God almighty, how I will miss Molly Ivins. What a shock.

Seed-starting inside tonight - I am satisfying my inner child and I have a new greenhouse - do not imitate me if you are wise and don’t want to waste your seeds!

Although the Ping Tungs did fruit during a cold November this past year…no excuse for the others, though.

8 “Ping Tung Long” Eggplant - Southern Exposure Seed Exchange 2006
4 White Eggplant - Monticello 2005
10 Roma tomatoes - Southern Exposure Seed Exchange 2006
15 Amish Paste tomatoes -Southern Exposure Seed Exchange 2006

Brussel sprouts and the broccoli “blend” from Fedco are coming up.

I suspect that someone got the message at Park Seed about the comment spam - what they do with it is something else. I found this link in my Sitemeter stats, and it’s from the same communications company that the spammers worked from.

Proof of Park Seed comment spam is posted here. If they don’t stop now that they know we’re onto them, they’ll probably change their message, so be suspicious of ANY comment including a Park Seed link.

I guess that one thing was true when these folks said that they didn’t know much about the Internet - they didn’t know that they could be tracked and caught.

This pretty much goes without saying, but, bloggers, please boycott Park Seed this seed-buying season.

UPDATE:
Gosh, those Park Seed commenters sure are novices to gardening and the Internet.

By the way, PS, thanks for pointing me to some more negative publicity by using Blogger Search to visit my site.

Garden Mob awarded Park Seed the Snidely Whiplash Award this fall.

Garden Rant isn’t impressed with their “blog”.

By the way, I’ll be back to Garden Rant and Garden Mob (for rose lovers). They’re my kind of folks.

There are lots of great quotes in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine essay by Michael Pollan entitled Unhappy Meals. Here is one of them:

…it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.

It’s been a really nice weekend so far and I don’t want to think about it ending.

The 9:20 service at Church of the Covenant was thought-provoking, as usual. Jim’s been hanging his photos at Flickr and has gotten involved with the whole Flickr community thing. It’s cool because he has started posting philosophical comments with his photos.

Dill is sprouting inside. Most of the golden chard is dead. Nothing else succumbed to damping off though.

Black-seeded Simpson lettuce and French Breakfast radishes are coming up in the greenhouse raised bed.

I covered the new planted raised bed with a sheet of clear plastic so it is soaking up heat today in preparation for the serious cold front coming through tonight. I put the plastic on top of the Agribon layer.

I put an Agribon tunnel up on the other raised bed, but nothing is planted there. I’m just keeping the cats away.

I made up a new batch of potting mix and filled all my trays and little plastic pots, but it is really dry stuff. It will take some soaking to get all that peat moss moistened.

I started filling the new framed raised beds, but after five wheelbarrow loads I recalled a little belatedly that I promised myself a Sabbath today. Now I’m playing a computer game and I’ll pick up a book in a few minutes.

The wood stove is pumping out heat through my little Eco-fan, drying my laundry on racks while my husband is taking apart the dryer for the second time to try to fix it. I think it’s a design problem, but he sometimes surprises me with his tinkering.

I’m going to watch the second part of Jane Eyre at 9 pm tonight on PBS. I haven’t ever seen any of the other films based on the novel so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I was caught up in it just like I was caught up in the book twenty years ago.

You can’t ask much more than for a day like this one on your day off. I accomplished a lot in the Back Forty, even with my acupuncture break in the afternoon.

Sandy built the frames for the raised beds on the side. I’ll fill them with compost tomorrow and plant a few peas.

I moved some compost to the back, and I moved a lot of flowers and a few ornamental herbs to a less sunny spot. They may not like it there, but I’m dedicating the sunniest spots to the veggies. It will be pretty to have a big flower bed in front of the studio.

I made the raised bed in the middle more narrow so that I won’t have so much trouble reaching into the middle. It’s still a little too wide, so I may make a couple of pathways across every four feet. I thought about putting a pathway down the middle and splitting it lengthwise, but that would have put one of the beds almost totally in shade. I don’t have a lot of choice about the pathway on the other side - there are several railroad ties from a former garden about two inches below the surface. Since I don’t have a bobcat I’m just working with what I’ve got.

Although I love the curvy organic design that I originally made for the Back Forty, I admit that I have been heavily influenced by the orto at Spannocchia in Tuscany. As I get older and achier, those straight narrow rows seem more and more appealing. I also need to start using a hoe - I don’t know why I never think about using a hoe. I could make things a lot easier on myself if I tried. I did a lot of weeding today, but with a shovel and my hands. Duh.

Finally, I planted in the row nearest the deck, in order from closest to the tree to the middle, claytonia, arugula, long-standing Bloomsdale spinach, and Nero di Toscana kale. I put up a tunnel made with wire supports and Agribon row cover fabric, and laid down recycled wooden slats along the sides to pin the fabric down. The wooden slats came from a ceiling we tore down back in the nineties, and I have been finding uses for them ever since. Everything else came from Fedco Seeds.

I guess I should buy a roll of clear plastic to go over my tunnels for nights that drop below 20 degrees. It’s hard to believe after a day in the 60s, but tomorrow’s low is predicted to be 17. My lettuce patch has been fine with straw and a Reemay cover, though. My concern is getting these seeds to germinate.

