Friday, April 29, 2011

Garden notebook

Today was lovely and sunny, and I spent pretty much the entire day outside.

- Filled remaining EarthBoxes and got them all in place
- Hardening off: chard, basil, thyme, oregano, marigolds, cilantro, mint
- Planted: Strawberries

A gazillion wild violets are blooming in the rock garden, including a couple of white ones.
Red tulip in the ivy is blooming
Lots of plants coming in on the rock garden
Visited by cardinals, finches, doves & sparrows while outside

Wild white violet in the backyard

Thyme, basil & Swiss chard

Quick link

I took a bunch of pictures of my lovely plants this morning. Still won't be able to upload directly until perhaps the middle of next week, but I did send several to my MobileMe gallery. There are some pictures of the plants in March when they first sprouted, as well as the photos from today. BONUS: since I can't seem to find a way to organize the photo album from this iPad, you also get several pictures of my lovely Lydia, and, I believe, a couple of pictures of bento lunches I packed last year!

Now I must get outside and get working on this beautiful sunny day.

Pictures, pictures, pictures.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Garden notes

A catch-up garden notebook post, transcribing a couple of scribbled notes from paper)

For some reason, the tomato plants in the smaller (about the size of 4-packs) peat pots seem to be growing faster than those in larger peat pots.

I won't be using a sponge-like "hydroponic" seed starting tray again. Overall, the plants in there aren't doing as well as others, and outgrow the allotted space too quickly, requiring intermediate repotting.

Broccoli and lettuces seem to have wilted entirely. They didn't look happy in the spongy seed starting tray, but I'd hoped that they might perk up after transplanting to larger pots. Is this the dreaded "damping off?" Will give them a couple more days.

I got behind somehow on my seed starting schedule, and am starting cucumbers, melons & squashes several weeks later than planned. Hopefully, the fact that I primarily purchased short-season cultivars will make things work out okay. Or perhaps I will skip them this year and put in more tomatoes and peppers instead.

7 out of 10 EarthBoxes full and ready for planting. Need to finish up the rest this weekend!

I think that's it for the catching up snippets here.

Seedlings, hardening off, ramblings

Not trusting my own judgment very nearly killed 1/3 of my seedlings today.

I stopped by the garden center yesterday, ostensibly to pick up some vermiculite, but mostly so that I could wander around and stare longingly at the fruit trees. I got to chatting with the woman working there and mentioned that I'd just started hardening off a bunch of my seedlings, though "not the warm-season stuff like tomatoes & basil."

"Oh, no" she insisted, "you absolutely should be setting those out by now!"

Hmm. Not from everything I'd read. But while I was hauling other plants outside this morning, I thought, "perhaps she's right. She probably has more experience than me." It was shady outside, and I was feeling impatient to get everything planted, so out went all of the flats. What should have registered in my brain, besides the shade, was the fact that it was in the low 40s outside.

What I brought back in were some decidedly unhappy-looking and limp plants. Now that they've been back inside for several hours, most of them look like they'll make it. They won't be going back out till mid-May.

All of the seedlings moved up in the world today, though, leaving the warm basement and taking over my kitchen table. Hauling trays up and down the stairs in order to set them outside was just not cutting it.

[Let's just pretend there are some lovely pictures here of my kitchen table covered in green, growing things, shall we? As soon as I have a functional laptop again I'll actually post some non imaginary ones.]