celeries

Little Celery plants are spreading roots all over the bottom of their trays,

so I've set them out

and tucked into the garden, in that damp spot.

I hope they keep growing!

thyme

The Thyme plants still look so small, but they aren't growing any more and roots are coming out the bottom, so I took them out of their tray

and set into the garden today, between the cauliflower and broccoli rows. Among the larger plants they look even teenier.

carrots

The little Carrots were growing in clumps, from how I scattered the seed, and because there were some big gaps where I pulled out deep clover roots. A few days ago I dug up a few young carrot plants and shifted them to other spots, to space them out evenly. I know carrots don't like their roots disturbed (that's why they're better directly sown than started indoors) so I just did a handful to see how it worked out. Most of them survived, were lifting up their leaves again by morning.

So yesterday I finished the job, on the entire patch. It helped that the day before was very rainy, so the plants were well-hydrated and the soil clumpy. To loosen each plant without pulling out its neighbor (some growing very close, side by side) I thrust vertically into the ground all around the seedling a retired butter knife (serves many useful purposes in gardening!) and then gently wedged it out. Tucked them into their new places a little deeper than they'd been growing. Gave them a huge amount of water, so it was puddling all over before soaking in. This morning when I went out to look, most of them had recovered just fine.

Next year I've got to figure out a way to sow them evenly, instead of going to all this trouble. Making seed strips didn't work for me. And the seeds are way too fine to see where they lie when I sprinkle them onto the soil. I've never marked out rows with stakes and string, preferring to just eyeball a straight line, or make a groove in the soil with a trowel. But maybe that would work better.

more hosta!

So last year I planted four Hosta in the front beds, one on each corner. I thought only two had come up this spring but wasn't too sad, just happy a few were still alive. But after last night's rain I toured the garden to admire how straight and tall all the plants stand, their leaves washed clean and jeweled with water droplets. And found these two final Hosta, one hidden in a clump of weedy stems (which I yanked out)

and the other obscured behind some fading tulips.

So they are all still here! I think hosta will become the stalwart plant of my front yard, if I can afford to put more in. They come up right behind the tulips, and if I can get them through the summer will keep foliage in the beds all through fall.

mousie

Today I found something small and cute hidden in a wedge between a brick and wooden plank that make up the side of my coldframe on the proch. It was a little cold mouse of some kind. Fur matted wet, stiff in his crouched position. I felt pretty sure he hid from my cat and then died of the cold- poor thing!

The cat showed up while I was looking at the mouse, and because I didn't want to pick it up, I flipped it toward Irwin with a stick. He sniffed it, pawed it, picked it up in his mouth a few times, and then ate the entire thing. Not even a tail left! Now I know why I don't get presents of rodents on my doorstep- they just get consumed. (I wouldn't have given him the mouse had it still been alive).

sick?

I think I've done harm to my largest avocado. I went to change the water, dumped the whole thing out and refilled fresh. But either I bumped the taproot in the process, or it sat too long between water changes, because half the root has become brown, and it looks like mold is growing. Dismay. The stem doesn't seem to have grown any since, either. I feel bad to have this one fail, as it grew so well from the start. But if it does, there's four more steadily coming along, and I'll know better how to treat them...

Funny, there are little bumps all along the taproot, which I thought at first would become more roots. But they did nothing, more roots have grown out of the base instead. Is it sick? or are those bumps not supposed to become roots?

collapse

My sunflower seedlings are all falling over. Damping off? I figure if they all fail, I'll just wait for warm weather and direct seed into the ground. Less trouble, and they grow quickly enough anyway.

digging

Yesterday turned over my compost pile, and today spent half the morning digging up some parts of the garden still waiting to be planted with tomatoes, cucurbits and beans.

 Those volunteer Lettuces we ate the other day were kind of bitter, probably because I hadn't bothered to water that patch, so I just turned them all on their heads, into the soil.

I know I've said this before, but this time I really felt like I'd made the best compost yet! It was dark and crumbly, the shovel dug in easy. Just warm on the inside, and had a sweetish smell (um, kind of like a horse stable). After shoveling dry stuff off the top and sides, to dump back into the bin, it was almost like cutting into a compost cake

I filled five buckets to add to the soil where I'm going to plant in a few weeks, and top-dressed other parts of the garden. Gave some to the Hosta and Cauliflower plants

the Rhubarb

and Garlics.

I feel like I've got my composting system down to something relatively easy, with good results now. I know a lot of people get scientific about their composting, measuring what goes in, taking temperature of the pile, adding things to boost it, etc. I don't do any of that. Here's how it works:

In the mudroom I have a five-gallon bucket or two, and a bag of last year's leaves. (All the leaves that fell in our yard are in the shed waiting to be used). All kitchen scraps (except meats or dairy products) go into the bucket, between layers of dry leaves, which keeps the smell down. I only smell it when I open the bucket, and it's not that bad. (A great side is that the kitchen trash bin rarely gets stinky). When the bucket is full, start a second one. When the second one is full, dump the first one into the pile outside, scrub it out with bleach (or mold grows on the sides, ugh) and start again.

