Seeds and Seedlings

Winter is not half over, but it is time to start planning for spring.  First, the trees.  If you want to have them in the ground in April, you need to order them now.  My friend Vern and I worked on the City's order yesterday:  English walnut, Kentucky coffeetree, prairifire crab, red mulberry, Austrian pine, and Scotch pine.  Forty six bare root seedlings, and not a native among them.  For The Homestead, we'll probably order half that number.  So far, I have just one request, from VSO:  Cottonwood.

Second, the vegetables.  In past years, we have started most of our garden plantings in the living room window during February.  This year, we have not yet ordered our seeds.  Part of the problem is the lingering fatigue from last year's effort.  I was away from The Homestead so much that all of the work fell to the girls.  They have little enthusiasm for doing that again.  There has even been talk of suspending the garden altogether during 2013 if I am going to be on the road all summer.  (Then what will we do with our free time?  Daytime TV and fried pork rinds?  Whoo-hoo.)

We could certainly reduce the labor somewhat by improving our irrigation system.  Very little will grow—aside from cheat grass—in a southern Utah summer without adequate irrigation.  Carrying water to a couple of plantings is one thing, but we have hundreds of plantings spread over almost an acre.  Some of the irrigation is automated, or at least comes on when you turn a spigot, but much of it is not.  For about $300 we could probably buy the materials for a simple system that would reach most of our trees and do a better job on the vegetables.  Of course, as I've often argued, $300 would buy a lot of vegetables at the Piggly Wiggly . . . not to mention pork rinds.