I keep meaning to update here, and then I get sidetracked… it’s important for me to get accurate notes down to help for future planning, and just now I was thinking that I should post, so here it is, so that any more time doesn’t get away from me…

So well over a week ago, I was tripping on my cabbage plants in the house, and looking at the fact that the center leaves were starting to curl up, and I just knew they needed to go into the ground.  So the first thing I did was go out and stir up the dirt in the garden again, temp it, and found that it only raised a few degrees.  So I decided to give it a few more days, but while I was waiting, the bin of cabbages went to the back porch to harden.  After two days, they seemed just fine, so they went into the ground the Wednesday before last.  (I reserved four cabbage plants in the house, in case the first six tanked.)  After those were in, I sorted out the rest of the cole crops from my burgeoning plant propagation station, and set those outside to harden- thinking that I would get them into the ground that Friday.

Well, things happened, a quick weekend getaway was planned, and the plants came back into the house, because I just wasn’t going to have time to get them in the ground.   When we arrived home that Sunday, it was to an impending snow arrival, so Andy headed to the shop to construct me a rough cold frame for the cabbages in the ground.  How glad I was that the rest of the plants didn’t make it in!!

The cabbages survived, and this past Friday it hit 80 degrees, so the rest of the coles went in.  I have cauliflower, broccoli, kale and brussels sprouts in, and I also sprinkled just a few spinach and radish seeds.   Before I can do anymore planting, I MUST get some amending done.  I also need to properly mark out my square foot grids so that I’m doing things evenly.

Still no sign yet of the Swiss Chard coming back, and I also still can’t tell in the sage plant survived.  The thyme is greening up nicely, and the most surprising thing is the scallions that never got picked last year are looking great! I thought they were going to have to be ripped out, it will be interesting to see what they do.

That was the temperature reading of the garden soil yesterday before I stirred it up.  I am so itching to plant something… but I thought it best to do some preliminary stuff.  The first thing I did was take the temperature of all three beds. They all read the same, and when I pulled the probe out of the ground and touched it, it was definitely cold to the touch.  Seeds are not going to germinate nicely at 41 degrees.

Then I decided to grab the hoe and go to town, stirring up the dirt and checking things out.  It quickly became apparent that I need to add some compost this year, so in the next few weeks I’ll be keeping an eye out for some composted manure, as I think that will be ideal.   I ended up pulling out a lot of the herb plants- they just didn’t survive.  The two lone survivors are the thyme and the sage so far- they didn’t want to pull up, but it will be a few weeks yet before they show signs of growth.  I was also quite surprised when I was working the dirt where the celery and fennel had been- WOW! Those were some major roots!

In other news, I potted up the tomatoes this week.  The paper cups ended up not being such a great idea as they were rotting, and all the cups had mold on the bottom of them.  My original intention had been to pot up some of my paper cup plants, but I ended up having to move them all.  We’ll see how they do.  So far, though, the tomatoes look fantastic!

I also decided to give up with sprouting onions from seed, and this week I bought some basic yellow sets from the garden center.  I got 100 onions for less than two dollars, so I consider that a good way to go.  It’s not quite the heirlooms I wanted, but I think I’ll live.  My onions were just looking terrible, and for the record, last years leek seeds had terrible germination.  I pretty liberally sprinkled leek seeds in the dirt, and ended up with maybe 8 leeks.   The onions ended up with about 50% germination, so there is some truth to onion seeds not being viable from year to year if you save them.

I’ll be keeping my eye on the soil temps now.  The Weather Channels 10-Day forecast has our lows finally moving up into the 30’s starting Sunday, so that will help move things along very nicely.

Gotta keep this place updated so that next year, I can look back and see dates and pictures and such!

First, here is the cabbage patch.

Good gravy, these plants are thriving… and really desiring to go into the ground.  It’s just not time yet… By Friday our lows are supposed to finally move up into the 30’s, and I hope it swiftly goes up from there.   I really would like to get the peas in the ground and some cabbages out by the 15th, I’m just not sure that’s going to happen.

Here are the tomato seedlings.

Most of them are sprouting their first true leaves already , so that’s cool.  The only tomato that I had poor germination on was the Roman Candle.  But since I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to plant those again, I can live with that.  Other than that, I had one variety where only one sprout came up of the two planted.  Since it’s new to me, I’m fine with just the one. (I don’t remember which it is off the top of my head though…)But  I have my first concern.  On all of the plants, the cotyledons are looking a bit droopy.  Apparently, I need to pot up, so a trip to the garden center tomorrow is a must for the pots, as I am completely out.  Now, I just need to figure out where I’m going to put all the potted up tomatoes! Yikes!

And finally from the great outdoors, here are my chives, which is pretty indicative of how the rest of the garden looks.

Brown, brown, brown.  It’s just too cold yet.  I see that the very hints of beginnings of buds are beginning on some of the shrubs, and my mom has some tulips coming up, as well as her crocuses, so surely, warmer days are on the horizon.

