My new gardening goal for this season is to try and really extend our season by start planting our greenhouse much earlier. I normally preseed tomatoes and bellpeppers sometime mid April for planting Memorial Day weekend, but since most of those now life indoors I will preseed them with my leeks and brassica in mid February. Yes, we might get a cold snap, but it is easy enough to run a small heater in the greenhouse at night and it warms up really fast during the day.
Plus, I prepared the bed ahead of time to seed some lettuce and other leafy greens real early. Last season I sowed bok choy early with not much success, but the greenhouse might still have been to chilly for them. This year I'll use more cold hardy seeds like mustard greens, and lettuce mix, which I noticed seeded itself in my cold frame and came up the next year with no issues at all!
Instead of mulching with organics as I do in the rest of my gardens - the greenhouse does not get enough moisture for quick decomposition in winter - I remove the top couple inches of spent dirt and replace it with 2 year old composted horse manure I then dig in. Plus I do not like the tomatoes etc to seed themselves out each season and removal of the top layer also removes the seeds. I like having a couple wheelbarrows of soil to play with, either to dump & raise swamp hiking paths or to pot up suckers and seeders for a quick sale in spring! One can never have enough dirt...
Might I have mentioned I've got gardening on my mind today?!
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