FLOWERS?

Now, I will admit that by this point, this post is rather old, but one day about a month plus ago now, I went to move the ground cherries, tomatillos and eggplants into pots. As you can see the nicely planted seeds had become a mess of plants growing everywhere.  They had started to try and grow over the herbs I had placed in the missing cells spot to contain some water for them. 

Another small jungle

Imagine my surprise when I pulled out the one tomatillo that grew (one out of 6 cells had a plant). The tomatillo was flowering before it ever gets out of the seed starter... I think the grow light was worth it. The plants did seem rather happy under our new addition. We may have to set up a second one next year for a bit better coverage of the plants.

Flowers already?

I left the flowers on as I placed the tomatillo into its pot. The tomatillo and the ground cherries both I used our same method of planting as tomatoes where we buried part of the stem to help increase root production.

into the pot

That day, Pooka and I managed to get all the eggplants, ground cherries, and tomatillo into pots. The plants were all much bigger and sturdier than in previous years, so I do think the grow light has helped. Although it is always nice to be able to say "and at least now they are in dirt." Although, lets be honest, Pooka just loves being able to say "And now I am playing in the dirt."

More pots done

We also managed to get the valerian and the yarrow into pots as well. Due to pot space (and lack of pots) we did have to have them share a space, but it worked out great when we were transplanting later. These 2 ended up living on the front porch to harden off while the rest went out to live in the same jungle as the tomatoes. But at least they are done now. 

Yarrow and valerian

Tomatoes learn personal space

Okay, I admit it. In all the end of semester, end of school (since the kids and I are in different schools), spring garden plus the return of garden club for Pooka, and spring birthday world, I have been less than on top of things here. I promise stuff is still getting done, but here is me starting to play catch up and hopefully getting caught up.

A few weeks ago now, Pooka and I went to do our morning check on the tomatoes and realized that well.. they may of gotten a bit big. As in, big enough to start touching the light bulb on the grow light. Somethign needed done.

I think the grow light is working

And while it was a bit cool still outside, Pooka and I took our tomato tray outside to try and deal with this mess. Yes it looked worse once it was out of the light.

Oh dear... its a forest

The tomato plants had gotten rather big, so we started trying to gently pull the plants apart from the mass of vegetation. I will admit I should of done something sooner, but oh well. This is just one of the average size tomato plants. Yes those are regular coffee filters for scale (okay, honestly, they were there, but it gives you a good sense of how big these things got).

Tomato plant

I will admit it took Pooka and I the better part of a day to just sit there and pot the tomatoes. While we were doing that, Daddy and Brother were working on the side bed pulling off rocks and pulling out the old brick. I am not sure if Daddy or I got the worse end of the bargin. However, at least from my work, we will have food one day. The tomatoes no longer look like this, and some may or may not (okay may) of been a bit frost burned in my attempts to harden them off when it was still a tad chilly outside. However, this is why we plant extras. If nothing else, just means less tomatoes I need to find a home for.

Tomato army

Moving Cave

Since we fertilized our little trees, Cave the lemon tree has been doing a bit better but I may have over fertilized him. I also realized that he may of just been outgrowing his pot. On Sunday we took a few minutes to try moving him to a larger pot.

Before the move

We found this pot at one of the local home improvement stores. It was rather hard to find a place that had pots inside at this time of year, but we were hoping it was bigger than his current pot. It is definitely deeper and just slightly wider.

Awaiting Cave

There are no during pictures of the move since I was basically holding him still. He was not as root bound as I was afraid of, but I am sure potting him up after almost 2 years in the same pot was not a bad idea. During the move I notice he had some new flowers as well.  I also learned that I really should wait till I can do these things outside since it did make a bit of a mess.

flowers

 Here is Cave in his new home. He seems to look like he fits better. However, I will admit we used ice to water him slowly over the period of  12 hours. This allowed it all to "sink in" without drowning him. I am only hoping he didn't get too cold in those 12 hours. Now to just get him to hold on until the spring when he can start getting some real sunlight daily. I know that is most of what he needs.

all settled in

A good days work

A week ago Friday, Pooka and Brother had the day off school. I was feeling a bit behind with the garden, so we put ourselves to work outside. Well, Pooka and I did, I do believe Brother spent most of the day playing. Pooka helped me transplant most of the tomatoes. 