Today I also gave all of the more established veggie plants in the house a good dose of fertilizer.  It looks like it’s going to be awhile before we can even begin the hardening off process, so I want to make sure they stay healthy.  After looking at a few brands of fertilizer, I settled on a simple one from Scotts that is a balanced 10-10-10 fertilizer, meaning it provides a little bit of everything, as far as nutrients goes.  Depending on how it performs, I may also use it in the gardens this year.

Just a quick update today.  My tomatoes are sprouting like mad and making me a very happy tomato mommy.  Just one week old, and I am very close to 100% germination on all the maters.  I’m still waiting on one green zebra, one German red strawberry, one golden monarch and one other one I’m forgetting.  I do have one interesting specimen- one of the heirlooms, where I’d planted three seeds sent up four sprouts.  Hmm.

I also spent time this weekend potting up some other seedlings, because they just were growing like gangbusters.

Plus, I thought that it was about time to get the seedlings out of the greenhouse, now that they had some true leaves going.  So now they are in their own comfy pots, sitting in the sunshine.

It seems like every day I’m finding something new to discover.  I expect I’ll be potting up a few more sprouts by the end of the week here.  Now it just needs to get warm outside…

Well, my seedlings that I planted 20 days ago are doing very well.  So well, in fact, that I needed to do some potting up.  I had broccoli, nasturtiums and romaine that had some true leaves and were really outgrowing their little cell.

So I assembled my tools and then wondered how on earth to get the little seedling out of their cells.  I kind of squeezed the bottom of one broccoli and tried to very gingerly pull up on the stem.  Sadly, my biggest broccoli bit the dust.  S’all right though because I planted more than I want. So then I eyed those cells and reached into my utensil draw and pulled out a fork.  Voila! Instant success! The fork fit perfectly in the cells and transfered the seedling without disturbing the roots much at all.

Last night I had to make a stop at the garden center for a few more pots, it didn’t occur to me that starting all these different seeds early this year meant that I would need that many more pots!  I also picked up a small ceramic pot to start a second round of cilantro on my windowsill. The first sowing is three weeks old and doing well, but one thing I have learned about cilantro is that if you want it longer, you have to do several continuous sowings.  In a few weeks I’ll pick up another pot and do it again- I figure all told, I’ll end up with four pots on my windowsill, and that ought to keep me in cilantro for a while anyway.

Here is also a picture of my cabbages-started February 23rd.  They are doing very well, and seem to be happy so far.  Yesterday that got a watering of some fishwater from my fish tanks.  I have no idea what the spindly thing is on the far upper right, and on the left side there are three of my Di Cecco Broccoli plants.

If  you remember, when I planted my cabbages last month, I also started some Green Goliath Broccoli.  Well, a few weeks ago I sort-of stepped on the broccoli.  I was a little annoyed with myself, but decided it was for the better anyways since it wasn’t a variety of broccoli I wanted to plant.  So I picked up some organic Di Cecco broccoli, which is a much smaller plant, which produces a small 3-inch head to begin, but really excels with the side shoots it continuously pushes out.  We’ll see, but I’m really hoping this variety does well in my square foot garden.  As it is, I wanted to plant 3 cabbages and I  have 10.  Anyone need some cabbage?

Anyway, it has warmed up a bit, but not enough yet.  The lows are still in the upper twenties, so it needs to get a bit warmer in order to plant anything in the dirt.  I may have to revise my plans a bit, as part of my garden plan this year relied on getting some things into the dirt pretty early.    I’m already thinking that a lot of the herbs that I had planned to put in the garden might go into some nice pots instead.  We’ll see…

This weekend I ran into a few problems with getting my tomato seeds into the dirt.  The first being that I was out of dirt.  We’re being really careful where each and every dollar is going right now, so I really had to weigh whether or not it was a good time to buy a new bag of potting mix.  I decided it was, and Andy stopped and picked some up for me.  Then, with dirt in hand, I had to dig around the house to find something to plant the seeds in.  Lol.  My seed starting trays are all occupied at the moment with beautifully starting seeds.  Some of those, I actually need to transplant today to a larger container, but the problem of the moment was where to plant tomatoes.

After having success with the plastic drink cups a few weeks back, I went to grab some more of those when I decided to grab the paper cups instead.  I was thinking there that I could just write on the cups then what was going in them.  Then, after I chose the cups, I needed something to set them in to catch water for watering purposes. Gosh, I really need to bulk up my gardening supplies.   This time, I ended up grabbing an aluminum roasting pan from the basement.  I poked drain holes in the bottom of my cups, filled them 3/4 of the way with dirt and set them in the pan.  Then I very carefully started getting out the seeds- I wanted to be sure which seeds went in which cup, and I really had to think about how many I wanted to start.  I have 12 varieties going- most of them I only want one plant for myself, and the rest are meant to be shared with anyone who wants them.

