April in the lower south

I am back in the US now and although a bit late started my spring garden.  Yesterday I refreshed the compost in two beds and planted lettuce, broccoli, radicio, and spinch plants.  I also sowed lettuce, bok choi, chinese cabbage, spinach, collard and radish seeds.  I had one spinach plant left from the fall garden and some garlic and shallots from a November planting.  Parsley, rosemary and mint are coming up and I think I see some basil in one of the buckets.  And today we are getting rain.

I plan to buy tomato plants this year, but San Marzano are usually not available so I started 6 seeds.  They may get out a bit late, but hopefully I'll get some sauce tomatoes.

I also  emptied  out a tabletop and replaced a broken support under the hardware cloth. I used the MM to fill 7 tomato buckets and  6 pepper buckets (serves for rotational purposes).  I plan to cut way back on tomatoes and peppers this year.

Next project is to weed and empty 4 beds and replace the crumbling plastic lining with sturdy weedblock cloth and add a lot of compost to replace settled MM.  At the same time I will take the opportunity to raise 2 of them a bit higher.  Will use these for warm weather crops.

I have one more bed ready to plant, but need to blend my homemade compost with some commercial manure compost for a good blend.  I will put swiss chard in it immediately and save some for warm weather crops.  Something that looks like chard is coming up in the bed and I want to give it a week to see if that's what it is.  

Weeded the strawberry beds last week and I've got blooms.  Need to give them a top dressing.

Kay

WOW! You have been busy Kay, I wish I had your energy   

Thirty minutes on and an hour off is what it take for me now.  But a little every day adds up.  All that represented a week's worth of activity

Kay

Welcome back to your garden!  You've been busy  

Wow walshevak,

What a busy lady you have been.  I am feeling a bit embarrassed by how little I have accomplished to get ready for spring.

Bags of five different kinds of compost are in my garage.  Sacks of peat and vermiculite await my attention.  New Earth Boxes languish.  .

My big excuse is that it is a bit too early (well, for me) to direct sow summer vegetables.

Your strawberries have blooms?  I am very jealous!

Windmere wrote:Wow walshevak,

What a busy lady you have been.  I am feeling a bit embarrassed by how little I have accomplished to get ready for spring.

Bags of five different kinds of compost are in my garage.  Sacks of peat and vermiculite await my attention.  New Earth Boxes languish.  .

My big excuse is that it is a bit too early (well, for me) to direct sow summer vegetables.

Your strawberries have blooms?  I am very jealous!

Understood.  All that I put out are cool weather veggies.  I'll not put a single warm weather plant out until after Apr 15 and probably not until  around the 24th.  And I counted 5 strawberry blossoms in 2 beds of plants.    




Kay

I feel better now~ 

I have blooms on my strawberries also.  I also am waiting to plant my summer veggies until the week of 4/20 when I am on vacation.

Anyone know a good variety of ground cherry to plant here in the south ??

yolos wrote:Anyone know a good variety of ground cherry to plant here in the south ??

Sorry, I don't know anything about ground cherries.

Kay

Yolos, I get a lot of stuff from Baker Creek Heirlooms.  Here's a link to their ground cherries:

[url=http://www.rareseeds.com/ground-cherry/?F_Keyword=ground cherry]http://www.rareseeds.com/ground-cherry/?F_Keyword=ground%20cherry[/url]

Haven't tried them!  But I've been very pleased with everything I've gotten from them so far.

I pooped out and only redid 2 of the plastic lined beds.  But they are now raised and have marine plywood bottoms and weedcloth lining.  The plywood was in my garage left over from a sign from our defunct restaurant.  The supports were sagging.

Finally managed to get  soaker hoses into all 10 beds.  Will get them on a time later.

Lots of little tomatoes volunteering in some of my undisturbed beds and in some of the tomato buckets.  I potted up some for later placement and left the rest until I decide what to plant where.

I came down to my son's house in Wilmington on Wed to spend a week.  It will be interesting to see what the cold did to the volunteers the past few days.  Packed up the potted tomato seedlings and brought them with me.  Put them into the greenhouse that my son had to put back up on Mon.  He will get some of them.  not the first time I've traveled with seedlings, but this time only had to bring the ones I'll be sharing.  

Kay

Enjoy your trip, Kay!

Looks like Monday will be the day to plant out my tomatoes.  I pledged last year that I would not plant my tomatoes outside until the low temps were projected to be above 50 F.  So that looks like Monday.   I will finish hardening off my tomatoes over the next three days and be ready to plant on Monday. I am on an on-again-off-again vacation over the next ten days so I will have a chance to get everything planted.

That's nice, Yolos.  Had already planted my tomatoes.  Lost a bunch in the freeze...  Will be planting more once the rain ends again.

 My garden is now fenced!! No more will my big lab (in photo) wander through the beds! As far as growing goes, the snap peas are starting to produce... will be going out to pick those later this afternoon. Lettuces have been getting picked for awhile. Broccoli are getting huge,  but still no head formation yet. 5 tomato plants (3 varieties) doing well, a few even put out their first flowers. Potatoes doing well in their bags and I've opted to use straw to fill this year, looking forward to see how well it works. Bush beans, squash, and zuchinni seeds sprouted this week as well.

Looks good, CarolinaGirl!  Although I'm sure puppy is disappointed... lol.

Attractive looking fenced area!