Life at a "Swell's" pace

It's that time of year again, when starting seeds indoors for your garden is the norm for most yard-gardeners, like us. We always start with the basic seed pods that come in the ready-to-use sod, seed starters from the brand Jiffy® are kind of our go-to brand. We like these a lot because they are so easy to work with, especially when it comes to the tiny, itty-bitty, little seeds. You can get your own seed tray pellets with the soil pods at a local farmer supply store or purchase the ones pictured, here.

We soak them with warm water overnight and prepare the soil pods. This is a great activity for kids to get involved in. My son loves to help!

We are really big into herbs right now because of how much better they taste. Here we've planted Rosemary (my favorite) and Chives.

Then we branched out to Oregano and Spearmint. Spearmint can be used for pretty much anything really, but I like to make a tea with it and add it to hot cocoa.

I often save my seeds from the different crops from year-to-year and these seed packets make it super easy to do that because they are made from plastic and tend to last longer than paper seed packs.

I am still working on a good seed container to store my seeds in through the down months of no planting and growing. I've had some suggestions, but nothing seems to be really working for us. I'll keep racking my brain till I figure something out other than a large plastic box (what I am using right now, ha!)

And there it is. We'll cover these up and see how they do.

And, I have finally managed to get my ground cover to take off the way it should in my front flower bed. Now to clean out the flower bed so it looks "normal."

This ground cover I used is called 'Common' Periwinkle.

This Daffodil Farm has been in Oregon for quite some years and we love it. Over the years more and more people have found out about it and have taken advantage of all the flowers too.

So many different varieties of daffodils to pick from and the stand even has ones already cut and packaged if you don't want to get out and pick them yourself. We think picking them is the best thing though because you get what YOU want. 20 stems for $5, can't beat that!