Mouse would hit me. I was talking to my husband about it last night. We both had a feeling she’d have to be put down, that there would be nothing more we could do for her. The vet, based on my description of her symptoms before she passed, said it was possible that kidney failure was the culprit. Likely, diabetes, since she was an overweight cat. But there’s no way to know now, since she’s gone. Had it been kidney failure, there is no way she’d still be here. We do not have the money for a kidney transplant. If it was diabetes that led to her death…well, that was my fault, wasn’t it? She was an overweight cat. I knew that. We often joked about our “big girl” kitty. I should have taken her to the vet sooner. I should have been more careful about her diet (even though she only ate kibble, and we were giving them the “senior cats” formula, I should have watched the amounts more!) I should have monitored how much water she was drinking, how often she was using the litter box. These would have given me a clue about what was happening with our cat. Maybe she’d still be here today, if not for my own stupidity.

Clearly, I am in the angry, blaming portion of the mourning process.

Driving home from the vet’s office yesterday, with an empty cat carrier on the seat beside me, I shouted a string of four letter curse words, all the while, tears coursed down my face. This morning, the tears threaten each time I look at one of Mouse’s “spots” in our house. I wonder how much she suffered at the end, as a result of my ignorance. I should have made her drink more water. I should have gotten her there sooner. I should have carried her to the weight scale at the vet’s office myself, rather than letting a stranger take my girl out of my arms.

These are the things that go through my head as I try to return to normal. There are work deadlines to meet. Children to feed, read to, teach, and cuddle.  Amid putting on a “normal” front, I replay all of the things I should have done differently.

Part of me is almost embarrassed by the depth of my grief. “It was a pet, for crying out loud!” this jaded part of my psyche tries to tell me. But for the most part, I tell that part of me to shut up and sit down. Mouse was a member of my family. She was mine and I was hers. There is no shame in grieving that.

I am trying to find ways to move beyond it. While writing is part of my therapy, gardening is clearly another. I have an area in the back yard that I’m considering turning into a little memorial garden for Mouse. It’s something to distract me from the “I should haves” and remembering the empty look in my girl’s eyes.

Part of me wonders why I’m blogging about this. I could write it all down in a journal. But this is what I do. And maybe someone out there will relate. Maybe someone has a kitty who isn’t drinking water, or has a decreased appetite, and maybe they’ll read this and make that vet appointment for their cat. I don’t know. Right now, it feels like I don’t know much of anything, other than that I want my cat back.

So we brought her home. She looked like a little gray mouse running around our basement apartment, so we named her Mouse. She took easily to life with our two older cats, Bug and Zelda.

She cracked us up. She went after our feet whenever she had a chance. She raced, slid across the tile floors, and ended up crashing into walls and furniture. She was a lovey girl, if a bit on the cranky side sometimes.

And that was Mouse, to a T. She was cuddly, loving, but enjoyed her solitude, even more than our other cats. She had her spots in our house: the foot of my bed, where she could look out the window at the backyard. My husband’s office chair in the basement. The sofa table behind the living room couch, especially in winter, when the heat was on and the register below made the table toasty warm.

Mouse would gently nip your hands, telling you to pet her if she felt you weren’t paying enough attention to her. When my husband would work downstairs at his desk, she was ridiculous, rolling and purring maniacally, insisting upon plenty of ear rubs. She was, quite possibly, the most domesticated cat on the face of the earth. She only liked dry kibble. No wet cat food, no cans of tuna, no “people food” whatsoever. Though she did enjoy nibbling my tomato seedlings. She couldn’t care less about the birds out the window. All she wanted to do was sleep in the sun.

Mouse had been slowing down the past couple of weeks. Started eating less. Pretty much stopped drinking. At her vet appointment this morning, we lost Mouse. She panicked when the vet assistant took her from me to weigh her. She yowled in a way I never want to hear a cat yowl again. She had a seizure. And when they set her on the examining table, the vet listened to her heart, and it stopped, right there.

I saw the moment she died. Her eyes lost the keen awareness, that knowing that only cats can pull off so perfectly. Her body stilled. I knew before the veterinarian said the words.

The vet and his assistant left me alone with her. I petted her soft fur, rubbed her ears the way she’d always loved. I whispered that I loved her, that I would miss her every day. I thanked her. People who don’t know better think that people own pets. The fact of the matter is that my cats own me. I am fully cognizant of this. I thanked her, over and over again, for being such a good girl. For cheering me up when I needed it. For warming my lap on cool autumn nights, and matching my own grumpiness with her own.

