This weekend I’ll be sowing seeds like a wild woman here at home. As has been typical over the last few years, I’m behind. So behind! I have two days to make a serious dent in this pile, and I know that I will. Then it’s back to work to do the same thing all next week.

Right now it’s GO time.

So many seeds need to be sown on time, or else plants just won’t grow into the best they can be during the season. Some seeds are old, so I need to sow them ASAP to get anything I can out of the batch. Then I will plant those babies and pray that I will have fresh crops of seeds at the end of the season.

I planted several packets a few years ago that were 20 years old and I still had an ok germination rate. You just never know! Fun, right? Experimenting is the best!

This year is different than others because I want to redo the seed garden I used to have where I was able to collect seed crops. My shop on ETSY is nearly closed now. I’m still debating if I want to ever sell seeds again, but I want to have that option. Oh to have more land!

It was a decade well spent, but I honestly, I lost a lot of money doing it. The amount of labor that went into sowing, growing, collecting, cleaning, and packaging was A LOT. My time is worth more now, and I plan to sell small batches of plants wholesale. We shall see though. I’m not rushing into that yet since I’m working nearly full-time as it is. To make it in horticulture though, you’ve got to stay on your toes and be open to getting creative.

Some of the seeds will be sown in flats outdoors, on racks or on the ground. I lack space around here so I do what I can and I don’t mind that it’s not picture perfect. The good news is that I work at two nurseries and some of these babies wind up at either, or, I sell a few here, and there, or I trade with friends.

With more Open Garden dates this year I need to speed this up so that I can clean it all up in time for folks to walk through.

I’ll be starting seeds indoors as well. I can’t start as many as I used to due to the number of houseplants I currently own, but I’ll be doing what I can. It never stops. There is a reason I’m well-known for my seeds and seed work. I just love this process and work hard to learn more as I go. Each batch is a new recipe to me.

So much of this reminds me of cooking and many of my kitchen skills are used. It’s especially obvious when I have to prep, clean and sort seeds and it can be mind numbing. Sometimes seed cleaning feels like peeling potatoes all day. Even sowing them can feel like slamming your head against the wall over and over. Reminds me of cooking 5-course meals with painful swollen legs. Gotta push through the monotony of it.

I love to make a large serving of plants though, a potted up tray of beautiful plants, and to see people smile as they walk through tables of flats. Potted up cuttings, plugs, and seedlings grown on, all ready to go home to be planted.

Delicious on the eyes, isn’t it? Just the thought of this image gets us excited. We’re fans of the garden performance and we want to orchestrate our own.

These are the art supplies of garden artists that I “whip up” for them. Dabblers, dreamers, and makers crafting up living spaces, property, and the ground around them, making previously dull space come to life. Magical green daily dances on spring afternoons grow into something more solemn and bold on hot summer evenings. The show folds in autumn of course. Stems lose their leaves, and yet they still stand. Nearby their friends fold over, tumbling in cold winds, taking their finally bows. The curtain of winter falls and the show is over.

When the rush of this performance is over, and you’ve come down from your high, if you find yourself craving to do it all over again, then you know you’ve fallen hard for gardening. You’re addicted.

I miss collecting seeds at home. I miss observing native plants around the region. I miss a lot of things because of the pandemic and working so much.

I’ve learned a lot though during the last few years. While many consumers are willing to pay more for plants, their reasons are changing. Consumers are brutal though. They judge the overall appeal of your entire look and setup. Social media and the internet have made the industry so much more public too, especially thanks to indoor gardening. It’s important for me to escape from all of this, and so I have my jungle home, my laboratory, and my other interests. It’s not all sunshine and flowers out there in the real world.

Times are changing and there is a generational shift occurring right now. It’s interesting (and a bit scary) to watch as it happens but change is good and I see it as growth. I’ll keep posting about this throughout the year. It’s too complicated to cover in one flippant paragraph. If you’ve noticed it too, feel free to comment.

I am at Cistus now 3 days a week and am working shorter days to make it all possible with my health issues. After 5 years there, I have a lot of crops that have grown up. I hope to share more of them this year here on the blog too as they’ve aged a bit and grown up.

So many of my babies have gone home with customers who’ve planted them and loved them. It thrills me to have been been able to help others garden. My goal is to provide these products to consumers, making the plants my employers need to sell, but in the coming months I hope to educate more readers and folks who land on my site about the importance of what I do, and why small batches of diverse plants matter in terms of creating a marketplace that is fun for consumers to access and enjoy.

I fear that we’ll have less and less plant diversity on the market unless we have more small nurseries opening. That’s my nightmare, and I fight it daily, sort-of in a not-so-quiet way, behind the scenes. Expect me to keep talking about this a lot around here.

If you know where your food comes from, and how it’s produced, I think it’s time we better educate consumers and one another about where our plants come from, and why they matter too.