Yesterday, I planted the first big batch of seeds of the season. It’s amazing to me how happy the simple act of putting seeds in the soil makes me. I think it’s the clean slate feeling of it all - the new beginning - the knowledge of the abundance that will come from nature’s most magical alchemy - the seed.
This time of year, most of what I am planting is flowers. The ranunculus are already tucked in their soil in a cool room, hopefully putting down roots. I’ll pull them out in a couple weeks and put them under lights to green up. I planted all the snapdragons yesterday, too - hundreds of them. Each planting is a double batch because I pinch half of them so they will branch out and leave the other half to harvest from the first bloom. The pinched snaps will take several extra weeks to bloom, so that single planting becomes two successions.
I planted a few things that are experiments, but I’m optimistic about - floss flower and bee balm and a few things that are total punts just to see if they might work, like zanzibar, which is worth trying just for the name alone, and hibiscus for it’s amazing foliage. I know, it’s probably impossible to grow hibiscus in zone 4, even in a high tunnel, even in a pot, but you never know until you try, right?
Today, I put the plastic on the first high tunnel, the smallest one, which we use as a nursery. Over the years, we’ve perfected our high tunnel plastic removal and reskinning process so much that I actually put this 20-by-40-foot tunnel’s plastic on all by myself in less than two hours. It really wasn’t that hard since the plastic is attached to one side already and all lined up to go over. The most challenging bit is always dealing with those deadly ends of the wiggle wire, which can snap back and thwack your fingers like nothing else.
It’s sunny and warm out, and the tunnel was balmy even 15 minutes after the plastic was on. I spread espresso grounds gathered from local coffee shops and reveled in the knowledge that the sun was going to melt that tunnel so much faster than the snow outside. Of course, it now means that I’ll have work to do every time it snows as the sides of the tunnel will need to be shoveled, but it’s worth it to get a space for all the baby plants to bask in the sun in just a few weeks.
So here we go - it’s like buckling in to a rollercoaster ride. I’ve been on it long enough now to know there will be lots of ups and downs - successes and failures. But right now, it’s like holding a newborn in your arms. Everything is possible.
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