54February 16, 2017

We seem to be in a snowy weather pattern. The snow is building up on the roof of your house or your business. If you remember back to the winter of 2015, we had so much snow and people had to take the snow off the roof. The snow was shoveled off and it usually fell onto the ground right at a line even with the edge of the roof. The weight of that falling snow, falling on the shrubs that were planted under the roofline, causes many shrubs to be damaged. People spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to replace those shrubs in the spring of 2015. If you have to shovel off the roof, make sure that the snow is thrown away from the roof. This will prevent the snow from crushing the shrubs or you will be repeating the cost of replacing shrubs in the spring of 2017.

If you are in the mood to do some seeding of vegetable plants indoors, now would be the time to start your seeds for those vegetable crops that you would plant in mid April. The seeds that you could start now would be broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, head lettuce, leaf lettuce, kale, onions and other leafy greens. If you are planting seeds indoors, it is very important to use a seed starting soil. This type of soil is different from regular potting because seed-starting soil is a sterile growing medium. Regular potting soil can contain fungus and or bacteria that can kill the emerging seedlings. You also want to use new containers for starting your seedlings. This will prevent any contamination from bacteria or fungus that may have gotten on your containers when the containers were brought outside. You can sterilize old containers by washing them in soapy water, thoroughly rinsing the containers and then sterilizing the containers by soaking the containers in a solution of 1 part bleach to 9 parts water. Once this has been done, rinse the containers thoroughly in water.

Growing plants indoors does require an environment of strong sunlight or you will need to use artificial light. If your house is kept on the cool side, you may want to use a soil-heating mat to help to speed up the germination of your seeds. We carry all the things you need to start your plants from seed at our store.

Well, that’s all for this week. I’ll talk to you again next week.