Continuing with the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day tradition, today there are more buds and blossoms in the greenhouse than I expected for February.

The strawberry plants have been doing great!  They are continually covered in blossoms and have all kinds of little strawberries growing.  They are also really easy to pollinate.  I just take a little artist's brush and run it over the blossoms.

Even though the greenhouse is not as lush with green things as it is during the summertime, January has not been bad.  With the new thermal mass, inside temperatures have been twenty degrees higher than outside at night.

So much to the plants’ delight, with nighttime lows in the thirties, the interior temperature has stayed in the fifties.  The plants that survived the freeze in the greenhouse last month (before the thermal mass) and in fact are now thriving.  All the new plants are doing great.

This is my fascinating, completely by accident, very cool moss I have growing in the greenhouse.  My mesquite trees prefer less than ideal soil to grow in, so I use the sandy clay from the yard to start the trees.  A couple months ago, moss started to grow in a couple of the shaded pots!  I thought to myself, "Since when did moss grow in the desert?"  Turns out it is quite common!

I believe this to be some kind of Tortula Moss.  The really crazy thing is that I found out while looking it up online is that it can complete dehydrate and after being rehydrated, can repair itself in minutes.

Provided it is not invasive, I plan to try to move the moss in another container and once I get a few gardens in outside, try to transplant it into a moist, shady area.  I am contacting the Master Gardeners at Cooperative Extension here to see if I can find out more information.

I had no idea that this kind of thing grew in the desert.  Learn something new every day!

I officially have a new favorite garden tool.  My local discount tool store was having a fantastic sale on these, so I picked one up and am I ever glad I did!  I took it back to my compost bin and for me, turning it was so much easier than using a garden fork or shovel.

I detest shovels.  So I will be quite curious to try this out when I amend the new garden beds this spring.