Easy Street Gardening
Weekly, step-by-step guidance for gardening on the front range.
Each week, this newsletter will contain three sections:
How things are going
I will share an update on my garden as a point of reference for how my weekly tasks are adding up and looking.
What to do this week
Here I will present the 3 - 5 things I am planning or doing this week.
Resources
A deeper dive into information and perspectives that are inspiring or informing my gardening.
If you are coming to this newsletter mid-season, please take a look at the posts from the past few weeks to get a sense of context for where we are at this week!
Week 3: 1/14/2024 - 1/20/2024
How things are going:
I don’t know about you, but the cold has certainly chilled my dreaming and planning for the coming season. The only consolation I’ve had has come from noticing that the sun is setting slightly later in the day, giving a small sign of the season passing in the otherwise frozen stasis we’ve been experiencing.
I worry that the garlic and lettuces I’ve planted under plastic row cover in my beds may not make it through the prolonged low temperatures. I have only peeked at them through the plastic. I still see green, though also some browning. We will see. I’m looking forward to opening them up when we get a break of warmer weather and seeing how things are going.
Despite the cold, I’ve pushed myself to try to make some progress this week to prepare for the coming season. I think the hard thing about gardening is that it often demands that you take action, even when you’re tired or cold or not feeling particularly inspired. This is also a beautiful thing about gardening. It demands this kind of ethic. It’s good practice in building perseverance and knowing that if you just can do a little bit more, even though you’re not feeling it, the payoff will be there.
I’m taking this week and next to start setting up my seedling starting station in my basement.
Things didn't go as well as I would have liked last year with my seedlings, though I had a decent system in place. So, I really want to establish a mise en place to start everything off feeling right. I’m also going to carefully measure and control the temperature, because, besides overwatering, I think the cold of the basement may also have impacted the seedlings.
Besides setting this space up, I am starting to begin thinking about what seedlings I’ll grow for the spring. I’m looking at my goals for the coming year, and matching those with the seeds I have and a list of the seeds I’ll need to order or buy locally.
There’s still plenty of time to make these plans and order seeds, but some catalogs have sales this time of year, and it’s nice to take advantage of those, ordering with confidence because you have a plan already in place.
Related to this, I’m thinking about whether to take some seedling orders, like I tried to do last year. I like this approach, because it allows people to order the exact variety of plant they are interested in, usually things you can’t find at local garden centers. But, I may opt to simply grow a variety that I think are high quality, and sell what I am not using myself in the early spring, running a small seedling stand at my house.
If you have any interest in either option, please let me know by commenting on this post!
What to do this week:
Here’s what to do:
Start aligning your goals to more concrete plans. Ask yourself:
What seeds do you have and what seeds will you need to buy?
How many of each plant will you want to buy later in the spring?
Where will these plants go in your beds?
Are your beds big enough to allow you to achieve your goals? If not, what plans can you make to add or organize them accordingly?
If you’re going to grow your own seedlings, now is a good time to take inventory of your supplies and setup. While we are still a month or so away from starting most seedlings, if you’re interested in starting peppers, I advise that you plan to plant those seeds within a few weeks. They take a long time to grow.
If you’ve never started seedlings before, it’s a fun way to get into the gardening season earlier than the spring! The investment can be relatively small, if you want to just try it out. Think about what your next few months are going to look like and whether you’ll be able to take care of seedlings through the spring planting. I’ll share more resources next week and the coming weeks on how to start seedlings inside.
Next week:
Starting pepper seedlings
Ordering seeds
Resources:
Resource 1
Ruth Stout has been another important influence on my approach to gardening. I think this is a pretty inspiring video, and it’s encouraging just how much she emphasizes how little work gardening can be, if you set things up right. This is a really interesting interview of Ruth’s own evolution of her gardening approach.