Yesterday I planted up a few more seeds to get a head start on early spring planting, and my little greenhouse is starting to fill up.

My current, preferred method of seed starting:  potting soil plus vermiculite mixed up, plus leftover six-pack plant things, plus masking tape labels.

They’re all shelf-ed up in the greenhouse.

My greenhouse is a little pop-up tent, basically, made of clear plastic.  The only photo I could find of it from the outside was from when I was taking it down last spring, so this is what it looks like partially disassembled:

It fits perfectly in the corner of my “patio” against the garage wall and next to the door.  Inside, I have shelves on either side.

The above shot is pre-seedling, but you get the idea.  It is jam-packed in there right now, since the seedlings have joined all of the plants that do not enjoy the freezing temperatures we’ve been sporadically having lately.

Yesterday I also attempted to dig up a former potato patch, looking for possible seed potatoes for the new potato patch.  I have proven to be a terrible, terrible potato farmer so far, so I’m hoping this attempt goes a little bit better.  Even though my potato plants never made it to the point of flowering, there were quite a few potatoes hidden in the soil!  I got tired of digging before the job was done, and now it is back to pouring rain, so the rest of the potatoes will have to be tracked down later.

That reminds me, I have a little patch where I grew a couple of tomatoes last year, and then after they were gone, tossed in a couple of seed potatoes.  There is now some borage growing like crazy in that area, so I was planning on leaving it up to nature to see what comes up there in the spring.  Sadly, potatoes and tomatoes are not supposed to grow well together, so we’ll see what happens.

In other, unrelated news, this is one of the dogs I walked at the Humane Society yesterday:

Besides the one brown, one blue eye situation, she had a puffy tail that really looked like a raccoon tail.  A raccoon dog!  She was a really nice dog, and whenever I walk the particularly beautiful and/or nice dogs, I think: “What kind of ass would give this dog to a shelter??” since most of the dogs there are “owner relinquish.”  So sad, right?  Two of the other volunteers were talking yesterday, though, about a man who had to bring his dog in last week.  He had a whole string of horribleness, including his wife leaving and his house foreclosing, etc.  When he brought his dog in, he was apparently crying and crying that he couldn’t keep her anymore, which in the current mess of an economy, is a pretty common reason for the animals to be brought in.  Ugh.  So sad.

Tags: animal shelter, dogs, garden, greenhouse