Late Winter Cleanup, Slow Compost & Tomato Seeds

Wow. I finally got my butt out into the greenhouse today and cleaned up all the dead flowers & vegetable debris left over from last season. That's terrible, huh. My excuse is that everything I think about doing involves a 4 year old and and a 22 mos old & the possible extra work of them getting dirty or just being in the way. I know that sounds terrible, but I'm being honest, here. It is getting easier, as I was able to put the little girl in an old pair of her brother's rubber boots, bundle her in two layers of pants & wool socks, a washable hoodie & a warm hat and bring her out there with me. My gosh she had a blast getting down & dirty and "helping" move compost with her little bare hands and pulling dead weeds! I'll be posting some pics of the kiddos in the yard over on my other blog, if you want to see how getting dirty can be cute, too.

Speaking of compost, remember those potatoes I planted in the compost pile last year & kept layering with straw to try and produce potatoes all the way up the vine? Yeah, that was a bust. Each produced one layer of spuds & that was it. The pile did produce a bumper crop of beautiful compost, though, so after I dug out all of the winter-worn & rotten spuds & removed the layer of sodden straw, I uncovered a mound of rich, black soil. Lovely. I hauled a load into the greenhouse to try & revive the dessicated soil that's left in the planting bed in there. I'm also hoping that the cold snaps we got this winter killed off the aphids that were taking up residence in there at the end of the summer. We'll see.

I also put in my tomato seed order today. My major gardening goal this year is to only grow what the cretins around here will actually eat, so I went light on the slicers & heavy on the saucers. Spaghetti & pizza sauce get a big thumbs up from the peanut gallery, but no one but me will touch a fresh tomato! Here's the rundown:

1	TM884/S	Chocolate Cherry Tomato - 1/8 gram	$3.15
1	TM919/L	Legend Tomato Conventional & Organic - 20 seeds Organic	$4.25
1	TM863/L	Oregon Spring Tomato Conventional & Organic - 1/8 gram Organic	$3.15
1	TM894/S	Oroma Tomato - 1/8 gram	$2.85
1	TM864/S	Santiam Tomato - 1/8 gram	$2.85
1	TM898/S	Saucey Tomato - 1/8 gram	$2.85
1	TM924/S	Super Marzano Tomato - 1/8 gram	$3.85

All from Territorial, in case you want to check out these varieties.

Not bad for a lazy day off.

Ciao!