Here’s to this year’s crop! I decided to try Independence Day tomatoes, and learned that it has a much lower germination rate than other varieties. Let’s hope they make up for it with taste.

The seedlings look sturdy and enthusiastic, and have grown large enough that I don’t have to worry about them anymore.
I haven’t fully planned this summer’s vegetable garden yet, but it will be pretty much the same as it is every year: tomatoes, peppers, sweet and hot, eggplants, squashes, beans, and cucumbers, together with an assortment of kitchen herbs.

The veggie patch is still buried under last year’s growth, an unfortunate setback due to the weather. As I said, March is a fickle and deceitful month, you can’t trust it enough to clean up, not to mention plant!

It is so cold that I haven’t dared go outside for an entire week, but I know that some of the plants that decided to brave the world early are not faring very well right now. They’ll recover, I hope.

Fifteen degrees, even negative temperatures, if you add the wind chill. Not all one is hoping for in spring, I must say.

The little crabapple tree had already started opening its leaf buds, just in time for the freeze. This too shall pass; in the meantime I get to enjoy the little make shift hothouse in my living room.

Author's Bio: 

Main Areas: Garden Writing; Sustainable Gardening; Homegrown Harvest
Published Books: “Terra Two”; “Generations”; "The Plant - A Steampunk Story"; "Letters to Lelia"; "Fair"; "Door Number Eight"; "A Year and A Day"; "Möbius' Code"; "Between Mirrors"; "The Blue Rose Manuscript"
Career Focus: Author; Consummate Gardener;
Affiliation: All Year Garden; The Weekly Gardener; Francis Rosenfeld's Blog

I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might use it in their own gardening practice.