You may be reading this asking if it’s worth the trouble to start my own tomato seeds when I can just go to the garden center and buy a few plants. Well, first of all, a packet of 25 seeds is about $2.50 average for the seeds.  A plant costs at least that for just one plant.  So cost wise it makes more sense.  I am also all about growing real tomatoes.  I don’t want the Better Boys and the Celebrity tomatoes that everyone else is growing because they just don’t taste as good to me. I want to grow heirloom tomatoes- the ones that are different in each and every way.  Some have more seeds, some have more juice, some have more pulp, and they all have a different color, which is fun too.  Each one also has a unique flavor- they’re not just tomatoes, they’re something special, and I enjoy each and every one.  I also enjoy the process, oddly enough.  Last year was the first time I ever started tomatoes, and it was so exciting to watch them sprout, and grow and turn into tomato plants.

So the tomatoes have been started.  Now we’ll see how long they take to germinate in the greenhouse.

Spring has sprung.  And my seedlings are sprouting.  It’s a fantastic day.  Later this week, once “The Great Melt” has completed and the ground has firmed back up a touch, Andy will see to repairing my garden sides.  Saturday, the tomatoes get started inside, and then we wait.  We wait and watch those overnight lows to climb up, and then the peas will go in the ground.  And then the lettuce, and then… well, who knows!  And the bulbs! I have all these tulips and daffodils that can go in the landscaping.

One day at a time.

There’s something about these tulips that has me completely smitten.  The way the petals have fallen and dried up a bit in beautiful waves… it’s like a dance.  An elegant dance, with the perfect skirt swirling in the breeze.  It’s a hidden beauty that has me mesmerized, I thought the tulips themselves were beautiful, but these dried blossoms are enchanting.

The problem with gardening (okay, maybe problem is not the right word) is that it’s infectious.  And when you hear that a neighbor or friend has started certain varieties of seeds… well, you just get an itch! A big itch! So this afternoon, after picking up Abigail from school, I trekked out to the shed and pulled my “official” seed starting tray. It’s one of the small cell pack trays, so it holds 32 little cells of seeds.  This one tray is perfect for doing the bulk of my seed starting.

So I started some seeds.  I started cauliflower, kale, scallions, leeks, bell peppers, sweet stuffing peppers, eggplants, hot peppers, and then the herbs- lovage, borage, summer savory, basil, sweet marjoram and the cilantro went in it’s own pot on the windowsill.  I decided to go ahead and do a few eggplant- if you remember, I had been waffling on them.  But since Baker Creek sent me a freebie of a new-to-me variety, well, how could I not give them a whirl?  And despite my dismal failure with hot peppers last year, I’ve now got some Anaheim chilies and some Serrano chilies planted.  You’ll also notice that those sweet stuffing peppers made it back on the list too- I’ll tell you, I was all determined to not grow them again, and then I pickled the last pickings off the plants last year. Oh. My. Gosh.  Totally worth it for just that jar of pickled peppers.

I think I’ve started just about everything that can be started ahead of time- except the tomatoes.  I still have some calculating to find out exactly when I can start those, but I do know it is much too early to think ‘mater.

I’m planning a trip to my favorite garden center in the next week or so, and I suspect that I’ll be adding to the seeds here, not to mention I’ve got a trade in the works, so some brussels sprouts will be added to my collection as well.  Overall, I’m thrilled it’s March, and I’m feeling very optimistic that we’ll have a great gardening year.  Two years ago I planted the garden the second week in April, so if we hold to that for this year, my plants have all been started perfectly.  That means I really need to get out the grid paper and get planning.  Once the snow melts and the ground thaws, there are peas and lettuce just dying to get in the ground!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days, but since I’ve been a little busy…

I was very excited last week to check on the plants in the greenhouse and find vegetable sprouts! It’s completely fascinating to me that these teeny-tiny seeds I planted a few weeks ago have put forth these tiny seedlings which will eventually turn into food for our family.  I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the growing process.

I’m pleased to report that I have 100% germination on both the Caraflex Cabbage and the Green Goliath Broccoli.

I planted ten cabbage seeds and have ten seedlings, and I planted five of the broccoli seeds.  Let me tell you about this broccoli.  The seed packet itself is over two years old, and the fact that I still am experiencing 100% germination tells you something about seeds.  Mainly, they keep.  I haven’t done anything special to them, I just put them in a rubbermaid container, and that container itself has been hiding in the closet above the washer and dryer.  Now, I really debated buying new broccoli seeds this year, as I’d love to find a more compact variety for my square foot garden.  But I decided that I would try my old seed first, see how it takes, and then buy new if I didn’t get results.  Well, I sure did get results!

The onions are also coming along slowly.  These are Red of Florence, and I really didn’t have good luck with them last year.  They never really bulbed out before it got cold, so I thought I would simply try starting them earlier this year.  What is very interesting here is that I have read in more than one place that onion seed is not always viable from year to year- it goes bad quickly.  Well, it will be a few weeks yet before I’ll say that they’re done sprouting, but so far we are at least at 50% germination.  I’ll be keeping an eye on them, that’s for sure.

This next weekend, more seeds will be started.  I’m just going to run out of places to put them pretty soon.