How do you satisfy your gardening itch in Winter?

I get sooooo antsy in the cold months and wind up pouring over book after book and web image after web image :) I even chart out the planned gardens on graph paper and color them with colored pencils to "test" my designs! LOL. Anybody do anything really desperate to keep in touch with the good, green earth?

Starting plants from seed gets me through the longs winters here.

Yes I have a small attached to garage greenhouse. I am already filling it with large potted brugs and brug cuttings. Plus lots of other cuttings. So that takes up part of my time and like you Hugs I like to plan my garden areas on graff paper. I don't plant anything without a label, and I'll be darned if I can figure out where they go. I'm sure some get pulled out with weeds. But I have labels anywhere from 12' to 24" tall, and you would think they would stay in place!!!! Donna

Hi Hugs! I do the charting also! I change my mind about a million times! Too bad my handwriting is so bad...
Starting from seed is a definete must for me too - although my DH doesn't much care for all the dirt I throw everywhere! Donna, after joining DG I want a greenhouse more than ever!!!! Of course the one I want is 6 grand - LOL - dream on....

Nicole

Putzing around in my greenhouse.........ooodles of trops....and, of course...seeding! Elaine......also when life creeps up on me and it's de-stress time...my gh is my sanctuary, in which I read and listen to music!

I spend the winter painting garden stones to give as spring gifts to neighbors and family. If I had a greenhouse I would probably live in it for the winter and my husband wouldn't get fed.

I start seeds, 'virtual' shop in all the catalogs I recieve, visit 'Daves' far to often, design and re-design all my flower/plant beds, make stepping stones, make bird houses and feeders. And on those few days when it's not so icky out I'll wander through the beds and pull weeds and tend to whatever I can.
Oh and I watch the calendar....waiting for Spring :-)

Sounds like a kindred spirit, Rikerbear. I plan and dream, plan and dream. Catalogs are GREAT! It's much easier for me to pick up a tangible catalog sometimes than log on and sit in one place browsing around...my babies, of course, take priority. Not much time in my stage of life for digging up trops or starting seeds in doors. I like to experiment with seeds during the season, but that's about all at this point. Catalogs, graph paper, and IDEAS :) p.s. what's your fave catalog?

hmmm....don't know what this year's will be, but last year I think it was Spring Hill's. How about yours???

All you need do is cultivate more friends in the West! Outside of the rainy days when we're stuck inside (like today: big storm from Alaska sweeping in), this is our prime plant-it-and-weed season.

I broke my leg Sept 8th and am dreading going back into the garden. I know there will be a ton of weeding and leaf cleanup to do! Even with the help of my gardener I'm going to be so behind things. And my garden was looking so gorgeous right before the accident, I was out there almost every day doing a little bit at a time.

i spend winter months planning my next garden, but come spring, it never looks the way i planned it. oh well. i also do a lot of cooking.

Plant Delights has a great catalog section on new Hostas. Excellent pictures :) Keep the thread going, ya'll. I'm going to have to take a break for a little bit here. Baby #3 is coming literally anyday!! LOL. :) Enjoy your falls!

i plan on doing alot more painting and crafty stuff this yr instead of looking and longing out the windows!
Magazines are GREAT and a mad house of house plants that have to be watered in shifts in wonderful too! ;)

DAVES GARDEN and other sites keep alot of us going! ;)

I'm not sure what my favorite catalog is, I think I receive hundreds of them!!! I do read Herronwoods catalog from cover to cover, love Daniel Hinkleys few words!! at the beginning of catalog. No color pictures tho. For color I guess I really like Logees, have ordered from them for many years. Donna

I spend my winters on indoor gardening - I have 70-80 indoor tropicals (and am always looking for more), a large number of which need transplanting about now. It isn't the same kind of gardening, I know, but I still get my hands dirty, I still have little problems to sort out and I have lots and lots of green stuff to keep me happy all winter.

I would love to live in the tropics, I do not like the cold or snow!!!

But since I live in area that gets cold and occasional snow... I spend the winter in the greenhouse and sowing seeds. I never plan gardens because I always change my mind/plans by spring anyway ;)

Oh, I envy those with greenhouses. I LOVE the catalogs. Planning new Spring progects. Dave's Garden is a wonderful past time, anytime. I also enjoy, crafts, ect. Ebay.

We are going to the National Quilt museum this weekend. That should inspire me. www.quiltmuseum.org/

OOOOOOH, Bluegrass! I assume you quilt...do you have a pics posted around DG of quilt projects?

HOUSEPLANTS! My houseplants have never looked better then in the winter.

