I took a tour of the backyard with my toddler son on a cool Saturday morning and found that, as I had suspected, spring is here. Some of my garlic sprouts are an inch or two above the soil, a few of my earliest varieties of crocuses are blooming (the deep violet ones are always first), the tulip leaves are starting to unfurl gracefully, and the early native perennials (like lupine, delphinium, and flax) are sending up their first few leaves.


Garlic sprouts on a foggy morning

All these things point to a need for me to get organized and start working. When starting the season, the first thing I always do is sit down on the couch with my husband and re-hash the previous year. He likes knowing that his opinion is important when it comes to gardening, because he's in charge of the most backbreaking aspects (like digging potato holes). He sometimes says surprising things, like "Can we plant more lettuce this year?" and so I write down 'add 1 more row of lettuce.' He makes some statements every year, and like his constant "I want bigger tomatoes" statement. I know, dear, I want bigger ones too, but you gotta remember we live in Montana and do not have a greenhouse.

Now that you know how my marriage and gardening life come together, here's a quick reminder of what you might get started on right now.

Do the gardening talk with your gardening partner, if you have one. Make sure to cover these topics:

• mistakes (perceived or real) in type and quantity of what you planted last year. Were these mistakes fixable, or were they just you learning about your climate, soils, time constraints, etc?


• Additions ("I want more lettuce") or subtractions ("do we really need a four foot row of dill?") from last year


• Infrastructure changes: New watering system? Thinking about raised beds?


• Budget concerns, especially if you are considering major overhauls like raised beds or yards of new soil

Create a list of everything you want to grow. Organize it by:

• Seeds you already have (most are good in the packet for 3 or 4 years, if kept cool and dry)


• Seeds you need to buy


• Starts that you can realistically do from home with some seeds and a sunny window


• Starts that you need to buy from a garden store or farmer's market

Start collecting reused containers for your starts, poking several large holes in the bottom of each for drainage. Both smaller (8 oz.) containers (good for smaller starts like lettuce and basil) and larger ones (for tomatoes, etc.) are great.

So far, in my house, we've come to a few key agreements for the '09 gardening season. For one thing, our new 40' x 10' garden, which has been slumbering for a year under a murderous layer of black weed smothering plastic, needs to be fenced to keep out the dog and chickens. This huge (about threefold) increase in gardening space will largely be taken up with low maintenance, high yield favorites like zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and potatoes. That sort of crop selection will keep the increase in workload down to a minimum. We've also agreed that we need to be more aggressive in our mulching strategies for the veggies - the best yields last year were in the parts of the garden that had a weed cloth and hay mix used for weed smothering.


The new garden, as partially exposed and seen from above

So now that you have your to-do list, go for it! We'll be gearing up in the next week or so with a lot of tips for growing all kinds of veggies, basic garden tasks, and more here on Gardenaut, so don't be intimidated - if you've wanted to start a small home garden, dive in and we'll be with you every step of the way.