Garden Notes - April 2, 2014

 

 I have a cold frame!!  And it came just in time, too!

A shingle was blown off of our roof this past week, so a friend of ours, Russ, came over to fix it.  Russ is also an avid gardener and grows his veggies from seed.  Actually, he is far more experienced than I am, and I can learn a thing or two from him.

I was at the WMMGA Garden Symposium when Russ came over, and Michael showed Russ all the plants I have growing in the basement.  So, when I got home, I asked Russ for his professional opinion about my plants and he said, "They look good,except your lettuce is getting big. You should put them in a cold frame."

Well, I've been wanting a cold frame and just haven't gotten around to getting one.  Lo and behold, Russ had one to give me!  Twenty bucks!!  And he delivered it on Monday morning, two days later!

The weather is finally warming up a bit.  There were about a dozen robins on my front lawn on Monday, and I see the garlic coming out of the ground. I started bringing my lettuce, kale, spinach and cabbage plants outside on April 1st - yesterday.  Today was about 60 degrees outside, and I put the plants in the cold frame until about 7:00 tonight. Tomorrow I'll leave them out even longer.

I planted my tomato seeds on March 31st and I also got about a dozen-plus dahlia tubers started.  Everything is looking good, except I did lose 2 ageratum plants to "damping off".  My fault.  I watered the soil heavily when I transplanted them.  I was also a little nervous about a cabbage plant because it was flopping over and the stem looked like it was getting thin. However, the leaves look healthy.  I think some of the plants are just getting "leggy".  The lettuce is definitely "leggy".

As for seeds, I'm still waiting on the cleome.  The seeds take anywhere from 14 to 21 days to germinate.  I'm on day 14.  The lavender is also taking a long time, and the spinach didn't do too well.  I only got 2 spinach seedlings from the seed I planted.  I accidentally mixed the spinach seedlings with the pepper seedlings and couldn't figure out why one "pepper" plant had such long rabbit ears! (picture 6)

Time is flying!  I still need to get out and prune my apple trees and other fruit trees, as well as two blueberry bushes.  All the other blueberry bushes are still too young/small.  I also need to get my asparagus crowns in the ground.