Now the Garden Season has Started with The First Transplants in The Garden

 Early to mid April happens to be the best time to start transplanting cool weather plants into the garden.  If you are using cold frames or placing row covers over your plants you can even start transplanting much sooner.  This is also a great way to extend the garden season especially in areas that are much cooler such as in northern states.  I like to do the first tiling sometime in April and do enough for adding all my springtime crops.

 

 This year I have decided on growing spinach, lettuce, potatoes, onions, and sun king broccoli which should be able to withstand the hot months and produce a decent crop.  I am still working on whether I should grow peas and or radishes.  Most likely I will plant pea because I bought a whole packet of seeds in the beginning of the year and would be a waste not to use them.

Even though these are normally springtime plants I can still plant them later and use them for a fall time crop instead.  Normally I plant kale and broccoli for a fall crop, but I decided that I would use them for a springtime crop instead.  I want to see if I can get a much better crop during the spring or if the fall is where I should keep my kale and broccoli plants.

This week was the perfect time to get my spinach and kale into the garden and the weather is still cool enough that they should be able to provide some great leaves for consumption.  I still have my lettuce and broccoli growing in pots outside, but they are not quite ready for planting.  I still have some time before the hot weather comes around and ends the spring season.  I would say in less than a month I will be putting my lettuce into the garden.  

 

I still have seeds that need to be planted indoors including many flowers that include cosmos, statice, calendula, amaranthus, queen annes lace, and some more wildflowers.  I already have six containers of both dill and alyssum at the moment, but I need to start growing many of the other flowers that I need to support my garden and plants.  I will hopefully start getting them planted indoors and placing them under lights this week.

What’s Left of My Spring Crops That Need to be Transplanted?

This week I actually started placing my spring crops into the garden.  I have plenty of plants that I think I should get a decent crop as long as the weather cooperates for the time being.  Spinach was the first plants that I needed to get into the garden.  They were starting to get a little bit pot bound and running out of room within the container.  Some leaves were also starting to fall which means they need to get into the garden right away. 

 Next I decided on placing the Brassica plants that I planted into the garden.  Unfortunately I lost track of which container had cabbage, broccoli, and brussel sprouts.  Since these plants all look the same when they are young it is very difficult to tell at the moment what they are.  In a couple of weeks they should start to take shape and I can tell you exactly what plants I added into the garden.

Next I wanted to get a new type of lettuce into the garden.  As you know I planted a large crop of lettuce seeds this season in an effort to make up from last year.  I planted seven different varieties of lettuce I was planning on having a great crop as long as they sprouted.  Some did not sprout which was disappointing, but I still have plenty of lettuce plants that did sprout which I hope to place in the garden very soon.

Once I get all my spring crops into the garden I will then start my summer tilling and get my corn, beans, and carrots planted right away.  I need to get them into the ground in the beginning of May and we are now getting close to mid May which means I must start planting them as soon as possible.  I am hoping to get them into the soil this weekend, but I am not sure if I can accomplish this with the time I have.

Started Transplanting All My Plants This Week

With the good weather over the past month it was time to start putting them into the ground right away.  The quicker they are placed in the ground the faster they will provide a good harvest hopefully.  This is why I decided to place them in the garden.  I still have not finished with the garden, but I should be complete by next week.

I am aiming for next week because I still have have plants to add to the garden including eggplant, peppers, along with planting corn, beans, and carrots.  There is still plenty to do and I am not sure if I can get this done by the weekend.  That is the earliest that I can get this done and even with good weather I might not get it done that quickly.

So far I have got a couple of alyssum plants in the ground along with squash, cucumbers, and melons.  This includes both watermelon and cantaloupe as well as zucchini and pumpkin squash plants.  I even had time to put some pot bound tomatoes into the ground too.

Here is a cucumber plant added to the garden this week.

Here is a pumpkin and zucchini added to the garden as well.

More Plants Added to Garden This Week

I still have some plants that have not been added to the garden due to the fact that they were planted a little bit later and their roots were not ready to adapt to the new ground soil.  I always wait a certain amount of time before embarking on this task of transplanting.  Once the roots are stable they then are ready to get into the ground as soon as possible.

This week the time had came for some later planted tomaotes, flowers, and herbs. The flowers and herbs were actually placed into the garden after I had the tomatoes in the ground.  I like to plant all the important plants such as fruits and vegetables and then I move on to herbs and flowers.  They are both important and play a crucial role, but the whole point is to have a great harvest.

These are just a couple of images of tomatoes and herbs that I planted this week.  You can get even more when you check out this post today.

Transplanting My Plants Into The Garden This Past Week

I have been extremely busy with the garden and many aspects of it.  For instance this weekend I usually put up the nets for the blueberries along with the strawberries.  They need a net to keep the birds away and so you can salvage your fruit harvest.  They are targets for the birds and putting up a net can be a time consuming and boring process, but it needs to get done.

Along with putting up a net for my fruit plants I also needed to transplant many plants to the garden in their respective holes that were previously dug.  Since putting up nets takes at least a couple of hours I was short on time to get my flowers and vegetable plants where they belong.

Luckily it didn't rain this weekend and there was good weather every day.  Since the weather was good I decided on getting right down to it and planted my tomatoes, sunflowers, alyssum, pumpkins, and zucchini right to the garden soil.

Here is one cherry tomato that I took a picture of marking the first transplant into the garden besides the spinach plants that were done earlier in the season.

A picture of one of the two sunflowers that were placed outside.

Some alyssum that was put into the ground to attract the best insects possible as early as possible.

Last but not least the squash family of plants.