The snows have left us, albeit temporarily, replaced by a weekend with just enough hint of the spring a long 10 weeks hence to make us antsy for it.
While there will be no hint of green in the outside snowpack, there will be plenty of its suggestion inside. For a new mini-greenhouse is going up in a dining room corner.
The greenhouse – about 3 feet long, almost as wide and 25 inches high at its peak — will sit on a table positioned over a furnace register in front of a window. A small light will be placed inside to help maintain heat and humidity at night.
That peak will come in handy, too. An older version of a similar greenhouse – but with a flat top – became an inviting sleeping spot for cat sisters Winslow and Wyeth.
While there was much comedic relief to see the cats, soundly snoozing, break through the poorly anchored polycarbonate panel inserts, it did no favors for the greenhouse, let alone the young plants inside.
So, the “cat problem” fixed – supposedly — what to plant to get this growing season underway? Obviously, it’s a tad too early for most vegetables. But not for lettuce. And not for flowers.
Thus, a variety of leaf lettuces will be sown in all manner of spent food and drink containers horded for just that purpose, filled with rich starter soil.
Selectively harvested over the next few months – there’s nothing better than fresh-cut greens in the dead of winter – they will be more than robust enough to move into outdoor cold frames as spring bows.
And the indoor greenhouse also will be the perfect place to sow some of the tens of thousands of marigold seeds harvested last growing season, some of them descendants of marigolds going back 35 years. As the new flowers mature, they, too, will move into larger outdoor cold frames.
When others are just thinking of buying flats of marigolds at their favorite local nursery, these freebies of several varieties will be ready to be transplanted into the yard.
It’s always nice to be ahead of the game, of course. And, mind you, there’s plenty of winter to come. But working “in” the mini-greenhouse surely will make those raving north winds and that pelting snow, blowing high and blowing low, far more tolerable.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
