Cleaning up Plants and Starting to Till the Soil

This past week was perfect to start cleaning up plants including blueberries and hopefully will be cleaning up strawberries very soon.  I need to remove the straw from these plants before the good spring weather arrives.  At the moment my strawberry plants still have straw covering them, but many of them are starting to grow through the straw which is a good sign and I will start removing the straw very soon.  Hopefully this week as long as the weather is good I will remove the straw from my plants and start loosening up the soil for them.

I have cleaned up my blueberry plants by removing any weeds that started growing around them, removing old or dead branches, and loosening the soil for them to provide some air circulation.  I will be adding a mixture of manure and peat most around them in order to give them the nutrients they need to produce delicious berries this season.  As long as the flowers open and don’t wither I should have a decent season.

Yesterday I decided that it was time to get my potatoes into the ground before it starts to rain for quite awhile.  I also was able to get my pea seeds and radish seeds into the soil.

 

 I started tilling the garden yesterday and only did a portion of the garden instead of the whole thing.  I only need a portion of the garden in order to plant my spring crop plants and seeds.  The next plants that will be added to the garden will be spinach, lettuce, and possibly some flowers before the month is done.

I am still planting seeds indoors and when I get a good day of weather I place my plants outside to ready them for planting them into the garden.  I would probably say that my flowers will be the first to get ready to the weather because I need to get them into the garden as fast as possible.  These flowers are important to get as many beneficial insects to the garden as quickly and early as possible.

Getting Ready for Placing Plants Outside

At the moment there are only a couple of plants that are able to withstand the cool temperatures that have arrived.  It is still a little bit early to put all my plants outside.  With these temperatures only my spinach and lettuce can bear it right now.  I also have broccoli which I started inside that loves cool weather and I will probably be putting them outside soon as well.  For now I will be keeping my lettuce and spinach outside.  I am hoping by the end of the month to be putting them in the ground as long as they can get some sunshine.

I have been planting more seeds inside this season and have recently planted some cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, and even carrots.  My melons and cucumbers are sitting underneath fluorescent lights to get them sprouting quickly. 

I have also used larger peat pots this season for these seeds.  Using larger peat pots will allow for more time for the plants to develop without having to put them in the ground too soon.  If they sit in the peat pots for too long the containers may begin to dissolve and I would have to put them in the garden soil right away when it may not be time to do so.  That is why I chose to use larger ones for my melons.

Carrots on the other hand are not normally put into peat pots and I usually just plant some seeds directly into the garden soil.  Unfortunately this is not very efficient to say the least and I needed to try a different approach to planting this vegetable. 

Using small peat pots for carrots seemed like the obvious and best solution to this problem.  Planting them in plastic containers is something that should not be done because of transplanting problems.  Many times when transplanting carrots from a plastic container into the garden may cause the roots to not grow straight and might crack easily.  This is why I avoided planting them in plastic containers and chose to use small peat pots.

 
I also have tomatoes and broccoli sprouting that have grown beyond the trays that I placed them in and had to move them into larger pots.  I moved all my tomatoes and broccoli and placed them into large cups that I had saved up and this should last them until it is time to transplant them into the garden in the next couple of months or so

Set up Trays for Some More Indoor Planting

As you know I have planted some containers full of dill, alyssum, and some wildflowers.  I also have some lettuce and spinach growing in the cool cellar under lights.  These are the only plants I have growing indoors as of yesterday.  I decided that yesterday was a perfect time to start planting many more seeds that I need to give a head start.

Getting most of my plants into the windowsill for maximum light exposure which all my flowers need before going outside.  It has been some warm days recently and I probably could have put my spinach, lettuce, and all cool weather plants outside.  Instead I kept them inside under lights for now.  It won’t be too long until I set up my table and start bringing all kinds of plants outdoors.

I have a tray that has 72 cells where I can start planting all kinds of seeds.  I have many types of peppers that I needed to plant yesterday and these cells definitely came in handy for this reason.  I have literally five different varieties that I am looking forward to grow especially all the spicy peppers.  I even planted some of the sweeter ones as well which make for great salads and sauces.  The hot types will be used mainly for salsa hopefully.

I also have another tray full of other vegetables and some flowers.  I knew I wanted to get eggplant started and hopefully don’t grow so many plants as last year.  Six small containers are what I stuck with this year and that should be plenty of plants as long as the seeds sprout in the soil.  Some sun king hybrid broccoli is what I plan on growing the whole season so I planted some of these seeds in containers.

 
I also bought some more raspberries this year and looking forward to planting them in the garden.  I need to place them in a tray of water in order to get them out of their dormant state before planting them in a container or the ground.  Once they start growing roots and producing leaves I can then take them out of the tray and get them ready for soil.

Let’s Start off a New Decade of Gardening Right

Over the Winter I was thinking about some new seeds or plants that I should try out during this new season.   I came up with one idea and decided that I should start trying to grow some hot peppers along with the normal sweet peppers that I grow each year.  That is when thought about growing the hottest pepper on the planet at the moment: The Carolina Reaper.   This is supposed to be the hottest pepper and even hotter than the ghost pepper.  I also bought some habanero peppers to go along with it.

Aside from growing some new peppers this year I also am thinking about growing a larger spring crop this season.  I might be adding some cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts and maybe some celery to this year’s spring season.  This would go along with my normal crop of potatoes, lettuce, spinach, peas, and radishes. 

I am not sure if I am going to do this, but it is an idea I was going to look over.  I will have to make sure not to grow too much or I would not have enough room for my summer plants.  This is just something I was thinking about doing.

For my spring crop I have started planting seeds of both lettuce and spinach.  These are two crops I plan to have growing in the garden within a month or so.  I placed them in a cool place this year since they grow best when in temperatures of 50-60 degrees.  I could place them in cold frames outside, but for now I am keeping them indoors just to give them a little head start.

 Wildflowers, dill, and alyssum are also planted indoors right now.  I planted them about a couple of weeks ago before my lettuce and spinach.  I love using these plants because they are good at attracting some of the best insects in the area and are a great help during the whole season

A Good End to The Summer Garden Harvests

Eggplants this season was more prominent than any other summer or spring crop.  I had planted close to thirty eggplant plants and received at least one or more from each plant.  I picked some of the last eggplants a couple of weeks ago just before a frost ended the season for most of my plants.  Close to a dozen were picked in this last harvest
 

The frost ends the season for all my summer plants and starts the season for harvesting my fall crops that include broccoli and brussel sprouts.  Carrots will also be harvested during the fall season as well, but that will be a little bit later in the month. 

My last tomato plant that was still growing after most of them were done for the season has finally finished growing the most tomatoes that it could during the time that it had.  It grew some of the best beefsteak tomatoes this season and some of the best that I have ever grown.  This year I grew a different variety of tomatoes and still focused on beefsteak, but instead of a large type I decided to grow a basic type of tomato.

 

 Now on to my fall crop which I am very much looking forward to.  I have actually started harvesting both my broccoli and brussel sprouts.  I have only begun to harvest just the large heads of my broccoli plants, but soon I will be harvesting the side shoots that come after cutting off the head.  So far I have just cut a couple of large heads that were ready earlier than many of the others.  I would say that the next couple of weeks most of the heads will be removed from my broccoli plants.
 

I wasn’t sure if it was time to start picking my brussel sprouts, but the plant had stopped growing and most of the brussel sprouts looked like they were pretty much ready for consumption.  Instead of picking the whole plant I just started with about have of them and the rest I will get later in the fall season.