This week Home Grown New Mexico will begin posting tips and ideas from other New Mexico bloggers that support community homesteading. Welcome to Jannine Cabossel this week. She is a Master Gardener, ‘The Tomato Lady’ at the Santa Fe Farmers Market and writes the Giant Veggie Gardener blog about her experience in her 2,000 foot artisan garden with award winning large pumpkins and of course tomatoes. You can follow her at http://giantveggiegardener.com
10 Things to Do in February
From Giant Veggie Gardener Blog by Jannine Cabossel
Well February is upon us and although for most of us gardeners it is a quieter time of year, there are still things we can start to do to prepare for this coming season. Here are 10 things you can do in February.
1. We haven’t gotten a lot of moisture, so on a nice warm day, water your trees and bushes this February. Don’t forget to empty your hose of the water so it will be ready to water again. (Nothing worse than a frozen hose). If we don’t get significant moisture, we should water once a month for established trees and plants and more for those we planted last fall. Of course if the ground is frozen where they are-don’t worry about watering frozen ground.
2. Go over your seed catalogs, make your lists of what you want to plant this coming season (go ahead-go wild-order more than you need-I do!))
3. Order your seeds so you will be ready to start planting. Cool season crops can be started later in March outside.
4. You can start some seeds inside-spinach, chard, peas and arugula to be ready to transplant outside next month.
5. How about cleaning, sharpening, and oiling your garden tools (after you find them)
6. If you do start seeds inside, clean all your containers with 10% bleach/water to disinfect them.
7. Turn your compost pile if it isn’t frozen.
8. Check your vermicomposting red wrigglers. Have you fed them recently?
9. If you haven’t cleaned up your old garden be sure you do. Bad bugs hang out in dead leaves and plants and diseases can stay on your soil in dead leaves.
10. Read some good books-gardening and otherwise!
Home Grown New Mexico 
Perusing seed catalogs is a great start but please take your seed list to your local nursery first and then order what you cannot find in town from catalogs. If our local merchants do not have our support they will go away.
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Thank you for the comment and buying local is important. There are many ways to find seeds. The first place that I go is a local seed exchange. Home Grown New Mexico will have one on Feb 28 and I am working with the City for a garden kick-off and seed exchange the last week in March. Watch our site this week for more details.
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LOL, I guess I jumped the gun. My indoor tomato plants are now 6 inches tall, and I planted two (as an experiment) in walls of water with warm gallons of water close by. It will be interesting to see if they make it! Our chard, arugula, spinach is up and doing well (under plastic) and our peas are peaking out of the ground. LOL perhaps it will not work trying to plant this early, but so far, it is fine:) Thanks.
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Ellen,
Gardening is a big experiment to see what works best in your microclimate. I start tomatoes in Feb also and love them to have long stems to make long roots when I plant them outside. Keep us posted and send pictures to homegrownnewmexico@gmail.com
Amy
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