Planning a Garden in a Record-Breaking Blizzard

As I write this the wind is howling outside and blowing snow is pounding down on us.  Yes, on March 15th we are in the middle of a lovely pre-spring blizzard, my friends! Driving is touch and go, public transit has been pulled from the roads, the city is pretty much at a stand-still and I'm planning our garden. (♪ ♫ one of these things is not like the others..♫ ♪).  Truth be told, I'm going on my third evening doing this and I don't expect to finish tonight or tomorrow night either.  It is no easy task! Let me tell you why!

As I scour my favourite seed company websites, Cottage Gardener, West Coast Seeds and Stokes Seeds there are so many things running through my mind!  First and foremost, my main dilemma is that as much as I hope that we list our house, it promptly sells and we are at the new homestead in time for planting, realistically speaking there is a good chance that we won't be there in time.  If this is the case, I don't want to order a whole bunch of seeds that we aren't going to use!  What a shame it would be, though, if it does all work out and we arrive with only enough seeds and plants for our city garden.  I will be starting a lot of our seeds indoors this year, or at least the ones that can be started indoors.  This way, with a season that looks like it might be shorter, all of the plants can reach maturity.  What I'm considering is planning for somewhere in the middle: more than needed for the city and not nearly enough for the country.  This way, we will have a decent garden either way and if we have too much for the city, I can sell the seedlings.  This approach has a few downfalls; however, one being the obvious issue that we potentially could be looking at our beautiful fields... empty. The second being that this approach means we won't be growing much in the way of animal feed, which means our first year might include only a few chickens.  A few chickens is more than what we have now though, which is zero...

Snowing and Blowing!

That's our house back there..somewhere

March 16th. Post blizzard, with 36 cm (a little over 14 inches) of snow down, but a beautiful sunny day. We have broken the record for the most snow to ever fall in our city!  The previous record, set in 1962-63, is no more as we stand at 431 cm so far this winter.  That is almost 170 inches, or over 14 FEET of snow.  Wowza!  Oh, and we have more coming tomorrow night.. Yippee!  Now, back to the big problem here:  My Seeds!

Aside from the 'Where' dilemma, there is also the 'What' dilemma that goes hand-in-hand with it!  When I look through the catalogs and websites I just want to plant them all!  I'm like a kid in a candy store.  So much potential, but trying to do everything in the first year is just not realistic.  As much as I know, there is a lot I don't know and there will be a learning curve for sure. So, the quest continues.

I'll be posting soon about what I end up ordering!  Stay tuned!