Potatoes are Placed into the Garden Later than Recommended

Due to weather conditions I have been planting much of my garden later than I would like to.  As they say April showers bring May flowers.  This happens to be true most years, but this season it has been abnormally rainy and windy for the most part.  I normally wouldn’t mind, but unfortunately it is preventing me from planting potatoes and other plants into the garden.

Luckily today was actually quite nice, but definitely windy.  I can deal with the wind and since the sun was out for a short time I decided that it was time to get my seed potatoes into the ground.  I had cut them a couple of days ago and let them sit in the windowsill in order to cure them before placing them in rows outside. 

 

 Rather than digging holes which would have taken much longer to complete I decided that it would be best to start with a thirty foot row.  I had to dig a little bit deeper because they require at least three inches of soil to cover these seeds.  Once I did that I planted them into each row and took up about twenty feet of row instead of the usual thirty or more.

 

  This means that there was extra room that I need to fill.  Since I had no more potatoes to plant I thought it would be best to put some cool weather seeds there.  I wasn’t sure what to put in this spot, but I eventually decided on cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, celery, and lettuce.  I could have placed some flowers there, but there was enough space for some seeds to be planted.

All my recently planted seeds have started to pop up.  I didn’t think they would be sprouting by now, but believe or not they are showing themselves through the soil.  I would guess that it was all the rain we have been receiving for the past couple of weeks with more to come

Almost Done with All the Transplants in the Garden

I am just about finished with all the transplants that I will be adding to the garden.  All I have left is some dill, wildflowers, statice, alyssum, and various other flowers that I need to get outside real soon.  With vegetables and fruits finally planted from seed or transplanted into the garden from containers, I can now focus on weeding and caring for my plants.  I am just looking for the first harvest from my garden this season.

It looks like some of the first harvests of the season will come from either my lettuce plants or some other spring crop.  Radishes don’t take long to mature and they were planted in the ground a couple of months ago along with my pea plants.  These are just some of the harvests I have to look forward to this year.



The only flowers I transplanted into the garden this week were my cilantro and cosmos flowers.  These plants I started growing back in April and took quite awhile for them to germinate and grow in the containers that I provided them.  They survived this whole time and it was way overdue to plant them in the ground.  It seems like they all took to the soil and with the rain today should definitely help them out greatly.



Rhubarb was another plant that had been grown in pots and was eventually destined to be added into the garden.  I gave them a spot with plenty of room since they have very large roots and need plenty of feeding.  I don’t plan on harvesting any of the stems this season, but hopefully with some good care this year and a cold winter I should have a small harvest next season. 



Last but not least I wanted to mention some of the seeds that were planted and which ones have shown signs of germinating.  Squash was the first since they don’t take long to germinate.  This includes both zucchini and pumpkin plants.  Some cucumbers were in the mix beginning to sprout.  Sunflowers were the other seeds that are starting to grow in the garden.  All that I am waiting for are carrots and a couple of melon seeds that I added a week ago.

Almost Time to Start Thinning Out Lettuce

It is almost time to begin thinning out my lettuce sprouts that have began growing sometime earlier this week to late last week.  There have only been a couple of containers that needed thinning and I made sure I did that today before they got too crowded.

I always leave just one plant per pot in order to have one good producing plant rather than many small non-producing lettuce plants.  Today I did about four pots that were ready for thinning.  I will have to do much more in the future once all my lettuce seeds have completed sprouting.

Here is just one example of iceberg seeds I have planted and sprouted rather quickly.  I then took the time today to remove all of them but one.  The one I pick is usually the strongest out of the bunch.

Spinach Placed Outside and Flowers Sprouting Indoors

Whenever warm weather or at least sunny days occur I like to place as many plants outside as possible depending on various conditions.  For instance right now it is almost springtime, yet this doesn't mean that the weather is going to get warmer right away.  It will still be too cool for most of my plants except for spinach which is capable of withstanding cooler temperatures at least in the lower 40's to upper 30's (Fahrenheit) at the lowest.

They grow best in the 50's to 60's (Fahrenheit), but I do place them outside when it is much cooler.  Since last week was warm and sunny it was a great opportunity to place my spinach outside to enjoy the bright sun.  This week it hasn't been sunny at all and mostly rainy.  This week they haven't gone outside, but I hope to put them outdoors soon to adjust to cloudy weather as well as rainy weather.

They are growing very nicely at the moment and I will soon be placing them outside and throughout the night once the temperature is acceptable to them.

Now I want to discuss the various seeds that have been sprouting this past week.  The sunny weather last week definitely helped out my lettuce plants indoors and they started sprouting this weekend.  Both of the Ruby glow hybrid and the iceberg black seeded Simpson are growing.  Check them out below.

It seems that I may have added too many seeds into each pot and I think I will be very busy removing the ones I don't need.  I didn't think that all the seeds would sprout and since they are very small seeds it is difficult to know how many I added.  That is why I always add more than needed because I can always remove some.  In this case I am going to remove quite a bit and it looks that I probably should have added only half or more of what was planted.

When it comes to flowers I am not that worried about having too much because I have found that most of them grow best when they are in a large bunch.  One plant that I especially like that is perfect for this reason is alyssum.  I can grow them in large pots and put a large amount of seeds and they will do just fine for a few month until I place them in the ground.  They flower all season long which is perfect for what I need them for.

Pictured above are alyssum, sunflowers, and dill.  Now that they have sprouted I can remove the dill from under the lights and place some new plants under them.  Right now I am not going to plant anything, but tomorrow I plan on adding tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers under these fluorescent lights.