Seed sorting in January

High winds today, but they’re broken by the woods behind the house and barns. In the gravel driveway this side of the kitchen garden, juncos feed in their little flocks. The frost cloth over the fall-planted spring annuals is holding up, and in a couple of months I’ll be watching the plants and the weather for the right day to uncover them.

But this month, aside from doing taxes and corresponding with people who are planning weddings and mapping out the planting for the year (and writing with a cat purring in my lap), I am working in the basement growing area, getting everything ready so I can begin the annual round of planting.

Yesterday, in better weather, and I brought in several more five-gallon bucketloads of city compost from the big heap west of the old barn. I’ll put this through a sifter to make a fine base for the soil blocks that act as both yolk and white, food and bed, for the incubating seeds. I’m checking all the lights to see if any need replaced; these are all standard shop lights from the hardware store, with one warm and one cool light in each.

I have all the seeds sorted into the following six categories:

I. Plant early, January and February, indoors in soil blocks (such as eucalyptus and Iceland poppies);
II. Sow directly into the soil in February if the ground is workable—and there are always days when it is (the year’s second blooming crops of larkspur, bupleurum and nigella);
III. Plant later, March and April, indoors (most of the May-planted annuals; celosias and all the rest);
IV. Sow directly in early May (zinnias and cosmos);
V. Plant indoors in late July and August for planting in mid-September to bloom in spring (all the cool-season annuals—snapdragons, foxglove, dianthus and all the others that are out there now under frost cloth);
VI. Sow directly into the soil in early September for early spring bloom (the first sowing of larkspur, bupleurum and nigella, plus other crops, for the next year’s season; these are outside under row cover now, also).

In this way I follow the habits of northern gardeners everywhere, spending the year’s shortest days dwelling on the color of spring and summer.