New England, April 2015

7 am and the temperature is 19°F. I am so ready for the cold to go away. I can see more of the garden but it is still frozen.
I'm ready to plant peas, beets, spinach, shallots and chard.

These guys are chomping at the bit and ready to go out into the SFG. 

Hopefully this is the weekend, kiddos!  I'll be few days behind last year but hey, feeling lucky.

Then I need to pot up some 'extra' peppers & tomatoes...you know, the ones you're supposed to cut away?  They are just starting to form their true leaves so I figured now is as good a time as any.

And Ms. Spud definately needs to get out:
(I found her in  my drawer at work...from days gone by)

CC

At work???

I had to go shopping for my Easter turkey today and saw some bulbs that caught my eye so I bought Rudbeckia, Purple Cone Flower and some Columbine bulbs along with some herb seeds:  3 types of basil, 2 of chives, thyme and rosemary.
The tomatoes are stretching their sprouts up under the lights which makes me very happy.  They are looking healthy and robust, too.
I'm nowhere near to planting like CapeC but I love seeing what she's doing which gives me hope that I'm following not far behind.

Love Ms. Spud. In your drawer at work? Is this so you wouldn't forget her?

sanderson wrote:Love Ms. Spud.  In your drawer at work?  Is this so you wouldn't forget her?

 Well, actually she was part of a group of 3 taters in my work 'junk' file cabinet.  I don't eat potatoes much but if I was ever late for work and couldn't pack my lunch, I had these potatoes (along with a can of chick peas) as back up to cook up for lunch.  The garbonzos are still in there along with emergency garlic & ginger in case someone here is sick.

Warm spell is hitting today and tomorrow.  The Cape goes up to hi 40's, maybe 50! 
  I'll find that compost pile yet!
CC

My garden is still mostly covered in snow except the top of the asparagus mound. Nothing growing there yet, the mound itself is probably still pretty frozen, but soon! 

So the first thing we're planting are peas and beets? And was it bee balm seeds you plant as soon as the snow is gone? I have some in the seedlings trays.

I wish the search function were a tad better. I know we talked about what kind of flower seed to throw out there as soon as the snow melts. I'll look in last month's thread.

Edit: Aha! It was borage.

Funny, CC!!

I think you said you had 80 kale seedlings. If it's 1 kale per square basically, do you have room for 80 kale? I seeded 6..... And you had a bunch of lettuce too. It's making me wonder if I'm thinking too small. Especially with the drought issues in California produce land...

NHGardener wrote:Funny, CC!!

I think you said you had 80 kale seedlings. If it's 1 kale per square basically, do you have room for 80 kale? I seeded 6..... And you had a bunch of lettuce too. It's making me wonder if I'm thinking too small. Especially with the drought issues in California produce land...

I always over sow  and plant, particularly the leafy greens because I want to have enough growing for harvest to eat, re-growing,  harvest for preservation/storage, I want all those things to be happening at the same time. So, the plants are all at different stages.

NHGardener wrote:
I think you said you had 80 kale seedlings. If it's 1 kale per square basically, do you have room for 80 kale? I seeded 6..... And you had a bunch of lettuce too. It's making me wonder if I'm thinking too small. Especially with the drought issues in California produce land...

Nope, not 80.  I planted 80 seeds total of collards, kale & lettuces in the first sitting.  Only 30 kale seeds of which about 25 germinated.  I planted a lot more kale and collards this morning - 60 total.  They are currently on the heating pad.  

If I don't have room in the SFG, out they go into the perennial gardens or into pots.  It's interesting how different the flavor between the same variety of collard or kale planted in the SFG is to the ones in the perennial gardens.  The perennial gardens aren't covered so the plants have to generate their defense against the critters, which makes them tougher and stronger in flavor.  I'm not crazy about that in my salads but in a smoothie it's fine.

Like camp, I need a lot of them to keep me going, but in 3 yrs I still haven't been able to grow enough to blanch & freeze.
 
CC

Yeah, I can see over-sowing, but she's 10x more than me, so that got me to wondering. 

I think maybe I undersowed this year, and thinking twice about adding another batch of everything. Of course, my 2 kale plants seemed to have been plenty last summer. I don't think I'd need 80, or even 60...

Last year I had tomato plants coming out my ears, and then a bunch of volunteers.

Still, it might not hurt to stagger another planting, 2 weeks apart. Crop insurance.

Ah, CC, you chimed in as I was posting.

Interesting about the different flavors, because in a recent gardening get together, folks were talking about the quality of the soil improving the flavor of the vegetables. I thought that was really interesting.

It's almost getting to be time to fetch seaweed! Can't wait to have more seaweed. If I lived nearer to the coast, it would smell like the beach here year-round.

I know you make a lot of green smoothies, and that must go thru a lot of kale, etc. So you're hoping to freeze kale?

Mine rarely get full grown either.  I harvest them continually, very young, as cut and come again.

YES! I would love to have enough kale to freeze!

I'll tell you what I ran out of last summer, and that was basil. I could use 20 of those plants easily (to freeze also), and I did seed a bunch here.

My celery isn't sprouting yet. I'm a nervous wreck this year about sprouting. For one thing, because I didn't wash the trays/lids. The tomatoes are pokey and the peppers haven't shown their heads yet.

I'm getting rid of almost all my seeds this year. And CC, I'm going to hunt for end-of-season seed sales like you found last year. What a bonus!

Basil grows great here and I don't use that much of it so end up growing it mostly for the neighbors & pest resistances.  What do you do with your basil?

Pesto, which takes 2-4 cups of fresh basil, and I add it to pretty much every sauce/soup/stirfry I make. I love basil.

Last year my basil got the blight

I'm starting to give more thought to interspersing everything here and there, to maybe minimize diseases like blight, instead of doing everything in blocks. I wonder if that would help. I think so.

That's one of the big pluses about SFG.  You're correct - interspersing items will confuse bugs & diseases.

Today I started more seeds under lights: Genovese Basil, Common Thyme, Winter Thyme, Garlic Chives and Curled Parsley.
I've got some perennial flowers to start tomorrow and my peppers probably early next week and then I'm done with indoor starts.

We had a wonderfully warm day today, in the 60s.  I had to leave my jacket in the car when I went shopping today.  Much too warm for anything but a shirt.

I hope you had a Happy birthday QB!

Thank you Camprn, I had a very nice BD with foods I like and snacks I adore and people I love.
I even sowed some herb seeds today so I did something I love as well.

It was 65 F on the third and 60 F on the second.

Looks like back to cloudy-with-high-relative-humidity days.

We've been thrown back to about March 5th I'd say, with our week ahead of chilly and rainy/snowy days. We had a nice day of spring tho yesterday.

Been hearing a lot about swiss chard lately, it seems to be the "in" vegetable right now. So what is it good for, and when do you plant it? Now I'll have to get more seeds....

I see you can blanch & freeze it too!