Should I Be Growing Something Now?

Here in southeast Ohio, winter has arrived. Wait, no, there it goes. It’s here. Nope, there it goes. Well, it’s supposed to be here, anyway. I have always thought it was virtually impossible to grow edible items during this time of the year, even when the weather hasn’t been completely psychotic. Shows what I know! As it turns out, there are lots of plants that can flourish in super cold environments. This begs the question, should I be working on my gardening as we speak?

If I had my own land…

Ah, the constant lament that spurred this project on. If I had my own land I would have a fall/winter garden that would already (hopefully) be colorful and edible and otherwise charming. I have extremely limited outdoor space, however, so I have to be extremely picky about what I plant in the actual ground. This has its pros and cons. The con of course is no land! Duh! But the benefit is that I pretty much have to use containers, and those can start indoors and then move outside if the plant can handle changes in temperatures.

Should I be starting my gardening now? Yes. Well, kind of.

So what’s the plan, Stan?

Thanks to the awesome people at GrowJourney (by Tyrant Farms) I essentially have a cheat sheet of epic proportions for any seeds I get from them. Here is the online guide for just one of my seed packets:

Kind of insane, right?

So, I have chosen three different types of seeds that I am going to try to start on over the next week. Now the thyme up above is technically a spring/summer plant, but since I’m starting it indoors where the temperature hovers in the 60s, I think it will be ok.

The other two plants are intended to be fall/winter plants, so once they get big I might move them outside. We are definitely not having a typical winter so it’s impossible to say when the last frost will hit.

We will see how this goes. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck starting plants from seeds over the last year, but I am going to diligently read everything like a good little monkey and see if that helps my results. I will also try to see if there are different locations in my apartment that might yield different/better results.

What three plants am I trying?

In addition to German Winter Thyme, I am going to be taking a shot at kale (Russian Frills) and Spinach (everlasting). All three come from seeds I got from the GrowJourney folks. If these start off well I might add more as the “winter” progresses. If they don’t I might hold off a little on new plants and try different approaches with these.

We’ll see where I am a week from now. Stay tuned!