Transplants getting bigger

We also took care of this poor guy. He didn't make it through this hard hard winter. I had hope he may come back, but I am getting to a point where I am tired of waiting. I am tired of looking at sad plants and ready for new ones to take their places. I want to start harvesting already.

A victim of winter

Instead this new little guy got planted in his place. Hopefully we will have plenty of lavender to use this year.  All this was done in the same day. Now if I can only have a few more days like this and we may finally get caught up. 

New life. 

Stupid cold snaps

I will be honest with you all, we have been transplanting and transplanting away here. All our little seedlings are going into pots to get big and strong and ready for the yard. However, I haven't had a chance to tell you all about it. Granted, showing plants going into pots is real exciting. 

Stupid cold

However, this is what happens when you get a cold snap. Everything ends up in your garage hiding from the cold. The table it is sitting on is just an old hollow core door we use as a workbench. The most annoying part is the 15 minutes it takes to move them all inside, then the 15 minutes it takes to move them all back outside daily and it only gets worse as we continue to put more plants into pots. Soon, maybe the weather will give in and things can live outdoors. 

Oops and Groundhogs.

Sorry all, I know we disappeared again but Pooka's Aunts and Uncles were in town and family comes first. I promise to have a proper post up in a day or so. Right now, I am going to get a tired Brother, Pooka and Mommy ready for bed.

Oh, and may I just say, the groundhog said what I expected this year. Maybe just maybe he decided to be honest this year after I called him out last year. Either way, get ready for more cold and snow.

Father's day

If there was ever a weekend to not fall behind on, this would be it. Yesterday was our anniversary where I got Cave Johnson. Today is Father's day, and in true Pooka fashion, even Daddy got a plant. When I asked Pooka what to get Daddy for Father's day, she said she wanted to get him "those peppers he likes that we didn't get."

What she meant was cubanelle peppers. You see when we started the garden, I couldn't find cubanelle seeds for the longest time. I looked but I could only find it on the internet, and Daddy and I agreed had that we didn't need anymore internet orders. I felt bad because even though we had all these plants, this was the only one Daddy had asked that we grow at the end of last summer. I offered to buy the plants, but Daddy said we had enough and I left it at that.

Pooka and her mind like a steel trap remembered these peppers. She said she wanted to get him his peppers. Since I lacked any other ideas (or much time), I agreed. So off to the home improvement store we went to get Daddy's peppers. We also needed a pot to put them in. We came home with these. I have them in water because one pot was super dried out and I wanted to minimalize some of the transplant shock (and I didn't want it falling apart when I took the wrapper off.

Rehydrating the peppers

Pooka helped me fill a pot with dirt and then she dug a hole and filled it with milk. Since peppers do suffer from blossom end rot as well, I figured I would try to prevent it now if possible.

Adding milk to the pot

We put both plants in a bit of an oversized pot and let it go. Now to wait and hope this works since there is no room left in the ground. Pooka even asked if she could buy Daddy a clearance butterfly to make it pretty for him. Happy Father's Day to Daddy and all the other Fathers in the world.

Happy Father's Day Daddy.

Transplanting, transplanting.

That is all we have been doing of late. It seems that I am constantly dodging rain drops while I run outside and try to get a couple of plants in the ground or bigger pots. Sometimes I come in not looking too worse for wear, othertimes, I am pretty sure swamp thing would be a relation.

