Cooking Mama does gardening
How many of you have played Cooking Mama? In this game, you learn how to cook and prepare foods. You combine the raw ingredients together as you cook them on the stove. The recipes are real and you actually interact on the touch screen (for Nintendo DS) with a stylus. For some dishes you can even blow on the microphone to cool down some food. You use the stylus just like using a tool in the kitchen to cut vegetables, stir, pound, etc.
They are coming out with Gardening Mama at the end of the year! I can even water my virtual plants, pick the bulbs and determine what's the right amount of fertilizer to use! Can't wait to see what they're going to do with the stylus and touchscreen this time. Winter time is the perfect time for this game!
What’s left in bloom
This is what's left in bloom in my garden. Temperature has been hovering around 70F (20C).
Overwintering bulbs in container
If you don't have the space to plant bulbs, you can overwinter bulbs in container. To do so, make sure you put the container in an unheated garage or protected from freezing. The cold temperature is necessary for bulbs to break dormancy, as long as they're chilled and not freezed. Tulips and other bulbs need good drainage, so use containers that has good drainage holes or put drainage materials at the bottom. Becareful if you use terra cotta pots because they will crack during winter if you leave it outside. Also, bulbs can be planted closer to each other than in ground. Be sure bulbs do not touch the outside of the container, the soil and container act as an insulation for the bulbs.
If you want some ideas about what kind of bulbs to get, Fern from Life on the Balcony has some great ideas.
