Education is the key!

This weekend, I made progress towards my garden goals by making some plans for the dreary winter month of February. First, I signed up for a class at Seattle Tilth. For Christmas, Jake said he would pay for me to take a class at Tilth, so I finally found one that I can really get some use out of, Indoor Seed Starting (2 day intensive). I'm super excited because I really have no idea what I'll need to grow seedlings inside and I recently discovered, through reading and planning, that in order to grow some of the vegetables I want to grow like broccoli and cabbage, I'll need to start the seeds indoors. I also know that it's best to grow tomato plants from seed by starting them inside, but was too intimidated to do it last year so I just bought a seedling from a store. This season, however, I'm ready to take on the challenge. This class will be great too because I learn best when I'm with others in a class setting. I think it will be amazing.

The next thing I did was put the Northwest Flower and Garden Show on my calendar.I've heard about the show before, but have never been really motivated or prepared to go (meaning, I usually hear about it while it's happening or shortly thereafter).I looked through all of the seminars and events that will be happening during the show and made an unofficial plan of all the seminars I plan to attend. For $29, I can go to the show on both Saturday and Sunday and attend seminars like: Gardening in the Pacific Northwest, Year Round Vegetable Gardening, Grow Fruits & Berries Anywhere, Glorious Container Gardens, and Portable Balcony Composters. The list goes on!

I started mosaicing a garden gnome for my garden this weekend too. When we cleared out my new backyard garden space, we unearthed 3 concrete stepping stones that were just begging to be mosaiced. Jake had the fabulous idea to mosaic a garden gnome on to one so that I would have one of those kitschy things in my garden too, only cooler. It's not finished yet, but I love him already. Jake named him Carl.

Finally, I'm getting a worm bin together to have at school. This year, I volunteered to head student council and we (my student council 4th and 5th graders and I) worked together to organize "Green Week" at my school this week - a spirited week of all things green and eco-responsible. I thought it would be a fitting week to get the worm bin going in my classroom. It won't have worms in it this week, but it's a start. Turns out, I have to order them (the red worm variety). When I mentioned this to my students, they looked at me incredulously and asked, "Why would you buy worms, Srta.Stacy? We can go out and get them for you." But I guess, your typical night crawler earth worm does not like the small space of a worm bin. To make a long story short, I'm going to try to get my worm bin together this week so that my students can put their food waste scraps in there and start helping me make compost for my garden. They're helping me with my garden and they don't even know it yet. It actually will connect to our curriculum eventually (we study plants/seeds in science in April), for those of you who are wondering how I am getting away with putting my kids to work. If you get creative, you can make almost anything work out. :)