Saturday, February 14, 2009

winter sowing delayed and other moments of the week

The seeds have arrived, the flowers for winter sowing chosen, the water jugs prepared.... so why then do they sit inside? The school is just a jump, skip, and a hop from Philadelphia where a record high temp was hit this week... 68 degrees. So I thought I better wait for winter to come back. It is back and hopefully next week I will be reporting that these gallon jugs are filed with seed, sealed with duct tape, and lined up on the path to the greenhouse.

Monday we made four batches of onion sage bread and one pan of lavender brownies. On the warm day the students wanted fresh air and muck. Well, maybe they didn't want the muck, but they got it as we moved our fall leaf pile onto the individual beds. Something that didn't happen at its normal time when winter came in fast this year.

After weeks of not playing much jazz in the classroom it came back in a big way this week. Maybe because I have the "post seed order not quite time to plant most of them blues." Here is Summertime from the Stan Getz CD I played for my students.

The Mighty Assistant was busy doing lovely things with some dried strawflowers and globe amaranths, which we then sold along with some heart shaped bird feeders (peanut butter, cornmeal and bird seed). Speaking of birds, here is a plug for a cool place up north of us in Milford, Pennsylvania. I have this poster from Grey Towers hanging in my classroom ...



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not a propagator so this might be a dumb question, but why would warm weather make you delay planting seeds? Doesn't that make it a better time?

Or do you just mean everyone preferred to be outside in the unexpectedly warm weather? Because I certainly understand the fine art of procrastination.

Kit Aerie-el said...

Great jazz tune for the mood.
Mmmmm, lavender brownies sound delicious. The Lavender Festival in Sequim, WA is an annual treat for the senses. Aside from all the obvious lavender delights, they also have all sorts of foods made with lavender. From lemonade to white chocolate lavender ice cream and everything in between.
Love the poster of the warblers. They're so cute!

Wayne Stratz said...

Susan--- the object is to create mini-greenhouses where the seeds experience winter, then start when the temps warm up, so it just seemed wrong to winter sow on a 68 degree day.

Aerie-el... We saw two jazz shows this weekend. I would so so be into that festival of lavender. Warblers are almost my favored type of birds, but woodpeckers are highly favored.

walk2write said...

Maybe my seed flat is missing some great music, and that's why it's not doing so well. It started out with such high hopes and then just sort of fizzled. Maybe it's the indoor air quality. We have been eating a lot of bean soup lately....

Anonymous said...

I don't know whether it's because I'm in Florida, or just plain ignorant, but I've never heard of winter sowing -- experiencing cold and the warm-up. To me, winter sowing means starting seeds indoors in January and February so they're big enough to plant outside in March. Are there some seeds that like to start in the cold? What's the theory behind it? (I'd love to see you post a blog explaining.)

Wayne Stratz said...

walk2write... at the end of class today a student said, "no Jazz today." tomorrow is another day! We live off of bean soup in the winter, so that's not it.

Penny--- just did a quick post on winter sowing with a link to a website dedicated to it. any of those seeds that require a few weeks in a fridge would be a fine candidate, but I try lots of stuff for the fun of it.