It’s almost Spring, here in the mountains. Things are waking up. Daffodils are starting to bloom, the hummingbirds are starting to come back, and I’m thinking of garden projects.
Time to start some seedlings. In our new “Potting Room” (where we get potted? Uh, no, not quite) we have a lovely rack that is being outfitted with grow lights transplanted from our garden room in the front of the house, and is currently hosting a heating blanket topped with thick plastic upon which is warming a newly-planted flat of seedlings-to-be. Tomatoes (six or seven different kinds), two kinds of peppers (King of the North and Anaheim), some flowering sweet peas and basil – both Genovese and Thai. Soon to follow are lettuces, brassicas, more herbs, and squash. The peppers and tomatoes get special treatment because they seem to germinate better with a little bottom heat.
These guys that you see in the big pots above are waiting for the night-time temps to consistently be above freezing before they go back outside for the summer. It’s far too cold yet – it was 29 degrees F this morning – the coldest morning we’ve had all winter.
The potted plants pretty happy in their sunny window, as you can see, and have put on some quite delicate foliage through the winter.
These two scented geraniums and a pineapple sage plant usually spend the late spring, summer, and early autumn on our front patio, where they get watered every day and get fed once a month or so. The sage is the youngest plant, at about four years old – the geraniums are around ten years old and doing just fine. The hummingbirds love the flowers on these plants.
What’s next on the garden chore list? Clean up, hauling manure and bark mulch, and getting a couple of new rhododendrons planted in the back yard. Easy does it – gotta break in the gardening muscles that have been overwintering in front of the loom and spinning wheel and lazing by the stove, knitting in hand.
wilsonrivergal 
I don’t bring my potted herbs in the house anymore because they bring bugs with them so they got left out in the screened in sunporch. The gardenia did not make it boat the rosemary plants are doing wonderfully. You are lucky to only have gotten down to 27° we got down to -10 on Cape Cod!
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Yes, I’ve had that problem before, too. Now we give ’em a couple of good drenchings with insecticidal soap – the day we bring them in and the day after. Seems to help a great deal. In the week leading up to bringing in the pots, I spray the foliage hard a couple of times and scrub down the outside of the pots with a bleach and water solution. That seems to work for me. Most of the time. 🙂
There’s always hanging yellow sticky tape (fly paper) near the plants – that works for some people. I wouldn’t want it in the house, but I’d be okay with it in the potting room or in the sun room.
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