I turn the pile once or twice a week. Every time I add weeds, expired vegetables or other yard waste, more leaves from the shed get stirred in as well. Fresh grass clippings are great for heating up the pile, but I also like to use them to mulch the tomatoes and strawberries, so the green stuff in my pile is mostly from weeds. Sick plants get trashed, not composted- also I try to avoid throwing tap roots from weeds like plantain or dandelion, and especially no weeds that have set seed, onto the pile. I learned from my mistake that dandelions which have done flowering and are folded inconspicuosly like this

will finish changing and make white poufs of seed all over the compost, even after being picked.

Anyhow, I keep the weed seeds, roots and germs out because I don't cook my pile hot enough to kill them all. The nice thing about the bucket system indoors is I don't have to go out to the pile every day to empty kitchen scraps, and I can compost straight through winter with two or three buckets going.

volunteers

I've dug up some of the volunteer Tomatoes from the beet and carrot patches (where heirlooms grew last year)

selected the largest ones

and set them into this year's tomato plot. I figure they're either from seeds planted last year that didn't germinate until now, or from tomatoes that fell off the plant and spoilt a bit before I cleaned them up. Either way, they're already bigger than my new seedlings in the coldframe.

If they survive, I'll plant the largest new-seedlings alongside them. If not, they're already replaced. But I remember last year, the volunteer tomatoes I saved tasted just as good as the other ones.

Growing among the young carrots is this hearty Sunflower. Dug that one up and moved it to the corner of the garden, where it has room to get taller.

Moved the one surviving overwintered Swiss Chard plant (also the biggest so far)

from its spot in the raised bed

to sit among the newer chards, all in a row.

new leaf

I was a bit concerned about the dieffenbachia last week, because some of the lower leaves were yellowing. Perhaps I'd done too much, splitting it into new pots?

But now there are a few new leaves growing out at the base of two plants, so I feel sure they're okay, maybe even happier!

rhubarb

I'm continually amazed at how fast the rhubarb is growing. Every day the leaves get bigger, and new crumpled ones start to unfold in the center of the plants. I've had to put out slug beer in a few areas of the garden, mostly in the rhubarb patch. So far got six mid-sized slugs. It seems to be working well, the two more eaten plants are showing less new holes every morning, and this one in the middle has no damage at all so far.

sunflor

Sunflower seedlings are coming up in the trays! Only took 5 days, on top of the fridge. As they like it warm and it's a cool day (no heat in the house any more) I've put them outside under cover, using that plastic sheet-package once more.

pink

The pink azalea out front had a few taller branches outgrowing the shape of the bush, and starting to block the window. I know the best time to prune is right after the flowers are done, but I wanted some for vases in the house, so I cut them today anyways.

broccoli

I've dug up and moved those broccolis that were growing from last year's stumps, into the patch with the new plants. Mostly to get them out of the way, and see what they'll grow into.

cilantro shift

The cilantro in the windowsill is about done.

Oldest pot was starting to grow tall, so I cut it all down short, and we've eaten it up. The other two might grow a bit more, but I'm not concerned about keeping them well-shaped or reseeding the pots because cilantro seedlings are beginning to come up in the garden!

greens

Even though lots of stuff is growing now, the only thing we're eating from the garden yet is lettuce. Two or three times a week now a salad of thinnings, with a few leaves cut off the outside of larger plants added in.

The plots of romaine, bibb and simpson look beautifully bright with green color.

On the other side of the garden, volunteers and a few wintered-over lettuces grow where I'm planning to put tomatoes this year. I haven't watered them at all, so the ground is pretty dry but the plants are alive nonetheless.

This salad I made yesterday was entirely of lettuces from that volunteer patch, with some chopped store tomatoes and carrot on top. Trying to eat out that patch so can turn the soil over to prepare for tomatoes to go in soon.

apple leaves

One of Isa's apple seedlings survived, and has been moved outside onto the patio where it can get more sun in company with the young pepper plants and silly clover bonsai. It is getting nice and leafy. Isa is convinced she'll have apples from it eventually.

bonsai

My little geranium bonsai before

and after their trim.

The smallest one, its stem is just starting to thicken. The medium one I'm not happy with at all- it's the branch I removed from the original plant and the shape is odd. I cut all the large leaves off to look at it more clearly, but now decided I'm either going to just toss it, or let it grow natural into the shape a miniature geranium would take on its own, without any more pruning.

tulips

All the tulips are fading now. Isa convinced me to let her pick one and put it in a vase inside (and I remembered my mom's trick of putting a penny in the water, which for some reason keeps the stem straight). Just before the petals started to drop off I took some pictures.

The inside of the flower looks even more interesting than its outside.

onions...

The last of the potted onions died. I still have the one rooted in water, it just keeps getting taller every time I snip off greens.

When I upended the pot to clean it out, found the stem entirely rotted away from the roots, even though I thought I'd been careful about keeping it dry between waterings. Well, now I know I can't keep onion greens going in a pot of dirt, but they do fine for me just set over water!