Green, Green, Everywhere is Green!

It's always amazing this time of year.  Days of warmth and sunshine, and timely doses of rain, and everything seems to be growing almost in front of one's eyes.  Unfortunately that also includes the   grass, but....that's a small price to pay for all the flowers and veggies which are popping up, growing by leaps and bounds.

Garden Update:

The lemon cucumber seeds I planted to replace the plants I killed are starting to pop up.  I have Brown Russians started indoors, and I'll transfer them outside this week.

Purple Belle and Grand bell peppers

I planted the bell peppers with a little protection.  I'll get the habeneros and jalapenos planted later this week.  I'm also going to plant some radishes in and around the pepper plants. They have a fast timeline to harvest, so they'll be ready to pick before the pepper plants get too big.

Tomato Plants

I planted a couple cherry tomato plants, and started some Pink Brandywine heirloom tomatoes.  I think I'm going to build a separate support for the Brandywines, probably something like this.  The question is, where do I set it up?  I think for this year I'll use the smaller 4'X4' bed.    But in the long run, and based on what I learn this year, I think I'll be resetting my entire garden set up.  To that end, I was reading Kevin's amazing blog this morning, especially his post about his garden set-up.  I don't know if I need something that extensive, but....I'm already starting to feel I want more space, especially for more lettuce!

Kale, lettuce, onions

Cauliflower and beet sprouts

The kale and lettuce are coming along nicely, and the onions, beets, and carrots have sprouted.    I need to think out the beets in another week or so -- the baby beet leaves will make a nice addition to salads.















My winter buttercrunch is coming along nicely, too!  Not too long before I can start harvesting some of the leaves.



I think I have some volunteer marigolds coming up.  I need to let them grow some more so I can be sure that's what they are, and then I'll move them to where I want them. I also need to get the nasturtiums and zinnias going.
















Here are my summer squash.  New leaves are coming, and they seem to be happy in their plastic tubes.

How much longer till I can pick lettuce?

Winter Buttercrunch Lettuce

Lettuce is coming along just fine.  I'm hoping in just a couple more weeks I can start picking some!


Everything else is coming along reasonably well.  This kale, and if you look closely, you can see that the onions have sprouted.

This is Red Romain and onions. 

More kale.

I planted the squash today.  I put some open-topped plastic jugs around them for some wind protection until they complete harden off.

I also brought out the tomato seedlings to harden off.  I want to get them planted next week.

And here are the winter sowing jugs.  Some sprouted, and some didn't.  I'm keeping track of which ones didn't sprout, and I'll adjust accordingly next year.

The poor cucumbers did indeed not survive, so I replanted seeds.  I had lemon cucumber seeds on hand.  I ordered some more Brown Russian cucumber seeds from Cook's Garden, and I'll get those planted this week.

I also ordered TunLCovers.   I'm very disappointed with the hoops and fabric arrangement I was trying to use.  Everything just pulls out of the soil, in part because the soil in my raised beds is so friable. I even tried Earth Staples, but.....nothing held them in.  We'll see if the TunLCovers work any better.