Potting up

Repurposing yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream containers for potting up tomatoes.  Love recycling!  I burned drainage holes in them with yet another repurposed tool...a woodburning tool.  I definitely do this outdoors so I don't breathe the plastic fumes.  My great grandma would use a heated nail to make drainage holes in Dixie cups.  I think of her every time I do this.

Okra update and first harvest

I wish I had gotten the time to take a picture of the okra seeds after their soaking.  We had to get them planted in a hurry prior to leaving on an out of town trip, so I skipped a step.  They started rooting right away in the water/bleach solution.  Who would have thought?  I was hoping for at least one plant so that I could at least keep the seed going since I really didn't think that they would sprout being old seed. 

I thought that I had read somewhere that okra does not transplant well so I had some peat pots in my potting shed and thought that I would try those since I couldn't get them directly into the garden.

 Close ups of okra seedlings.

I had my first harvest from my garden the other day.  Radishes and beet greens.  I radishes and beet greens in my salad last night and they were so good.  My husband thought the beet greens tasted too much like beets themselves (he is not a lover of beets).  I have a lot more thinning to do.  I will have to be looking for other ways to use them also.  I am wondering if they can be cooked like spinach.  I can't see why not. 

I found such an easy way to clean the greens.  I put them in my salad spinner, ran water over them, and them spun them.  No crunchy bits of dirt.  :)

 

And the hardening off begins....

 I started hardening off my plants today.  I have put them on the east facing porch of the house.  It is terribly windy here today, but I think that they will be okay.  They don't seem to be getting blown around too much.

The 5 flats on the right are all tomatoes.  I have given some away already.  I usually plant 40 plants, have reserved some for a neighbor, and think that the rest will probably go out on a table in the front yard for sale.

This is my "mystery" flat.  When these were just starting to germinate, I tipped the container over, and ended up with a heap of dirt and seeds and no way of telling what plants and seeds were which.  My prized Black Krims were in this mess.  I just dumped everything back into the pot, replanted the four plants that had sprouted, and hoped for the best.  They did well.  Any guesses as to which is which?  The choices are:  Black Krim, Amish Paste, Juliet, Jelly Bean, and Marcellino.  Unfortunately, they all look the same.  :)

Easter Eve

My messy potting area.  I pot plants about as neatly as I cook, but I have been told that I am a good cook, so how about a messy gardener is a good gardener?  :)

My seedlings under the lights.  I have repurposed a lot of yogurt containers this year.  The bottom row in the picture on the left are my many, many tomato plants.  Not all of my varieties germinated this year, but what did grew well.  The picture on the right are the tomatoes.  They look small, but when I pot them up into bigger containers, I plant them deep which encourages a better root system.  They will be bigger again in no time.

 I usually don't leave my seedlings on the heat mat once they have germinated, but the peppers seem to be growing so slowly that I thought a little extra heat might be helpful.  The temperature in my shed is low to mid 60's so it can't hurt.

The lilacs are starting to bloom.  We are fortunate to have a hedge of lilac across most of the back of our property.  The scent in the spring is awesome.  The rule of thumb around here is that when the lilacs bloom, the morel mushrooms are also out.  We haven't mushroom hunted yet this year, but people are starting to find them.  Yum!

The maple tree is full of seeds this year....all I see are all the baby maples sprouting in the flower beds.  :(

Seedling update and spring blooms

Ah....spring is certainly here.  Even if there is a chance of a rain/snow mix Friday night. 

I heard a frog "singing" outside my dining room window last evening.  The frogs always make me think spring.

Toward the end of this winter, I started to have problems with an infestation of my Gerbera daisies.  I thought that I had that problem under control.  Seems that I was wrong.  I went to check on my seedlings tonight and found that my little seedlings were literally being sucked dry.  The tomatoes were wilting.  I am very protective of my seedlings since I grow varieties that I cannot find at the neighborhood nursery and losing seedlings corresponds to losing a harvest.  I sprayed them with my Ortho spray and now am hoping for the best.

The warm temperatures of the last couple days have really caused things to bud, blossom, and grow. 

(L) Maple seeds AKA helicopters :)  (R) Cherry blossom

(L) More cherry blossoms - I'll bet the birds can hardly wait!  I hope to outsmart them.  (R) Spider on PJM Rhododendron

(L) The peony on east side of house is sprouting much slower than the one on the south side.  This one was from a friend and is supposed to have pink flowers.  My south side peony is knee high now and will have white blooms.  (R)  Peach blossom.  This is the first year that our two peach trees have bloomed.  I am hoping for peaches this year.

(L)  Additional peach blossoms  (R) Lilacs

Tulips - they seem to have much smaller flowers this year.  They also appear to have been frost bitten as pictured on the left.

Grape hyacinths - these always remind me of our dear neighbors from the first house that we lived in when we first got married.  They grew these.  I think of Ken and Edna everytime I see these.

Dwarf Fothergilla - their blooms resemble a bottle brush

Spouting seeds

The seeds are sprouting very well. Yes, they do look crowded, but I purposely planted them like that. Once they get a set or two of true leaves, I will transplant them into their own cups. I really wasn't sure how well they would germinate.  The alyssum sprouted very quickly.  I am definitely a fan of heat mats.

