The Waiting Place

 I have started moving trays out to the cold frame.  The Waiting Place.  In a cooler, less lighted environment, their growth will slow and they will have to hang out there until better weather comes.

Marigolds

I am so proud of my tray of white Marigolds and my Profusion Zinnias.  A commercial grower couldn't do any better.  I also have my Dahlias grown from seed in the cold frame.  This frees up space under the grow light.

Zinnias

We have a 10 day forecast of cool, gloomy weather. The lower graph is cloud cover.  I wouldn't mind the rain if it would clear up after and give us a little ray of sunshine.

wunderground.com

Moving three trays out into the cold frame frees up space under the new grow lights for some of the second string plants.  A few days after their rotten FedEx ordeal, the Romence annuals are putting out some blooms.  But the first thing I see when I walk through the door is the baby tomato on the Orange Hat micro tomatoes.

The new Dahlia tubers that are being "woken up" in a tray of soil are doing well.  I even tried pinching one back and rooting the sprout.  I have a plastic bag over the pot as a make-shift humidity dome.

The past few years I have direct sown Durango Marigolds at the feet of the pole beans.  I may as well start them indoors on a heat mat.  When I transplant them into cells they can go out into the cold frame.

My Ornamental Peppers could stand some leg room.  I need to transplant them into 3.5" pots.  This will require some culling as I have 36 cells and the tray will only hold 18 pots.  Okay, I seeded some extra just in case and at this point it is time to let some go.  What I will probably do is plant into two trays and one will stay under grow lights and one tray will go out to the cold frame to continue their role as spares.

Peppers

The Indeterminate Tomatoes are doing well.  Probably no need to bump them up to larger pots.  If they start to get root bound that will just slow their growth until they can go outside,

And outside, the Strawberry plants are blooming their heads off.

As far as I can tell, there is still at least a week until the Dahlia tubers can go out into the bed and two weeks until the Tomatoes and Peppers can go out to the Cold Frame to begin the hardening off process.

Ready and Waiting

 We have been stuck in a warm, rainy weather system that won't go away.  In the past week we have had about 2.5" of rain on top of 6 inches in April.  It's wet.  But... it could be snowing.  It could absolutely be snowing.  So I'm OK with it.  It is just the first week of May after all.  And, if I had a traditional in ground garden and was either waiting to till, or had tilled and was trying to work in the mud...

Cole Crops are thriving

My winter project of a wire mouse excluder has been working.  I planted sunflower seeds and put the wire cover over them, shoving it down into the soft soil and weighing it down.  If they don't come for sunflower seeds, they should leave squash seeds alone too.  I haven't even had to resort to adding dryersheets.

Little baby sunflower seedlings

Last year the mice ate all of my sunflower seeds so I am looking forward to having some this year to attract the finches.

Carrots have germinated

The cold frame is chock full of plants.  There are my seedlings, annuals from the Amish greenhouse and mail order perennials that arrived.  I am about ready to start planting things out even if I have to keep frost covers on them because I have more seedlings to move out and some of them should probably be potted up into larger pots for a few weeks which will take up even more space.

I have all of my containers moved out and filled with potting mix.  I think I will actually have enough potting mix to do what I planned with maybe a little left over for wiggle room.  I've used about 150 gallons and still have ten 3 gallon containers to fill for micro tomatoes.

I ended up having to buy Candy onion starts from the greenhouse.  Mine didn't amount to anything, but I will make adjustments and try again next year.

And Oh My Gosh! at least one of my seed potatoes has survived the constant soaking and is erupting through the soil.  I had just about given up on them.  I figured they had all rotted.

The apple trees are in full bloom.

And we are finally trying to grow grass to correct the shape of the landscape bed where we took out the Lilac bush and planted the apple tree.  

If nothing else it has been excellent grass growing weather.

Finish Work

 

Yesterday I did the finer cleanup work around the West Side wilderness area.  I raked all of the twiglettes out of the gravel drive and the mown grass area.

I went in with a hand pruner and trimmed more broken and unwanted shrubs.  There were still Ash limbs tangled in there.  I used a leaf blower to clear the sawdust out of the rocks and generally tidied up our work area.

