Growing and Warmth

Here's our growing boy (with growing squash plants in the background). Kitties (black and blonde) warming up in the sun...

It was the black kitty's idea to come out here and lay in between the rows.

This also gives an idea of the size of the garden (not big!) Posts showing other growing areas to follow...

Tomato plant count

Here are the tomatoes we planted, and the number of each variety:

Australian Oxheart (3)
Black Cherry (3)
Black Krim (3)
Brandywine Yellow (5)
Cherokee Chocolate (4)
Green Zebra (3)
Kellogg's Breakfast tomato (4)
Principe Borghese (4)
Yellow pear (5)

The only new one is the Black Krim. They all have different uses, which I will chronicle as we harvest them.

A Day of Mothering--plants.

Mother's Day, and I'm busily trying to get plants to produce offspring. We put in the entire garden today, planting:

• Leeks
• Summer squash
• Cucumbers
• popcorn
• sunflowers
• other flowers and herbs
• two avocado pits in pots (since we had guacamole for dinner)

transplanting:

• Fennel
• peppers
• herbs
• tomatoes (34 plants in the ground and in pots)

Also discovered the joy of stewed rhubarb this weekend. SO GOOD.

In comparing notes with other midwesterners, we are lucky to be close to the lake, and west of it. It has a moderating effect on the weather--it is supposed to get to 38 degrees tonight, but it is freezing elesewhere. We've been harvesting kale for two weeks. The Rhubarb is hearty and producing well. The tomatoes we transplanted earlier this week are thriving. Will be interesting to see what this does over the years, if it changes, etc.

At any rate, a good day of gardening.

Turnip sprouts!

I have no photographic proof of this, so you'll have to take my word for it, but there are tiny turnip sprouts coming up as of today!

Our seedling set-up

Hard to believe these photos are a month old! This is the set-up on our enclosed front porch where we grow our seedlings. Which means we have a grow-light on in the late-night and early morning hours--I wonder if it annoys dog walkers and the paper delivery person. (I did not know until last year that the light retards growth--it keeps the plants from growing too quickly and getting "leggy" as they do most of their growing in the dark.)

Last weekend (April 18 and 19) we put in the first of our outdoor seeds: Peas, beets, carrots, turnips. We were also delighted to discover that Kale is a perennial--we have Kale coming up in a row in the garden and a few clumps in the front of the house. In a week or two we can harvest and add all those healthy vitamins to our frozen soups.

We had one spring day on Thursday (about 60 degrees) and up to about 75 on Friday. But today it has been raining and the temperature has been dropping so now it is 40 degrees. We hope it doesn't go much lower--the forecast says no. The seeds got a good 5 days of soaking, two warm days, and now they got soaked again. If warmth comes again next weekend, we should see sprouts.

Kitty Assistant

This got edited out by blogger yesterday, and rather than re-post the entire entry, I will give you here a solo photo of our curious kitty, ready to help with the planting. He's the best kitty in the world, and he loves gardening. He hangs out in the garden when we are out there, loves to sidle up and rub against us when we're working. I'd grow a whole garden full of cats if I could be guaranteed that they'd all be so perfect!

Starting

We are using the guidance of this site to begin our seedlings this year:
http://www.yougrowgirl.com/
Here's our seed collection. These are from Victory Seed Company (all heirlooms):

These we bought at the local Stein's Garden Center.

There's a seed starting calculator somewhere on the site http://www.yougrowgirl.com/ but I can't locate it just now. It told us to plant this weekend, so we did.

Then I went to the farmer's market on Saturday and was told it was way too early to be planting seedlings by a very experienced gardener. Sigh. I'm sure it will be fine, and seed pots are enjoying their time in the laundry room on top of the warm, sunny and vibrating dryer (spouse/botanist says that the jiggling strengthens the growing plants. We'll see).