 Pictured above are alyssum, broccoli and several varieties of tomatoes.

 Above-Various tomatoes, broccoli and a couple pepperoncini plants just starting to emerge. Note the leaning broccoli.  They were on the edge of the flat and leaning toward the light.  I keep the florescents directly over the flats, but the plants on the edge have to be rotated to the middle to keep them happy.  It doesn't take long at all for them to start their lean.

 There is a story to this set of cells.  I was moving the cells that had sprouted out of the covered flats so they could get air and this group dumped upside down like a slice of buttered bread.  I was sick!  There were so many varieties of tomatoes in here and no way to tell what was what.  I salvaged the seedlings that I could and just scooped the soil back into the container, replanted the seedlings, and hoping for the best.  My beloved Black Krim tomatoes were in this bunch.  Note the markers all bunched together.  These seedlings could be any of these types of tomato.  If they make it, I will have a surprise.

 Sweet William sprouts

Coleus and one salvia sprout. 



Seedling status

Lettuce sprouts on the bottom of this picture and pea pod plants, toward the top, just starting to sprout
newly planted potatoes - Dark Red Norlands and Yellow Finn. I planted an extra row than I really should have, but I couldn't help it. I didn't have room for an extra bed of potatoes. I had a few left as it was.
Broccoli plants just put out today
Pepper plants still in the shed. I didn't think it was warm enough for them yet outdoors. I was wrong though. It got into the low 70's.

Small container of Southport red globe onion plants and broccoli seedlings before I planted them out.
Onions seedlings - Southport Red Globe, Ailsa Craig Exhibition, and Australian Brown

Hardening off

more hardening off....

And yet more hardening off of plants

Great Day to Work Outside

Today was a great day to work outside. It was breezy, cool, and overcast. I mowed the lawn, worked in the flower bed, transplanted peppers and tomatoes, and planted seeds.
I have definitely decided after today that not all plant starts from neighbors are a good thing. I received a start of a plant that my neighbor said, "only gets about so high and has pretty yellow flowers on it". Having never seen this plant in her yard before (now I know why), I planted it. The first year, it grew at least 5-6 feet tall. This was not a small plant. This year, it is threatening to take over my flower bed! I pulled so many of those plants today, it was not even funny! This thing is invasive!! The bad part is, I think that it may spread by roots also. I had a devil of a time getting them out. Finally, I started just yanking the plants. I will have to keep an eye on them for regrowth. Lesson learned.
My peppers and tomatoes finally got transplanted today to bigger pots. I should have done this weeks ago. It is still supposed to drop into the 40's at night, so I don't feel comfortable planting them out yet. I had them out to harden off a bit though. I have so many! They will probably end up like zucchini and I will have problems giving them away!
Finally, I planted some lettuce and radishes in the garden. The lettuce that I started a couple weeks ago is not ready to transplant yet. Again I am late starting.... We are supposed to get rain tonight and tomorrow, so the seeds should get watered in well.
I received my Mother's Day present today. A new butterfly bush. It is probably the largest one that I have ever started with. It is multi colored picked out by my girls. My husband and I planted it today also in anticipation of the rain.

Forgiving Seedlings

I have found that seedlings are somewhat forgiving of my care. I thought that I had watered my seedlings in the shed and walked in there yesterday to find that I was wrong. I was in shock to see how badly they had shriveled. Well, lots of water later, they are surviving. The cotyledons of my tomatoes are yellow, but the leaves are okay. I need to be more careful about their care.

There is so much to do in the spring that I feel that I almost need a list to check off just to get everything done.

Lettuce

I started various lettuce seeds today. Some of my seeds are up to three years old, so I am not sure as to how successful I will be. When I went through my seed, I found that I have a ton of lettuce seeds! I did not even plant all of them. Rather than plant them in the garden directly, even though I could. I chose to start them in a flat and see what my success rate is. I am hoping for some yummy salads! My camera does not take the best pictures, so you have to click on the picture to see it better.

Today's planting

Today my husband and I planted our potatoes. We bought seed potatoes from Wal Mart. Nothing fancy. This is the first year that we actually let them "cure" after cutting them before planting them in the dirt. I was reading on on of my favorite blogs, Skippy's Vegetable Garden, that she uses supermarket potatoes with good success. I have done that before, and will probably try that again. I like the thriftiness of it. I have read that some supermarket potatoes are treated with a chemical that retards the sprouting. I must never buy those potatoes.
Our onions that we planted are starting to sprout a bit.
My broccoli seedlings came out from under the lights today and are on the back porch to harden off for a couple days. I was so tempted just to plant them, but I would hate to see what would happen.

Start of raised bed planting

Well, the planting in raised beds has started! Bless my husband's heart, he moved quite a bit of compost and soil for me so that I could get some plants going. I sure hope that this method of gardening pans out well. We are really hoping for the benefit of no/less weeds as well as less compaction of soil.
Yesterday I planted Candy onion plants, super sweet onion sets, and red onion sets. There is so much to plant already. I was a bit under the weather yesterday with respiratory crud, that I did not have the "umph" to get much accomplished. There is a slight chance of rain tonight and tomorrow.
Good night.