The Garden Stocking Stuffer

This is a Friday reminder that before your ground freezes up on you, it’s a good time to test your soil. Can’t get to it during the busy holiday season? Bag it up and put it aside for a winter project. Consider it a stocking stuffer for your garden. When one of those dreary January days come round, pull out the soil and test it yourself with a purchased kit or send it out for analysis.  

If you relentlessly till your clumps of dirt without knowing what is or isn’t in each particle, it turns into a lot of hard labor with little to no results. Dealing with plants, whether starting from seed, bare root, or a balled shrub or tree, it’s all alive. And when you are dealing with live material, like us, you need to plant it in good soil. It sounds basic but we tend to forget this simple principle. As Gunilla Norris reminds us in her excerpt about bare rooted roses, “The greatest longing is to leaf out.”

So while our gardens hibernate, we can keep the soul of it moving forward. I end with another excerpt from Gunilla Norris to remind everyone that whether our winter creeps in slow or harsh, use this time wisely and tend to what matters. “Acceptance of yourself as you are and others as they are is the true potting soil. All Growth starts there.”

Top Image of fork and trowel set from the Internet (Want to buy the set? Here’s the link)

http://www.grahamandgreen.co.uk/fork-trowel-set

Bottom Image of Rose by Ann Bilowz

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