I found still more rose bushes but those I will tackle when we clean up after the tree crew removes the trees on the far side.

We have a pile started in the edge of the woods for the next burn.  We will relocate it with the tractor when the ground firms up.  No burning now until May 15th.  Above is what remains of our last brush pile.  The coals continued to burn down until it is almost completely flat.  

The Allium bulbs I planted last fall have come up nicely.  I'm excited to see those flowers.

The large Peony that I transplanted last summer has survived and is putting out some little red buds.  I was a little concerned about it but it seems to be fine.  Now I feel comfortable buying a support for it.  I wasn't going to bother if it didn't survive the move.  I don't expect it to be as large as usual but it shouldn't take long to settle in.

Divide and Conquer

 A wet and soggy spring is the perfect time to divide or relocate perennials.  The ground is soft and they can wake up in their new spots and start growing without being set back by a move.

Last fall when we cut back the foliage I attempted to divide this huge Black Eyed Susan.  It just wasn't going to happen.  The hard root ball simply deflected my transplant spade.  I decided to wait until spring hoping that saturated soil and dormant roots would be a little easier to deal with.  And I carried a large butcher knife with me just in case.  I figured if all else failed I could stab it down the middle to make way for my spade.

But it wasn't necessary.  My spade easily cut the soggy roots and dead stems right down the middle.  I wanted to reduce the clump by half but not unnecessarily disturb what I was leaving behind.  To remove the clump you need a garden fork and some leverage.

I took the right half out but some growth hung on around the edge effectively removing the center.  I'm not real thrilled about having the center wide open so when this begins to grow I will probably pull some of the stragglers out and reposition them.

I had a nice big clump to plant in an empty spot I prepared last fall.  There were a few single little plants that broke away during the move.  I potted them up and stuck them over by the compost pile to fend for themselves.  I am not sure which strain of Rudbeckia this is (there are four and I've planted a couple over the years) but it sure is a nice plant and I wouldn't mind having some more of it.

Managing Expectations

 This is the time of year when I can get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of keeping things alive.  All it takes is one bad day.  One bad decision, one lapse in judgement and you have a situation where you have to make significant changes to your plans and gardening expectations.  For the whole year.  Compound that by making commitments to other people.  Then you have to manage their expectations as well.   

Now don't get me wrong.  There have been no gardening catastrophes.  The people I have made promises to wouldn't be terribly upset if things went wrong.  But it troubles my mind and makes me worry more.  I no sooner thought "I hope I don't have any trouble with damping off" than Elsie's tomato seedlings started keeling over.  It was as if I had summoned the negative energy.   And I adjusted quickly.  And now I have a lot of nice little plants.  But this time of year you have to stay on your toes and pay attention.

It was time to start moving things out to the cold frame.  That mess up there ^ in particular.  On the right is a tray of Celosia and sweet peppers.  Growing well.  Need to get out of the way.  To the left are marigolds.  Those were supposed to be germinating out in the cold frame.  But the weather has been too changeable and they were (wisely) biding their time.  So I brought them in to give them a kick.  Now they need to go out.  Unlike the wimpy tomatoes, the Marigolds all had nice roots.

That's what you want to see.  Nice little green leaves right in the center of a tidy cell.  That's not that easy to achieve.  The tomatoes (below) were too leggy.  I missed the best window for transplanting them as I waited for the weather to break so the Peppers, Celosia and Marigolds could go outside, freeing up enough room for a large tray under its own light.

They transplanted OK.  There were no roots to speak of.  In fact, the upper left cell pack in the tray as pictured below had no roots at all!  As I broke seedlings I set them aside and put them all in one cell so I could watch them.  They wilted that day, but its hard to kill a tomato seedling (unless you damp it off then all bets are off) and by the next day they had adjusted and stood back up.

I also had extra of my father's favorite tomato (the Barlow Jap that my PaPaw developed) and two dozen of Elsie's that I seeded the day their brothers damped off.  We all do it.  We plant too many them we can't bear to kill them.  They may as well go out in the cold frame with the Marigolds.  I can keep an eye on two trays as easily as one tray.

