Winter just won’t quit, but that’s okay. If you call yourself a gardener or farmer a necessary skill to have is timing. Knowing when to start seeds, when to transplant, when to work the soil, when to direct seed- these are all judgment calls that can change from year to year. I guess this week’s snows can be valued for keeping one’s enthusiasm in check. So we wait.

There’s all sorts of activity inside, though. We’ve been busy for over a month with onion starts, herbs, brassicas ( that’s the veggie family that includes broc, cabbage, kohlrabi etc.) and tomatoes. They’re starting out under grow lights. You might be familiar with starting seedlings under some fluorescent lights in a basement or a sunny windowsill. We have a lot of plants to start, though, so we use a more professional system of grow lights. The lights consist of an overgrown hood fitted for 400 watt metal halide bulbs that are almost as big as a football. The logic is to approach the intensity of natural sunlight. The metal halide bulb emits a light that is very intense in the blue spectrum, which somehow aids in creating a compact seedling which doesn’t get leggy and reach for the light. So much for the science lesson, the point is we want a vigorous and healthy transplant and these are the steps we’re following.

Final thoughts : I don’t know if any poet or writer has ever written about that smell of the ground thawing in the spring or described the scent of newly turned soil, maybe Wendell Berry or Thoreau or some Japanese haiku master. But I’m longing for it like sugar cookies baking at Christmas or lilacs in May or really good BBQ. At least I can get my olfactory BBQ fix at the Roadhouse, everything else will have to wait. So what do you think, any good dirt prose out there?