I have a Brothers Disney Embroidery machine, so I make a lot of beautiful flowers in the winter, then I love to make quilts, and to think I just started this last winter. Just like I started gardening last summer. So I am just getting started with all this new stuff since I retired the first of 2003. Couldn't do all the neat things I do know. I worked about 50 miles away from home and there was always alot of overtime which didn't leave much time for all the new things that I am interested in know. I do love to read the forums at DG.

That's really very pretty, 2pugs :) I'd love to learn hand embroidery here sometime soon. I sew clothing for my daughters and would love to add a little something special like that (I love handwork)!

OOPS! We got a little off. Okay, how do you keep green :)

For those who want to satisfy their gardening itch in winter, just move to coastal CA. We weed year-round here, LOL!

Winter is always the worst: the rains sprout all the weed seeds that the winds blow around, and the snail/slug population literally explodes.

May I offer a shovel or trowel for those who miss the dirt? It is always open season here. Jkom51, better run. They tar and feather folks of our ilk for their fun in the wintertime.

I like to discover gardens, if I can't visit in person, I can always wander on the net. I'm always in search of nice plant combos, plant catalogs only go so far. Of course, ya'll could help...

This is just another shameless request http://davesgarden.com/forums/f/publicgardens/

The tar pot doesn't get fired up until January - guess that's when notmartha and her neighbors really start feeling the effects of living up north. Which is just about the time the zone 9 and warmer folks start feeling their oats since their "winter" is over by then.

I do just about "all of the above" although I'd have to say my winter season here is blissfully short. We stay fairly warm through T'giving (unless it's a weird weather year), and I put off some yard work until then just to stretch out the season a bit. I can always putter around the GH if we have a cold or rainy day or two or three. From Thanksgiving to Christmas is a whirlwind blur of shopping, cooking, baking, card-sending, going-to-concerts and school events.

By mid-January it's time to start a lot of seeds, with subsequent sowings through February. So my only real "downtime" is for a week or two after the holidays, which is faced with catalogs and gardening books and DG to keep my mind occupied.

By late fall, I'm ready to take a break. I ski in every free moment, and don't really start thinking about the garden again until early March. By Mid-April, I'm usually ready, but since we have snow here til the end of April and all the frost doesn't leave the ground til the end of May, I try not to push things too much. Of course, next year when I get the green house, I may think differently!

I used to get pretty restless in the spring, before things melted off. Now I've created a virtual year round gardening experience for myself on the computer. I visit DG, I trade seeds, I research my plants and seeds, and come December or January, I begin planting seeds under lights in my basement. At first, it is mostly geranium, then lily, iris, etc. Lobelia comes in there somewhere.

At any rate, I begin planting 24-22 weeks before June 1, when our last danger of frost occurs. Once February rolls around, I've begun planting seeds in earnest, and soon enough, its time to transplant them. I'm pretty much gardening indoors full time by March. April 1st, if not sooner, the heater goes into the greenhouse, and I haul about 100 flats out there from the basement.

Soon both basement and greenhouse is full and I'm getting frantic. By the end of April, I can begin taking the hardier plants out to my coldframes, then by early to mid May, they go out on the tables with row cover at night.

I sell plants all summer, then by fall, I must begin inventorying them, remarking tags, and trimming them for wintering over. When the first hard freeze comes in late October, I have them tucked away under straw mulch then plastic.

So, November and early December are about the only times I can take a break, and then I am processing and packaging all the seeds I plan to trade over the winter. Even though I live in a place that has winter almost 7 mos. out of the year, I am always 'gardening'.

I winter sow and it makes the winter go by so fast. Starting at the winter soltice or early January, I start planting my perennial seeds in 2 liter bottles and milk jugs and throw them outside to let nature take her course. I planted over 200 varieties last year and was about 94% successful. It was so much fun. Here is a great site to learn about it. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/wtrsow/

Hi all! I've haunted the Garden Watchdog for sometime and finally decided to subscribe... this would be my first post.
Winter sport - magazines new and old, catalogues and then visiting their websites. Last winter I discovered it's easy and worthwhile to cut-n-paste the picture and description from the website when I order and past them into a word doc. When they started showing up and I had already forgotten where I had envisioned putting them, having that color picture made it easy to find impromptu homes.
Shoplights and stands/tables have multiplied in the basement where I can start seeds and new cuttings from my favorite variegated pelargonium. By accident 3 years ago I discovered petunias started from cuttings fairly easy. PLUS - by February those orchid madness were blooming and perfuming the basement! By then the geraniums that were cut back hard are pushing the lights and blooming as well.
A few years ago I ordered tree seeds with the intention of dabbling in bonsai. Well, I'm not doing bonsai but I found that trees I've grown on in pots are extremely popular at the garden swaps. Especially since you can start some cool stuff you don't see in local nurseries or are expensive. Various conifers, birches and last year some Dawn Redwoods from seed I got from trees in front of Great America in Feb.
I still go outside a lot and see where there's no winter interest and I need to plant a conifer or a deciduous tree/bush with interesting bark like the Clump River, Canoe, or Chinese birches with their peeling bark.
If all else fails... I make a new afghan (crochet... not knitting which is a girlie sport! ;) )

Welcome to DG, 8ft! You're going to like it here. This is one of the A#1 ways to take care of the winter gardening itch! So, you grow things in your basement, too! I used to winter over plants down there, under fluorescent lights, but since I've been starting so many seeds under lights, the plants I bring in tend to bring in aphids, as well, so I've had to say goodbye to my geraniums and petunias in the fall... sob, sob!

