It's that time again; time to stop playing Farmville & get to Farming

Truth is in Texas you never really have to stop farming, and I haven't really.  Early January is just not a very busy time.  Now's the beginning of the 2011 season and my peas are in the ground.  I have just spent the day moving and organizing all the plants in my den/greenhouse to make room so that I may get to the shelves that my seedlings will be placed on to receive the maximum amount of light. To be honest my Spring juices are beginning to flow.  They always do this time of year.  To start off I need to figure out what needs to be started indoors and so even tho' I have loads of books on the subject; to the web I go. 

I remembered seeing something in all of my blog reading about a good tool that was on-line, so off I go to look back at all of my starred postings.  It pops up on Henbogle a great blog that I follow with a really terrific new snow filled banner picture.  Here I am directed to Johnny's Selected Seeds where I enter my estimated last frost date and "Voila!" my planning is done for me.  I copied my calculated info and pasted it into Excel, and it worked no editing required. 

It made me wonder what other tools are out there.  It also made me wonder if a really good urban farmer already has this stuff memorized.  Something to work on I guess. 

As it turns out I got quite alot of hits on my "Vegetable Garden Planning".  Better Homes and Gardens was at the top of the list, but I don't think that Vegetable gardening is what BHG had in mind.  Their garden planner was more about shape and design than about "what and when" like I had in mind. Their was another "advert" site at the top of the hit list called Grow Veg at growveg.com, but I am not willing to pay to find out.  Could be great tho'.  Let me know if you try it and think it's the bees knees.

I have found though a terrific garden planner that encompasses both timing and physical design.  Check our Mother Earth News' garden planner.  It is terrific and has video instructions.  Really great!

In the photos there you can see my Artichoke.  First in the Summer and now in the Winter inside the tubular tent that I made it of plastic, chicken wire, 2 bales of hay on the outside that you can't see and when necessary a couple of blankets.  I have a soft spot in my heart for this Artichoke and I will do everything I can to get it thru to the next growing season and then on to even better things!