In and Out

 I have been hardening off my seedlings rather than just throwing them out in the cold frame.  I'm working around the house each day so it isn't too inconvenient.  They can be out for several hours each day now and by the weekend they will be fine in the cold frame all day.

The Coleus and Marigolds are out there already.

I am warming the soil for my Dahlias.  The regular soil temperature here is 50F but under the panels I have it up to 64F.

I finally got the Caesar's Brother Siberian Iris planted.  

We decided to remove the brick border.

We got our new mulch and finished mulching.

I am enjoying some of the new to me perennials.

This is Penstemon Onyx and Pearls.  The foliage stayed "green" all winter.

This is Amsonia Storm Cloud

I've had this several years, but it is the first year it has significant blooms.  
It is Lemony Lace Elderberry

The Bartlett branch of the pear tree is blooming.

Both Northern Spy apple trees are full of buds

The later blooming daffodils are opening and there are new variations every day

And the strawberry plants are blooming.  These are first year plants.  I snipped the runners from the neighbor's plants last year.

Spring is under way.

Peas Are Up

 The peas popped up yesterday in that nice warm rain.  11 days from planting is pretty quick.  They usually take 12 to 14 days.  Today the temperature is dropping from mid-50s to low 40s.   Damp and foggy.  Bleh.  It's a good reality check.  Summer isn't here yet.  I moved the Coleus back in today because tonight the temperatures will be in the 30s.

Rain Delay

We are enjoying a quiet, peaceful, April Shower kind of day.  Just what we needed!  A break from landscape clean up.  It is such a gentle rain it makes me wish I had planted something.  But, I am in a spring planting lull.  I am beginning to move things out of the workshop and into the cold frame to harden off.   This is a good day for that.  They won't be too hot and they won't scorch in the sun.  I can just put them out there and relax.  

Yesterday I brought out the El Brighto coleus cuttings I took from my lightly frosted plants last fall. They hung out in the workshop all winter at 55F. They got pretty pale at that temp, but when I turned the heat up to 60 a few weeks ago they colored up real nice and started putting on growth. I deleted a couple over the winter that just didn’t root in well but ended up with 15 gorgeous plants. I cleaned out all of the dead leaves, spread them out into two trays to give them room, and watered them in well.

Yesterday we cut the last landscape bed edge.  We are out of old mulch and waiting for this year's truckload, but we are prepped and ready to roll.  It was a good day to dilly dally and check on the roots of the Linden trees.

We all believe we are not over mulching and creating mulch volcanoes around our trees, but it never hurts to check.  I raked the old mulch away from the trunk flares and checked for any strangling roots.  Each tree had a few that needed to be removed, but nothing too dramatic.  I just used pruners to snip these sections out where they cross the larger roots and gave each tree an apologetic foot rub.

 

A Little Spring Veggie Maintenance

 

Although the heavy snow cover prevented weeds from growing this past winter, the warm weather and sunshine has encouraged them.  I put a heavy layer of compost on my raised beds last fall and there is a fresh crop of little weeds coming up around the edges.  The best way to deal with this is to cultivate them out.  While the beds are empty it is easy.  I just rake over the surface, disturbing the roots of the weed seedlings.

I pick out the worst of the uprooted weeds and leave them to fry in the sun before I throw them out.  I go over each bed about once a week until it is planted for the season and then put on a layer of shredded leaves to block out the sun from any seeds that might still be lying in wait.

I planted some carrot seeds today.  It I grow my carrots in potting mix in containers.  I use last year's reclaimed soil and recharge it with a good amount of balanced organic fertilizer.  I finish the container with a layer of worm castings which are really good for seeds to germinate in.  The rich, loose material is easy for them to set roots into.

I water the soil well then sprinkle the carrots seeds on the surface and firm them in to get good contact with the soil.  I put one variety on each half.

Then I sprinkle a quarter inch layer of worm castings over the seeds. 

 It is a gardening trick to place a board over a row of carrot seeds to help keep them moist and dark.  I cut some round pieces of corrugated the size of the pots and held them down with a brick.  The cardboard can get wet and when I am done with it, it can go in the compost pile.  In about a week I will have to start checking under it to see if the seeds are germinating so I can remove the cover.

While we're here let's check on the lettuce and peas I planted last week.  The lettuce is up, but still no sign of the peas.

One of the pretty spring flowers is the myrtle ground cover.  This entire bed of myrtle started as a spade full from my Dad that I planted underneath the plow.  Now we no longer need to mulch this corner, but the myrtle drowned out almost all of the perennials here and I moved them out bit by bit over the years.

