Seed starting.... ROIGHT.

.The dog and I have been making the best of the cold by taking luxurious sunbathing occasions together by the only large south facing window.

It's been hard really :)

Of course, my husband has to be the practical one and seduces me out of the warm sun by saying "It's 10am on the weekend, you just woke up! You don't want to fall asleep again already!"

Bah.

So I am attempting to be good (but not being very good) by blogging about my lack of seed starting so far.  I'm trying to be a little more financially savvy about my gardening (garden start up costs can always been a shock, but as start up is past already for me I just need to focus on plants/seeds).

As I've been stupidly whining about finances as of late, I've been taking a hard look at what I really need and thinking about putting the Soil Blocker thing on hold until maybe next year's gardening. 

I will be attempting as well to limit my seed purchases to my local mom and pop b/c they're cheaper, will save me in shipping and handling and generally have a good idea as to what is good to grow in the area.  As I have seed saved a good number of varieties from last year (though I still need to check viability levels), I hope this will work out well.

A few things that I might purchase outside of the mom and pop are particular tomato seeds because this is a matter of true garden happiness!  I want me some delicious tomatoes and mom and pop doesn't always have luscious heirloom varieties, so I might need go out investigate those further elsewhere.

A couple of other things I really want to grow would be tomatillas and luffa, but the luffa might need to be put on hold LIKE MY OTHER STUPID SQUASH (*note the annoyance here?) I probably would just be attracting vine borers AGAIN.  Damn, when will I be able to grow my own bath supplies?  Can you imagine how cool if would be to have a bubble bath bush? (Would that be like soapberry?)

The tomatillas I will hope I have no problems though and I am excited about salsa verde and tomato-y like things with their own wrappers and can keep relatively well.  It's like they're tomato candy :)  Think the kids will like that on Halloween?

A couple of plants I generally don't seed start are peppers and eggplant because they take so darn long to get going and I don't generally use much of.  I can usually get $1 or $2 plants started already at the mom and pop (and as much as I'd get more plants to seeds if I bought a packet, I don't think I'd use them fast enough), so I'll just tend to few plants of each and be happy.

Another plan to keep me mostly sane this year (gardening is all experimental, I'm just trying to figure out if this will be what's best for me for now or in the future) is to direct plant more, rather than seed start as much as I have in the past.

I've found that my okra, peas, beans, cucumbers (which I really shouldn't plant this year...), mustards and others do MUCH better direct planted and as I am in limbo about a million things now it would be hella better to not have to tend to these all winter to get them going.  Seed starting is tough as I have very limited lighting and can't afford kick-ass grow lights (I hear you can use fluorescent or Christmas lights though) or or heat mats or etc. so I'm going to rid myself of the usual pain, sadness and drama of taking care of little seedlings during the cold wee winter months in the awful indoor conditions of my home and focus on maybe a nice little tray of a dozen tomato plants to prepare for the outdoors. (and maybe a few tomatilla plants)

AND THAT's IT.

No fuss gardening for spring is the plan (and hope).  A little tomato and tomatillo preparation soon and a week or two of crazy planting in the spring and hopefully I can sit back, weed a bit and not go nuts and work on my writing and get that GAN (Great American Novel) out and make some money to afford fun plants again :P

ROIGHT?