Garden Dreaming - March 2014

Spring is getting a late start this year….more time for garden dreaming.

• The racks of seed packets are hard to pass by. I bought colorful beans and carrots…and decided to start chives and cilantro indoors immediately.
• I’m always on the lookout for items that can be turned into ‘pots’ for the deck. The big plastic containers from cat litter are my latest target. We buy the big jugs of cat litter so I’ll have to cut off the top but that means I can make the ‘pot’ the depth I want. The maximum depth would be enough to grow sweet potatoes or carrots on the deck!
• It seems like freebie seed packets are coming from all directions. So far I’ve collected sunflowers and marigolds….cucumbers and tomatoes!
• It is pretty obvious that garden success will require some control of the deer browsing in my garden area (fortunately the deck is not accessible already). I’m going to try a ‘liquid fence’ repellent for my garden (and right away from my ornamental shrubs and bulbs coming up….the deer are starving….eating everything right now).
• I had to cut the sweet potato back in the pot I have growing indoors….and it is rooting in a glass of water. Now that it is putting out fresh leaves I probably will need to plant it soon but I need a pot of it (may be the first thing planted in an empty cat litter jug will be the sweet potato)!
• I’m thinking about what will go in the garden plot. It gets a reasonable amount of sun on one side although a young sycamore is shading part of it late in the day. The veggies have priority and I’ll try to start some indoors to give them a head start. The sunflower may be too large for my garden so I’m contemplating planting them along the sunny side of the house - which is not even a flower bed right now.
•  I enjoyed the cardinal flowers and zinnias in the pots on the deck last summer. This year I am getting more organized and thinking about combinations in the larger pots; the thriller - filler - spiller idea appeals to me. The first and last on the ‘dreaming’ list below is already started - assuming the cardinal flower survived the winter in its pot and the pot I have growing inside now makes the transition to outdoors after the last frost.