Still Mulching

Yesterday we got a very nice day and made the best use of it.  We are getting about every other day sunny and warm.  Spring is in full swing.

We mulched around the London Plane trees.  We did not bother to cut a new edge around these and you cannot even tell.

We mulched around the front of the house and along the driveway.

While the tractor was out I got the old Siberian Irises dug out from around the wellhead.  These needed a reset because they had a lot of grass encroaching and moss and crap.  I had already dug out some really nice dark blue Caesar's Brother Irises and set them aside ready to go in.  First I wanted to straighten out the brick edging and I didn't quite get to it.

Not today either.

Cabbage Patch

 Yesterday I planted Brocolli, Cauliflower and Cabbages.  I ended up with some extra cabbages which I tucked in the middle of the cauliflower and broccoli.  I can harvest the cabbage small and leave more room for the others to grow.  These plants are on the small side (I prefer to think of them as "compact") but very dark green and healthy.  They had good roots systems.  The spent their wholes lives under the new LED lights and being bottom watered in the Gardener's Supply GrowEase cells. 

These transplants have not been hardened off.  I have found that setting cole crops out early under insect netting and shade cloth is enough to ease them into outdoor life.  I have also supplemented with frost cloth and/or shade baskets depending on the temperature or amount of sun.  The netting is enough to break the wind and the shade cloth is 40% and blocks enough sun.

I planted them late yesterday afternoon and today is overcast and rainy which is a good transition for them.  Over the next week I will peel back the shade cloth for some time each day.  If we happen to get any hot sunny days I can add baskets to them to filter out more sun.  I also need to add a thick layer of shredded leaf mulch but first I am going to let them establish and get some height.

April Showers?

 

Yesterday:  Fresh Snow and BITTER cold winds.

Today: Blue Skies and Warm Breezes

And fresh mulch

The lawns are still so soggy and wet that we are working on weeding and mulching areas we can reach from the driveways.

Peas and Lettuce

 

Time to plant peas.  I planted about 3.85 ounces per row which was the entirety of my seed peas collected last year.

This was about the nicest weather I have ever planted peas in.

I also sowed leaf lettuce down each side and covered everything with burlap to keep the birds out while everything germinates.

We finished edging and mulched the front fence line where the ditch lilies came out.

Seedlings

 Today I transplanted the indeterminant tomato varieties.

Below, the micro tomatoes, dwarfs, eggplants and ornamental peppers are doing very well.

The broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages are fine.  Their cotyledon leaves have yellowed as normal and need to be snipped off.  In a couple of weeks they will go outside.

Just in case you think that everything always goes well for me, below is a tray that is struggling.  There are Vinca, which I have never grown before, and some Celosia which are always finicky.  Celosia can be difficult to start and transplant just because their root systems are small and delicate.  In this case, the soil was retaining too much moisture.  I lost about eight of the Celosia seedlings.  They didn't damp off, they just withered and died.  When I pulled them, they had very little root system.  It had probably rotted.  I let the survivors dry out and today I transplanted them into fresh soil with a lot of perlite and sand added for better drainage.  I will have to continue to watch the amount of water I give them.

Next to transplant will be a tray of marigolds.  I can no longer count on buying my favorite Burpee Vanilla hybrid marigolds at local nurseries and I cannot find the F1 seeds at any reputable seed store.  I tried Burpee's Snowball variety two years ago and they were not as good.  I tried saving seeds from my Vanillas, but being F1 hybrids, they produced very weird offspring.  This year I am trying three other nearly white varieties: Moonlight, Creamy White and Vanilla Cream.  We'll see if any of them are what I want.

Besides the three white marigolds I have some Durango marigolds, Figaro dahlia seeds and my own saved single dahlia seeds.  In the background are two more varieties of Celosia.

The End of the Ditch Lilies

We spent three days working on the ditch lilies, a total of almost eight hours with clean up and everything.  It was a bit of a muddy mess, so there was considerable tool cleanup.  But if it had not been a muddy mess it would have been that much harder to get them out.

This is the situation we were dealing with.  After sixteen or seventeen years, each clump had expanded to the point of taking over the railroad tie border and was not only speeding up the disintegration of the RR ties, but making its way into the gravel.  There was a mass of roots along the ties.

Some of the fence sections were not as bad and we could sift through a bit with a fork.  But the further along we went, the more aggressive we got until we were stripping some sections down to the gravel.

Next we will fill in the low spots with soil, cut the lawn edge and mulch.

The ditch lilies got moved back to the ditch.