These were at the right stage for transplanting.

These were way past time.  But they had good root systems.

May weather has finally straightened around.  Everyone has been complaining that spring is late and Mother Nature is a kook.  As a gardener, I think I have more realistic expectations of April.  I know that a week of summer weather in April does not mean summer is here and the weather will continue to trend upwards.  Anything can happen.  It can freeze in June.  I would don't mind a wet, gloomy April so things can grow and get a good foothold, but when May arrives I want no funny business. I can tolerate some cold nights, but I'm ready to get going.

I spent all day yesterday tidying up after a week of cool, wet weather.  Today I need to go around and apply slug bait and reapply deer repellent.  My perennials arrived from Bluestone Perennials this week and most of those can go in the ground now.  Then I may see about getting my dahlia tubers out of storage and into some trays in the cold frame.

Temporarily Out of Mulch

 This week we edged and mulched until we are out of mulch.

Today we will just edge while we wait for another truckload of mulch.

We basically started at the front of the property and did anything visible from the driveway.

We cut the circles around the London Plane trees.

When we got to the bottom of the mulch bunker where the mulch is damp and more rotted, my husband wanted to toss it in the woods.  Wait!  I want that for the bank where I plant odds and ends!  Well rotted, nearly compost is perfect stuff to mix in and plant in.  The conditions have been perfect.  The lawn was dry enough to get the tractor on and moist enough to cut well.  There were only a fraction of the number of weeds we usually deal with.  I don't know if that can be attributed to the dry spring or the infrequency of mowing during last summer's mini-drought.  But I liked it!

  Yesterday morning at 8:00 am it was 66F in the garden.  Perfect weather for sowing.

I planted two rows of Penelope Seeds.  This is my second generation of self saved seeds.  As an experiment I put worm castings in the first row.  I sowed lettuce seeds along side and covered with burlap to keep the birds out.  This has been a very very birdy spring.  They're everywhere.

I also set out Tom Thumb buttercrunch transplants.  I was looking forward to using my new transplant tongs.  The problem with buying sturdy cells that you can use over and over is getting the transplants out without damage.  With a flimsy nursery cell you can squish the plastic, push the seedling out and then toss the mangled cell pack.  These tongs are perfectly sized to work with Gardeners' GrowEase cells.  Maybe at some point I will do a breakdown on the GrowEase system.  They work well for bottom watering seedlings and starting indoors, although I do not like using them out in the cold frame for various reasons.

Twenty Four transplants set out in last year's cabbage bed.  I didn't have to do a thing to this bed.  There was still some shredded leaf mulch on top and it was completely weed free.

I covered them with some Dollar Store baskets to shade them from the sun a little on their first day and topped it off with floating row cover.  These transplants have been hardened off pretty well and this evening I will likely remove their little shade protection going into two or three days of cloudy skies and rain.

This is the prime season for daffodils.  Everywhere you look around here....

Happy little daffys.

Spring has Sprung into Summer

It's Grow Time!

The Maple leaves are ready to pop.

The peas and lettuce will be direct sown next weekend.  But I have some lettuce babies that will be ready for transplanting, and 75+ degrees and unabating sun will cook them to a crisp.  I am hardening them off this week.  They had their first half hour of morning sun today and then they went back to their grow light which I set up in the garden shed so I can easily set them out for their allotted time each day then return them without having to navigate the basement stairs every time.

This morning I transplanted eight peppers and some Celosia.  They always look so bedraggled the first day but they will be fine.  I have extra Celosia that I might try in the cold frame as an experiment.

I ended up with two extra pepper plants.  Instead of doubling up in the cells I got them their own big boy pots.  We'll see if the different pots cause them to grow any different than the others.

I also moved the Dahlia tubers out of the bulkhead into the empty chicken coop because the bulkhead will be heating up in the sun this week whereas the coop is insulated and dark so it will be cooler.  I will not be fooled into thinking that summer weather is here to stay.  We could still get two weeks of miserable cold and snow in May like we did in both 2020 and 2021.