Sunday, April 17, 2011

Now I Know It Is Spring ;)

My salad garden has begun to push up lovely little leaves!  Last year I saved seed from my French Breakfast radish.  I planted some last Sunday and around Thursday they began to sprout up.  Along with the radish I planted arugula and a salad green mix that looks interesting.  Such a diverse mix of seeds has to produce something out of the ordinary!  I planted a red bunching onion too.  I've never seen anything like it and look forward to the addition of them in my salad.

Leek seeds haven't sprouted yet, but germination can take as long as 21 days.  They are out on the deck waiting for the ideal weather.  I'm about to sow some flower seed in the house.  Sweet Pea and Nasturtium.  It's a good idea to include such an attraction to the bees for pollination.  I have a couple of rail containers to plant them in and I'm sure they'll do the job.

Last Sunday I also transplanted some kale to a large container on the deck, along with seed in peat discs which had sprouted purple sprouting broccoli and calabrese broccoli.   These will be planted in one of the raised beds.  It wasn't all that long ago that the ground was still a little crunchy.  They'll do okay in the peat discs a little longer.

Tomato seeds are up.  Roma plums.  I've potted up some containers of mushroom manure and topsoil to transplant them in.  I don't know about where you live, but gas and food prices are going up.  I just didn't want to spend money on potting soil that I really didn't need to have.  The Romas will live in the 2' X 10' raised bed down in the garden.

I'll start the eggplant and peppers at the end of the month.  I have a winter squash developed for container growing that I can't wait to see full grown.  The squash bugs are relentless.  I do plan to plant dill in the container with it though, after reading that it is supposed to deter the squash bug.  Let's hope it works.

Speaking of herbs, my sage looks ragged and I hope it comes back.  However, the last year's pot of chives came back in full force!  It was so nice to see that first greenery a couple of weeks ago.  I'm not absolutely sure what I'll be doing with the herb garden.  I've got several different ones to get started which will be the beginning of my medicinal herb garden.  I don't want to have them all in containers.  I would like to have them in a permanent place where the ones that will reseed have the space to do so.

So that's all I've gotten done in the garden so far.  Next post should be about my adventures with herbmentor.com.  A truly rewarding experience.

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