Pooka's new strawberry plant

Pooka has had plenty of time to enjoy digging her holes. She has named and counted every worm, and makes sure they all go back into the holes. And to her credit, she has hung in there, although I know planting 8 plants at a time can be a bit challenging for a 5 year old who would rather find some way to exercise "to get more energy."

Tomatoes and peppers all done

However, through all this, the regular broccoli and the cucumbers have been planted, all the hot peppers and tomatoes are now in homes. The tomatillos and the beans and the peas are settled in. The eggplant, some squash, zucchini and the mystery plant are getting comfy in their new pots.

Mystery plant all settled into a new home

While we still have some things to plant (the sweet peppers, a couple more squash, and about 8 new herbs) we are getting there. That is something to remember when you are dodging raindrops to plant, or when you sit on the ground and hear it go squish. Plus the more I plant now, the less I need to water. Mother Nature is taking care of that.

Squash in a recycling bin

Finally something in the ground

Even with all the insanity of late, we have finally started to get plants in the ground.

First was the tomatoes that were getting too big for their pots. Those went in last week before we even had the beds finished.


Tomatoes

On Monday before we had to leave to deal with family matters, a pot of broccoli fell and the terra cotta pot broke. I grabbed the plant up and got him into the ground.  Not the way you want to plant, but it worked well enough.

Broccoli

But Wednesday Pooka and I finally got a chance to get some real planting done. The weather was nice, the lows were going to be in the 50s, we decided to take a chance. First we started by gathering all the sunflowers in the front yard. It didn't seem like that many when I counted them

Sunflowers all gathered up

Then I had Pooka put the pots where the plants were going to go. There is no rhyme or reason, this was how Pooka wanted to plant them. I did go out and write down on a piece of paper which variety was which so we would know.

Ready for a new home

Next came lots and lots of planting. I don't have pictures since I was getting a tad dirty and moving the rocks to plant was a bit of pain. I will say the rocks have helped with the weeds in this bed. But I am going to be watching it to make sure they stay that way. Once they were all in the ground, this is what they looked like.

Welcome to your new homes Sunflowers

Sadly, the sunflowers due to rocks and weeds took a bit longer then I had expected and we had to leave to do some other things. However, after we were home with Kiddo and Daddy started to make dinner, Pooka and I got the Pak Choi in the ground. They were a tad wilted that day due to the heat, but their new home is in bit shader place which should help. They perked right up after we watered them.

Pak Choi (Bok Choy) that can grow 4 in a square foot

Hopefully this means over the next few days Pooka and I can really get to work getting things in the ground. I know Daddy would like to be able to walk on the deck again, let alone sit down in a chair. Lets all hope the rain holds off until its too late in the evening to do much for the next few days.

PLANTS EVERYWHERE

The plants have finally taken over. Or at least they took over enough that I forgot what was out there.

A couple weeks ago, but gives a good idea what it looked like

These pictures are a couple weeks old, but you can see how the plants are not sorted, and they just landed places, so I had no real idea what had survived to this point.

Part 2

I spent part of Saturday evening outside sorting the plants into catergories. I think Daddy wanted to know what was out there as much as I did. It took a bit but the final tally is.

2 Jalepenos, 5 green peppers, 2 bell peppers

2 cucumber pots, 1 celery for sure, one I think I seeded recently, 6 tomatoes,










1 colored carrot, one orange carrot, 2 potatoes, 2 blueberries, 2 strawberries, 1 green onion, 4 mystery squash 4 Romanesco broccolli

On the table is herbs on the left, 2 pots of scallions, 5 broccoli, 6 pak choi in one chair, 6 green beans in another, and off to the side is 4 Pooka sunflowers and 5 commercial sunflowers.















The front porch contains: 6 Romas, 9 Beefsteaks, 10 rainbow Cherry tomatoes, 3 Better boys,

The seedlings of herbs, 3 velvet sunflowers, and 2 five color peppers, 5 poblanos, 6 sweet peppers and a couple of zuchinni

Now to keep it all alive till it goes in the ground and hope we get a decent harvest. Wish us luck.