As for the acupuncture, I feel better, but I still need to see Dr. Lewis and get adjusted. The woman doing my acupuncture suggested that she could help my skin. I sort of did a double take because I never think about my skin problems unless I have an ugly rash or I’m itching. I’ve always had awful skin, either acne or allergies, and I take terrible care of my skin. I guess this denial goes back to high school when nothing I did seemed to help, so I gave up and learned to live with it. Anyway, I’ll think about it, because occasionally there are times that I am downright embarrassed about my appearance. I look more like W.C. Fields every day.

Now I’m going to make some spaghetti and kick back for the evening.

I thought I’d write a few random thoughts while finishing off the coffee pot.

In a few minutes, I’m off to the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market, as usual. The Market is trying new winter hours beginning in February: Saturdays, 7 am to 1 pm. Hope that they will do this again next year when I plan to sell veggies and herbs there. 5:30 a.m. is a mighty early start on a cold winter morning.

I write about this a lot, but for you new readers, I do most of my food shopping at this market, with the rest coming from my garden, my freezer, my canned goods from the previous year’s harvest, Deep Roots Market, and only the occasional purchase from Earth Fare or a conventional store. I find that a lot of my shopping can be done at the Farmers’ Market, more during other seasons, but you can find a lot more there this winter than you might expect!

I started just a few more seeds inside last night - a couple of pots of cardoons, and a couple more pots of basil. Mainly I organized my thoughts and laid out a plan for my seed-starting. Like a lot of people, I get too excited and start many more plants than I have room for on my micro-farm, which is less than 1/10th of an acre. When I realized that I was planning for 38 tomato plants - well, where will they go? I could sell the extra seedlings, but I don’t have enough natural light in my house to make for strong seedlings. Later when it’s a tad warmer, I’ll move some of these out to my new greenhouse and see how that goes.

Today’s plans: Sandy and I will finish the narrow frames for the raised beds in the side yard. They’re almost done. Then I’ll start moving compost to the back again and fill them up. I think that I’ll plant peas in these beds and switch them over to squash in the early summer. The tromboncini and butternut squashes are long vining plants and can run along the fence, and I’ll try some bush varieties in between.

One big project that needs to be done soon is digging up most of my perennial flowers and herbs and moving them to other places so I can have the primo sun spot for vegetables until the pear trees get bigger. Part of this entails digging up the mint that I’ve let get out of hand - ooh, I’ve been bad, and I will pay. I was planning to move these to the front yard, but I am not so sure now because of hubby’s objections.

In the middle of all this, I have an acupuncture appointment at 1:30 today. At first I was doing this rather begrudgingly - someone gave me a gift certificate for a session - but I’ve had a problem with a sore neck in recent weeks so it will probably do me good. What I really need is a good workover by my chiropractor, who did wonders for my physical health during the 90s, but I’ve only been to him for specific aches and pains in recent years, including my stiff neck last spring.

Whether I’ll want to go back to shoveling compost after feeling all tingly and chi-balanced this afternoon is the question.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the Slow Food Piedmont Triad planning meeting this past week, and I promise that I or someone else will get out information about the new year’s activities on the Slow Food Piedmont blog, but I want to wait until I get a little more concrete information so I don’t have to field a whole bunch of more questions! Right now, it looks like 2007 will be a whole lot like 2006, which had some awesome events, and the key is whether we will get volunteers to help organize and staff these events. A lot of people want to participate, but we don’t have paid staff to take care of these events, and so far a handful of folks have shouldered the load.

One thing I want to do for sure is to go back to the Levering Orchard in early June. I’ll do this whether we do it as a group or not. The film series will start soon, and there will be the open houses at Goat Lady Dairy. More later.

UPDATE: I decided to stop being nice. Park Seed is the company sending out the targeted comment spam to gardening blogs. Please name your spammer in the comments if you received a comment like this, except with a link to Park Seed. The beginning line differs according to the post, which is pretty slick, but the rest of it says something like:

“You seem to know more about gardening than I do. I’ve just just purchased my first tomato seed and I’ve been trying to find someone to give me some tips. I’m a novice to gardening and the Internet, so please excuse me if my etiquette is off. ”

Well, here’s a tip. Don’t buy your seed from Park Seed. And you’re right, lying and comment spamming is terrible etiquette, and I’m sorry, but you’re not excused.

So far, the comment spammers’ names are

For the record: indoors yesterday, January 25, all Fedco 2006 seeds

Bleu de Solaize Leeks - 16
Oliver Brussels Sprouts - 6
Broccoli Blend - 6
Parsley, Dark Green Italian OG - scattered in two containers, will divide
Chater’s Dbl Mix Hollyhock - 6 (for a friend, I don’t have room for hollyhocks!)

I only have one heat mat - those things are expensive and the top of the refrigerator is not an option because that is part of Guido’s mountain. The peak of Mount Guido is on top of a kitchen cabinet. So I’m moving the heat mat when a tray of seeds germinates and when I get to the peppers I guess I’ll leave them under them.

Mail just came - seeds are here!

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

Just checked the seedling nursery - kale is emerging but the Golden Chard seems to have a damping-off problem. I’ve never had that before, but I’m making a guess.

I’ll start a few more seeds inside but I think I’ll wait until after the expected winter blast of below-20 temps tomorrow night to plant anything else outside. That’s not usual for our part of the country, but we do occasionally get it.

I cannot wait for fresh sweet peas again. YUM!