Is it too early to start thinking about spring?

The amount of glorious sunlight that wakes me up through my south-facing bedroom windows every morning makes it hard to remember that it's not quite spring yet. Nevertheless, it hasn't stopped me from starting to plan my balcony garden. I've never done a lot of container gardening before, so I went to the library (just a few blocks from my place) to get some books on container gardening on balconies. Call me a geek, but I always feel better if I thoroughly research a project before I start it.

While out shopping with Nyron yesterday (for much-needed tall Billy bookshelves from Ikea) we decided to take a trip to Canadian Tire as well and I picked up some seeds. I got some clear plastic egg cartons from a nice freecycler and I'd like to try growing at least some of my kitchen garden from seed. Why?, because then I get to start the whole gardening process much earlier in the year! Of course, I haven't really managed to get a seed to grow into anything since we all planted bean seeds in 3rd grade, so we'll see if the fruits of my labour...well, fruit. In an attempt to get Nyron excited about my little wilderness of edible flora in the making, I let him pick most of the seeds - snow peas, green and red peppers, basil, camomile (for tea), carrots, cucumber, green onions, chives, parsley, peas, and tomatoes. Neither of us really likes tomatoes, but I've never had a tomatoe plant die on me yet, even in drought conditions where everything else withered away. This way, even if my green thumb turns out to be more brown than I'm hoping, I'll have at least one vegetable to show for my efforts. Anyone up for salsa?

As for my vermicompost, it seems to be going well. The only thing that sometimes worries me is the amount of moisture that keeps building up. Every once in a while I find white mold accumulating in the bin. I emailed the question address on Mary Appelhof's website and it was suggested that I take the lid off for a day or two. I've had to do this twice, so far. I'm not adding any water, it's all a biproduct of the worms doing their thing. I wonder if I should be adding more bedding or just keep leaving the lid off once a week. I think I'll go do a search of Yahoo! Groups to see if there's a vermicomposting group I can join to ask questions and get support. I'll come back and update my findings later.

o( )__