The receptionist at the vet’s office offered me ashes from her cremation. I shook my head. The only thing that will make me feel better now are the years of memories we made together. Right now, all I can think about is her last days, and that moment the light left her eyes.

Soon, I’ll focus on better things. The fact that her fur was as soft as a baby bunny. The way she’d roll around on her back, waiting for a tummy rub. For now, I’m mourning my friend of over 13 years.

I love you, Mouse.

So I’m scrolling through Pinterest this morning, and I see the same thing pinned over and over and over again on this gardening community board that I follow:

And pin after pin has the comment: “Plant seeds in ice cream cone and plant in the ground!”

I also saw pinners commenting that it was an “environmentally friendly” or “Earth-friendly” idea.

Seriously?

Let’s look at this from two directions: usefulness and “green-ness”.

Useful?

Uh, no. Have you ever eaten ice cream from one of these store-bought cake-type ice cream cones? What happens when the ice cream starts melting? The cone turns to mush, right? Can you imagine having a flat of seeds planted in these?! You would have an oozing, smelly, mushy mess in no time.

Also, stability. I know, they have flat bases. But anything that has a wider top than bottom is going to have stability issues. And when you add the mush factor (mentioned above) you’re looking at an unstable seed starting situation, at best.

Green?

Oh, boy.

This is where pins like this really make me crazy. First off, taking edible things that are still edible and planting them is wasting food, and that bothers me (yes, even if it is junk food, mass-produced…it’s still food.)

Secondly…these cones don’t grow on trees. There is a whole manufacturing process behind them. MadeHow.com has a detailed post explaining how these cones are manufactured. Go ahead and take a look. I’ll wait.

OK?

So we’ve got plenty of resources involved in the making of these things: the water and petro-chemicals used to grow the original wheat, the fuel used to move the grain from field to processing to the factory that actually makes the cones, the energy and water used to produce the actual cones (not to mention the necessary packaging), the fuel used to get these cones from the factory to their distribution centers to your grocery store to your home…..

And planting them in your garden makes you a GREEN gardener? Are you kidding me with this shit?

There are plenty of ways to avoid buying pre-made nursery pots or flats if you’d like to be able to plant something directly in your garden:

• Use empty toilet paper rolls (via YouGrowGirl)
• Make newspaper pots (via Organic Gardening magazine)
• Plant your seeds in empty egg shells (via Apartment Therapy)
• Use citrus halves as seed starting containers (via My Roman Apartment)

These are all actual GREEN plantable seed starting container options. We take the “garbage” produced from some other aspect of our lives and, rather than throwing it away, we use it for something else. This is green. This is eco-friendly.

Planting seeds in ice cream cones is not.

But Wait! It Gets Better

I did some digging to see what genius came up with this idea in the first place so I could give them a piece of my mind. The original image was posted on a Tumblr blog called “The Small Object.” You can see the original post here. It looked like a planter to me, not an actual ice cream cone, so I went to Google.

It’s a faux bois planter created by Richard Taylor.

So I went back to Pinterest. The first few pinners seemed to actually get it: “cute planter!” “this is such a pretty planter!”

At some point in the Pinterest universe, this very pretty little faux bois planter turned into an “eco-friendly” way to use manufactured ice cream cones as seed starting containers.

And that, my dears, is why knowing the original source and/or intent of a pin is important. Please pin responsibly.

And then there’s the novel writing.

And the husband deserves some attention, too (wonderful man that he is.)

And during gardening season….GARDENING!

So, what I’m saying is….sometimes, we need to be lazy. And, luckily, sometimes lazy works.

Such is my front yard planting method.

See, we started the front yard with lots of clearance perennials and perennials that I wintersowed our first couple of years here. And I made a point of choosing plants that were tough and would re-seed, for the most part. I knew getting rid of as much lawn as possible would be important (see “lazy,” above…) and we’ve been expanding the beds ever since. There is a narrow path of lawn left in our front garden now. I am considering keeping it, but probably not. It still requires a lawn mower.

So I love this garden, but like any gardener, I like to see new things in my garden from time to time. New colors, new plants. And each year, I end up with a few more. Some white coneflower here, some northern sea oats there, and, oh,  hey, look at that black hollyhock!