Last of the transplants Into pots.

On Wednesday Pooka and I had a super busy day, however, we really needed to finish transplanting some plants. I really just want them out of our house.

First we transplanted the last of the grow ums. This is the carrot seedling that has done really well in the computer room by window.

Carrot

We transplanted it into an old trash can we found in the shed last year. It should give it some good room to grow.

Grow Ms. Carrot. Grow.

We also had some late started pepper seeds. I had re-seeded this fairly late, so I am hoping we have enough time to get something out of it. I still maintain I hate this seed starter type since even here you can see the issues with mold all over everything. I do believe these are the peppers we planted in these spots.

 

Now they are planted into pots. I will be hardening them off as soon as the weather cooperates. It may still be a bit cold out there for them. Stupid cold snaps.

 

 

The groundhog was on the take.

I am really done with this whole winter thing. I woke up to ICE on my car yesterday. I swear it is as if Mother Nature said "Haha, you have every single one of your pots in use and more plants to put in them. I am going to mock you by being 18 degrees when you woke up this morning."

Now, I try not to get upset about things I cannot do anything about, but when you have a 2+ foot tall pea plant growing in the house, as well as 12" tall bean plants. I think I get the right to make one small grump.

26" tall pea plant.

Not to mention the bench that goes under our front room window is now accross the room and has broccoli sitting on it. It is keeping some random toys, Darth Vader and Pooka's magnifying glass company.

Newly transplanted Broccoli sitting on the bench.

I need the weather to warm up at least some. I am not ask for 70 degree days here, (although we did have them this time last year). Nope, I am just asking for 40 degree days where I can put the peas and the beans and the broccoli outside, since they all love those temps. I need my pots back for other plants. I really don't want to have to buy more pots, but I am starting to think I may need to.

I am all out of pots and tables.

I think the groundhog that said spring was coming was on the take. I bet he got paid a nice big salad for lying to us. The little liar.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go buy some pots and a couple more tables... 

Our little seeds are growing up

This week we have been super busy here at the science garden. We have started to seriously transplant the larger plants into 6" pots to "hold them over" until they can go outside. Some I am hoping to get outside sooner rather then later, others well, they will need to wait a bit longer.

Peas, beans and sunflowers..oh my..

As you can see, we have been transplanting alot. This table shows all the sunflowers, Pooka's saved seeds from last year as well as the commercial "mammoth" sunflowers.  The differences between them is another post.  This also has our pea plants as well as some of the green beans. I am hoping in the next week or so it will get warm enough I can start taking some of them outside to get better light.

Snowing on the peas

I tried briefly on Wednesday to put plants outside. I had the newly transplanted sunflowers and the peas outside to get some of the precious sunlight. I had noticed it was clouding over so I pulled the sunflowers in. Not 5 minutes after I had put the sunflowers in the house we got snow, in MID MARCH. At least he peas didn't seem to mind.

Green beans with the seed starters

This is the front room. It is a bit crowded currently with seed starters still floating around and the green beans that are living on that table. We had 8 green beans that were ready for tranplant out of 9. I noticed yesterday it looks like the 9th is starting to sprout as well.

More transplants withs the tomato and pepper seeds

Here is the third table we had to put up this week. We were running out of horizontal surface in front of windows. In front you see the tomato and pepper seeds, but in the pots are the Growum's tomatoes and half of the cilantro starters from Growum's. All seem to have taken to their transplant well, but I do worry they may not be getting enough sun there. Come on warm weather so we can move some things outside.


Flowers

Remember the flower Pooka got from her birthday from her Great Aunt. Well it flowered this week, giving us a very pretty red bloom. Pooka loves that it is red since red is one of her top 2 favorite colors (purple being the other one). I swear its a red, even if the picture makes it more orange looking. It has been nice to have a real spark of spring while we wait for the real spring to come.