For most of the past two months, our yard has looked like this:
Although we’ve grown fond of Lake Artz, it has basically put a stop to our work in the yard. And, between the gardening magazines flooding my mailbox and a recent talk on using Colorado natives in the home landscape, I’m feeling a bit anxious to start gardening.
Thank goodness for crafty husbands! Matt promised that one of the things we’d have in our new full unfinished basement was a permanent rack for starting seeds and indoor gardening (and I’m not talking house plants–I’ve already got plenty of those! I’m talking lettuce & herbs in the dead of winter thanks to some broad-spectrum fluorescent lights and seed-warming mats). This past week, he delivered:
He basically adapted the design he used to build his workbench in the garage to build us some storage shelves in the basement and to build this awesome plant rack. We’ve only got two of the eight shop lights at the moment, but since Gabriel & I only planted seeds this morning, and the lights aren’t required until the seeds sprout, I think we have time for another Home Depot run before the plants become anemic-looking 
Although the four planters in the pictures have Mesclun mix lettuce, spinach, sorrel, kale, Simpson Black Seed lettuce, chives, cilantro, parsley, basil, and watercress in them, I also intend to start a lot of the seeds for finishing our landscape this spring. That means that Seeds of Change & Western Native Seeds can each expect a hefty order from me in the near future. In fact, I already have two packets of English Lavendar “chilling” in our extra fridge in moist dirt–they have to chill for 4-6 weeks to simulate winter before they will germinate.
Another experiment in seed starting this spring is going to be starting asparagus from seed. Most people grow asparagus from crowns (and I have 25 crowns of Jersey King on order already!), but seeds allegedly produce better crops of asparagus than crowns. In addition, asparagus has both male & female plants (unless you buy a male-only hybrid like Jersey Knight) and the males produce much better than the females. Starting from seed will let me use an old heirloom variety, Mary Washington, and simply weed out the females before planting them outside.
Of course, my vegetable growing urges have to take second seat this next season to getting our landscape in. Today we worked on pulling a bit more rock out of our yard and putting it to good use in the front by finally finishing our path on the east side of the front yard:
Of course the yard looks so clean and nice from this angle, because I’m standing between the new path and the huge rock piles that we’ve got at the side of the house:
The crushed sandstone (the pink stuff) will finish off our utility area/dog run at the side of the house and the big pile of river rock (the stuff in the foreground) will be used to finish some paths in the back yard and to finish off the dry creek bed in our front yard. The “dry” creek bed hasn’t been so dry thus far since it’s primarily responsible for draining Lake Artz.
Although the left-hand side of the dry creek bed ends in what will be our native grass prairie in the front yard, the right-hand fork goes all the way into the backyard and ends at the outlet for our sump pump and the two downspouts that our landscaper ran underground and connected up to the sump pipe. Yes, we live 50 yards from the river, so yes, we have a sump pump and it runs quite a bit as the water table fluctuates.
I have a lot more to share on the gardening, as usual, but this post is getting long and I have a few projects to finish while the babes are sleeping (and yes, Gabriel has been a lot more calm this weekend than he was Friday night!).
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