April 6, 2013 - In the Garden

Yesterday it rained off and on, so I didn't spend much time in the garden.  I did move a grow bag to a corner by the shed, then planted it with some leftover seed potatoes.  I spent the rest of the sunny period edging, weeding and cultivating the rest of the flower bed around the patio, and putting another large pot there for a third cherry tomato.  I still have to add the 8' stakes to the pots for the tomatoes to climb.  Those have to be screwed into the patio beam.

Pots are in place for cherry tomatoes, the beds are edged and weeded and waiting for May planting time.

Today I planted 34 leek seedlings, 2 cabbage seedlings to replace the broccoli that survived the winter (the new shoots just bolted immediately) and a 6' long wide row of carrot seed mats (144 seeds) in a windstorm, fun!  I also removed two Shasta daisy plants that never were very pretty.  That gave me room to (maybe) plant another tomato when the time comes.

The leek seedlings are so tiny, not much larger than a blade of grass.  I have a lot of seedlings left for backups if these fail to grow.  I was surprised to see my first planting of potatoes breaking through the soil already.  Last year it was four weeks from the time I planted them until they emerged.  This year it took three weeks.

Red Norland potato plants are peeking out of the soil.

The Kennel Garden has green things growing everywhere!  I can even see the peas from my kitchen window.  There still is no sign of germination for the shelling peas.  I even dug around a bit and couldn't even find a pea seed.  I paid $4.99 for a packet of those seeds from Burpee.  I certainly wouldn't think every single seed would be bad, but it's never taken this long for germination to take place in the past.

The rhubarb plant I thought was dead lives.  It's looking quite healthy now.

The warm weather seedlings got to spend their days outside for three days, coming into the kitchen at night.  

Then it turned rainy and windy, so they are back in the bedroom under the lights.  It won't be long until I'll have to up-pot them.

We discovered another broken sprinkler line by the front driveway.  This was evidently another "oops" from the heavy equipment they brought in to demolish our septic tank and hook up to the city sewer.  It's in a real bad spot, wedged between the concrete driveway and the big roots of the pine trees.  We were kind of scratching our heads and wondering which of us had the stamina to dig it out, when Son John stopped by.  He had read my blog about the front flower garden and my disappointment in Son Scott and Grandson Kevin not helping, so stopped by to offer to dig the bed for me on Sunday.  He's a good boy, I'm sure he'll help us dig out the sprinkler line.