Seed shopping

Posted on Wednesday 21 February 2007 at 08:53

TYDOS will get its seeds on Friday. I have to sit down and look at my spreadsheets and whatnot, but thankfully I already did my crop planning and estimates awhile back.

I am so antsy for spring it's drivin' me up a tree. I stepped out the door the other day, and it hit me. The first change of the year does that up here. You just know when the weather's broken and winter's on its way out.

Breakneck puts it down to the temperature change, but to me, there's something more. There's a smell and a feel to it as well. The sounds of everything change. The sky changes.

The worst part is, there'll be more snow yet. There's bound to be more cold. But it becomes variable, not set into the earth's bones like January is.

The planet is leaning. I'm going seed shopping.

The TYDOS Season Begins

Posted on Thursday 25 January 2007 at 10:52

Wow, one of my friends actually took me seriously. Upon the announcement in the e-news that there's a 5% discount for every referred new member, my biggest encouragement went to work.

This is the gal who pushed me to just do the thing, already (and rightly so, I'm a procrastinator after all). She then went and forwarded emails to a bunch of friends. I now have 7 out of 10 TYDOS memberships filled for this year.

Of course, I experience angst over the whole thing at this time of year, because I can't act on it. I can't go out and check the soil or the weeds. I can't go mix potting soil or till the garden or lay out my space. It's not even time for cold frames or starting seeds or anything. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

So I sat there last night and went, "Wow, I hope I'm not wasting these people's time," because that is the sort of thought I think late at night when some total stranger entrusts me with their money and their confidence. It's a very big deal to me when people take that step, and it's a very big deal to me to know that I'm also either building up or possibly diminishing the reputation of those who refer me, if I don't take my job seriously.

Does that make sense? I'm not saying I suck at gardening and nobody's getting vegetables this year. I'm saying I'm a little on the compulsive side when it comes to being vigilant with my customers' trust.

I work for these people now. My whole market angle hinges on the phrase, "Come see how your garden's growing!" And I chose that because I really mean it. I want the garden to be a place in people's hearts, and I want this blog to be a comfy room in their home where they can look out the window and see what's growing. Community Supported Agriculture is a team effort. I can't do it without my TYDOS folk. I want it to be an experience they love as much as I do.

Yay, TYDOS! Here's looking at a great year. Weather permittin' and the creek don't rise.

Happy New Potting Soil!

Posted on Saturday 6 January 2007 at 03:45

Happy New Year! I haven't vanished into the hinterlands.... Not completely. I saw a lovely T-shirt the other day which said, "I'm out of my mind, please feel free to leave a message." I would have got it, but I was too torn between that one and the one which said, "Why be difficult, when with a little effort, you can be completely impossible?"

To answer Katrina's question, I do have a recipe for potting soil, and it looks like this:

One part garden dirt
One part 50-year-old rotted sheep manure
a few scoops of bonemeal

Bonemeal is not eligible for Certified Organic use, because it does not necessarily comply with a full life-cycle of organic growth. E.g., the animals it comes from were probably not organically raised.

In other news, you can now find TYDOS (To-Your-Door Organic Store) at TYDOS.LazyCreek.net. Still working on getting it fully set up, and I don't have the mainpage (LazyCreek.net) really set up yet... But it's a step.

The Great Watermelon Fiasco

Posted on Monday 16 October 2006 at 03:55

My friend Jackie dropped me an email the other day, which incidentally reminds me I have been demonstrating how not to keep a blog lately. Now that you all know what not to do to be a blogger, I shall present to you what turned out to be the Garden Fiasco of 2006. It actually wasn't the brassicae.

We did in fact harvest broccoli and cauliflower in small amounts this year -- small because by the time I transplanted them, I was convinced they were all going to die anyway, and I stuck them in the ground way closer together than they should have been.

Everything grew tall and giant this year. Everything except our Afterthought Watermelons. Now, before you ask me what variety that is and where I got the seed, here's the answer: The seed came from my seed fridge, and the variety was actually Sugar Baby, planted late-late-late in June.

We shipped our largest and best melons in with our last TYDOS order, for which I owe my customers a huge apology. The silly things were white inside. Even right before we went away. Dave picked the last couple and left them on the counter the two weeks we were gone, hoping they'd ripen inside. Errr, not so much.

The vines hadn't frozen down yet when we got home, and they had grown another couple of melons. Those ones were somewhat pinkish inside (first week of October, good grief) and actually tasted like a watermelon. We have one left sitting on the counter, according to the Breakneck Theory of Melon Ripening, which I personally question. It ain't a canteloupe, buddy. There's only so much it can do when it's picked that prematurely.

In better news, if I plant my Sugar Babies as Sugar Baby instead of Afterthought, we should be able to not waste our customers' box space next fall. I'm looking at getting some nice row covers that would aid this venture. Now if only the wind would slow down a bit so I could go clean my garden out.

I'll Have the Cancer Prevention for Lunch, Please

Posted on Tuesday 5 September 2006 at 06:37

Our Brandywine tomatoes have been huge, marvelous monsters, and we're now getting some ripening without the mice eating them. The kids were terribly excited to pick this one off the windowsill and bring it to me.

I ended up slicing it and eating it for lunch, actually, and thinking the whole time about how much better I've felt this summer at the height of the vegetable season. My energy was up, my mind was clearer -- not sure if I was any less of a grouch, probably not -- and I felt stronger in general.