Gardener's New Year

The ground is still frozen.  Snow fell on Tuesday and lingered on the ground through Thursday.  The temperature was in the fifties today, but stayed in the low thirties in the preceding days.  It gets dark too early and light too late.  And the ground is sill frozen. 

But I'm celebrating my garden's new year, with a nifty new seed starting idea I picked up off Pinterest.  (Where else?)  It's also the Pagan spring festival of Imbolc, but I'll talk about that another time. 

I've been saving up egg shells and paper cartons over the past few months (the best method I've worked out is to crush the top of the egg and gently pick away the broken bits of shell and then wash out the interior), and now I'll get to see how this works.  I planted green onions, chives, and garlic chives from seeds, and I'm trying out a few of the bulbs I picked up from Walmart's garden section the other day.  That idea doesn't seem to have been a good one, though, because I overestimated the room in the egg shell.  I also got some garlic bulbs, but I think I'll wait to direct sow those and the rest of the onions. 

The lid of the egg carton will also be used; I think I'll scatter-sow lettuce and spinach and a mesclun seed mix I have left over from last year in that side and either use them as micro-greens or transplant the whole container outside.  I shall track this experiment and report back presently. 

As they say, watch this space.