These plants are all in my garden thanks to laziness. Here’s what happens:

I start going through my seed stash in January. I set some aside to wintersow (these are usually plants that I want for smaller garden areas or for specific purposes). Then I go through what’s left. I may have a four -year-old packet of calendula seeds sitting around, or a measly one or two liatris seeds. A few milkweed seeds I collected a couple of years ago.

Old seeds. Leftovers. That’s what I’m saying here.

I don’t want to take the time, effort, or soil to bother starting these remainders indoors or even in wintersowing jugs. Like I said…lazy.

But I don’t want to waste them either, because they’re seeds. They are my dragon’s hoard. My preciouses….

So I take those packets of remainders outside with me some time in January or February, and I look at the garden and remember all of those places where I’d wished for just a dash of color the year before. And I open the packets, and I sprinkle the remainder seeds on top of the frozen soil in that spot. And my neighbors walk by on their way to the corner store or bus stop and wonder what the crazy lady in the corner house is doing now.

And then, in spring, I watch and see what comes up.

This method has resulted in plenty of new plants for my front garden over the past few years. It is not perfect. If you want neat, orderly garden beds, this is not going to be your cup of tea. My front garden, if it had a style, would most likely be called “chaotic cottage.” And, luckily, that is exactly what I was going for. This method works for me, because I really don’t have much of a set “design” in mind. I plant things. They work, or they don’t. Usually, they do. And if they don’t work out, they get transplanted elsewhere. This garden is a source of serenity for me, both in the planning and in the enjoyment of it. I have enough to think about without stressing out about whether my garden looks “right” or not. I like it, my kids like it, and the bees, birds, and butterflies love it. We have a resident toad near the bird bath. Works for me.

I went out and scattered my remainder seeds this morning. Here’s what I tossed out there:

• Bee balm
• Black eyed Susan
• Shasta daisy
• Heirloom pepperbox poppies (I should note here that I never even though of doing poppies this way until I saw Mr. Brown Thumb’s post about how he plants poppies.)
• Lauren’s grape poppies
• Hungarian breadseed poppies
• Nodding onion
• Liatris
• Artemisia
• Milkweed
• Purple coneflower
• Pink hollyhocks

Will they all take? Heck, no. They’re old seeds, literally a few seeds per packet,  and I’m scattering them on top of soil and leaves. But enough of them will take to make this worthwhile.  And then I have space in my seed box for new packets of seeds!

Wintersowing Update:

I did three more containers over the weekend:

• #5: Marvel of Peru four o’clocks
• #6: Black eyed Susan (for the hell strip garden beds)
• #7: Northern sea oats (for the hell strip beds)

Holiday visits, baking, cooking, wrapping — that’s what I’m doing in December.

But, as I mentioned in the last post, by the 2nd week of January, when my daughters’ birthdays are over, and we are officially finished with the holiday season….this is my mindset then:

So, now I wintersow starting around mid-January.

The first few containers went out yesterday. Here’s what I have planted so far:

1. Bachelor’s buttons ‘Black Magic’

2. Milkweed

3. Bee balm (which Mr. Brown Thumb sent me like two or three years ago and I just now unearthed from my stash….)

4. Purple coneflower

5. Hoary vervain

This is my third year in a row trying the hoary vervain. If I don’t get some germination this year, I give up. Even though it’s a really pretty native and it has one of the best plant names, ever.

I’m trying something a little different this year in regard to how I store the containers until I’m ready to plant them. I used to plop them, in  milk crates, in a sunny spot in my yard (usually in one of my raised beds) but then it takes longer for the soil in the raised bed to dry out because there was all of this plastic-covered wet soil on it. So I have these two 4-shelf mini greenhouses that I use for seed starting and for helping me harden off my seedlings in spring. I took off the covers (they get really brittle and rip easily if you leave them outside all winter — something I learned the hard way) and will be stowing my wintersowing containers there.

I really don’t know why it took me so long to think about doing that. I think I saw all of the wintersowing ladies putting theirs on the ground or on their patios, so I thought I had to do it the same way or something. Such a follower….

So, I have the first five done. I would have done more, but I ran out of milk jugs. I am going to have to encourage my kids to drink milk faster, at least for the next few weeks.

Are you doing any wintersowing this year?