I've never tried growing trees from seeds... even shrubs. I'm 57, so I have to ask myself if I'll be around to enjoy them! LOL! We have some interesting trees & shrubs here, however, so let me know if you want seeds. My son is supposed to harvest some highbush cranberry seeds for me, now that they've had a good hard freeze.

I harvest seeds and purchase seeds so that I can start my own plants down in the basement each spring. By March, it is beginning to get pretty crowded down there, & by April, I'm hauling them out to the heated greenhouse. It sounds like we both garden all year long!

ya'll better make a note off Terry's post-notmartha has a tar pot and friends in the north with FEATHERZ! she develops a bad case of zone envy and spring itch around January and by late Feb-oh my the SPRING FEVER is out of control, so heed Terry's warning!!!
Pleas post pics of whats blooming in the south(molly)or across the pond or down under-----------> and ya'll better DUCK!!!!!!!!!

*********the TAR shall fly***********

LUVZ YAZ,(happy holidayz)may we all survive it!
Dori

8ft, welcome to Dave's Garden
I would love to have a bonsai for my daughter. She has been checking out books on that subject. Maybe we can meet at one of the Roundups. I love plant swaps!
Teresa in KY

These catalogs just keep coming in the mail and I have to look at them ALL!

This message was edited Nov 13, 2004 6:40 AM

I tend my houseplants inside and bring in any I want to winter over from outside and put them under lights. Then in late winter I start flower and vegetable seeds. I went and bought a "gorrilla rack" from Costco and had my hubby rig up three sets of fluorescent lights under the racks (one set for each rack) I have plenty of light and instead of turning on the light in the kitchen I turn on the plant lights. It is just as bright and look at all the fun I have!
I think I need another rack because I am getting out of control. Good thing he doesn't mind my habit.

I think I spend more money in the off season getting ready for the spring than I do during the growing season!

Winter is the time to work on design elements for the garden. If you have a master plan then maybe you can work on creating specific theme gardens or redesigning walkways etc. If you don't have a master plan then you have enough work to keep you busy most of the winter. Map your entire property and then draw it to scale on a piece of vellum (1/4" = 1' or 1/8" = 1' are both excellent scales). Then you can create several conceptual designs showing where you need privacy, wind or noise buffers, gardens, pathways, patios etc. Then work on the final design. Last but not least is fun process of plant selection!! This can last forever for gardeners! By this time it will be spring!

Don't forget to create some mystery in the garden and place benches or sculpture in hidden spots. Think about fountains, ponds, statuary, birdhouses, patios, lighting etc.

I'm adding to my gardening library, too! Any must haves???

I work on pictures.....the hundreds of flower, bug, wildlife pics that I take during the spring and summer that I don't have time to fool with get cropped, resized and named during the winter. It's almost like being right out there in the gardens.

I'm also in the process of making my own hosta library and wildflower library on my computer.

Me to, DiOhio! I also use this time to add my photos to the PDB. Sometimes when I am busy looking through my photos, it is a surprise to look out the window and see snow!

Well, that was a very entertaining read. I don't know how you guys can stand to garden when you can't do it year-round. That's the major reason I live in North Florida: for the 10 month growing season.

I plan to build a walkway in my backyard this "winter" because once it warms up, it'll be too darn hot to work that hard. ("It ain't the heat... it's the stupidity.) So this is the time to dig out the path, place the leveling sand, etc., and I'll probably plant dwarf mondo grass and some of those neat steppable plants just before our last frost date... which is the first week in March. Some years we actually get some hard freezes; last year we did not so many of my zone 9 and 10 plants look fabulous.

I also have a greenhouse for the 9, 10 and 11 tropicals, the bananas, pineapples, palms. Can't let them see temps below 50. Finally, I'll take cuttings of things, start seeds and try to get a jump on all those poor souls who will be buying their herbs at the nurseries in March. I should have a full salad garden going by the time the plants are ready to harden off.

What? This is a Yankees-only thread or sumpin'? Stop throwing snowballs, y'all!

:: ducking and running::