By Canny Cahn
Yes, the ground is frozen and your garden looks as though it was victimized by a Marvel Comics supervillain. Get over it. Stretch your limbs out of that fetal position and try the following curatives for your Gardener’s Malaise:
Plant indoor bulbs. Amaryllis are long-lasting eye catchers. Paperwhites grow quickly and fill their space with perfume. Working with baskets, gravel and moss are a nice change from raiding the refrigerator for distractions.
2. Study your seed catalogues, do some homework and order ASAP. If the last few years are reliable yard-sticks for sales, some of the most popular crops of veggies and perennials will go on backorder faster than you can say “Really?!!! The FedCo doorstop-weight order catalogue already has been in my home for three weeks. I usually devote New Year’s Day to hanging around the fireplace with a bunch of bacon (you may pick your own poison) with my order forms.
3. Draw and redraw your vegetable bed planting scheme. Rotate and rotate those crops. Pick out something new to grow and discard the varieties you’re not really using or have underperformed in our changing climate.
4. Make BioChar!!! Refer back to previous issues of this publication for guidance and make your fireplace do double-duty as a nutrient factory. (Doing so may assuage your guilt over all that bacon you're munching as you order your seeds.)
5. Start growing sprouts. Sprouting kits are around $25 or there's the old fashioned rubberband and cheesecloth aroung a glass jar.
6. Bundle up, get outside, and cut back those messy perennials whenever the ground is clear. You know that you didn’t get it all done. Pick up stray branches. Right your wind-toppled garden supports. Pile up your trimmings at property edges to create wildlife shelters.
7. And don't forget to feed the birds!
Canny Cahn is a member of GCW and Chairs the GCW Mentorship Program.
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