I haven't posted in a while, but that doesn't meant I haven't been busy. Here's a quick catch-up on the last couple of weeks.
THE GOOD- Laid straw bales to cover the cardboard in the walking paths.
- The girls have planted carrot and lettuce seed in their gardens, and the younger transplanted three of the broccoli seedlings that she planted in peat pellets into her garden. (Lettuce is only in the older child's garden. She loves caesar salads so she asked to plant some romaine.)
- A few lettuce seedlings have emerged in the older child's garden.
- On 2/5, I planted lettuce, carrots, spinach, and onions in the ground in the main garden. No germination yet.
- 63 of my 72 viola planted in a jiffy tray have germinated and are doing well. We had a particularly warm spell right at germination time for them, so they sprouted outside on the back deck in full sunlight and seem quite acclimated to it. I've been leaving them in the sun all day most days, so i'd imagine they're hardened pretty well.
- In addition to the three broccoli transplants in the kiddie garden,I moved five to my garden on 2/11 and didn't cover them on the couple of nights we've had below freezing, and they appear to be thriving.
- We've got a week-ish of rain in the forecast nearly every day coming up, and the current extended forecast is calling for only one night between now and March 1st with temperatures below 35. I'm going to check what else might be ready for transplanting and move more cool-season seedlings to the main garden this morning once we have daylight.
THE BAD- My germination percentages on cabbage, spinach, and one of my kale varieties has been poor. I'm thinking I didn't water them enough in their peat pellets. The violas were watered much more and did so much better. I did a huge planted yesterday (2 x 72-cell peat pellet trays) and watered to the same level that I did with the violas and covered. We'll see if that improves things.
- The spinach that did germinate got too hot in the greenhouse one day this week, it appears. I was stuck on a 3-hour call with a client watching the greenhouse temperature rise into the upper 80s on a day that was expected to be cloudy, but we ended up having direct sun. Nothing else seems to have been heavily impacted, but the spinach is still lying down on the soil after 2-3 days. (I guess the good news is that it's still green, so maybe it's still alive and could recover?)
- Keeping the germination media moist has been taking up too much of my time when using peat pots. So yesterday I put them in trays without holes and filled the bottoms with around a half inch of water. Here's hoping that'll reduce my watering needs.
THE UGLY- The kale that was doing so well is now almost all dead from a bad move I made. We had a morning where it was around 20 degrees. Given that the kale had been outside in temperatures as low as 35, I thought I'd give it a little exposure to super-cold temps so I could feel comfortable putting it in the ground. Oops. Only 40 minutes in 20-degree weather killed nearly every one of them. I had 15 seedlings almost ready for transplant. Only three seem to have survived. They're in the main garden and seem to be recovering well. One looks like it's starting to thrive.
EXTENSION SERVICE CLASS TAKEN
I attended the "Totally Tomatoes" class offered here on Sunday. Extremely informative and helpful, especially with regard to specific varieties that thrive here. I'm picking up some Celebrity seeds ASAP.
CURRENT STATUS
The spreadsheet I'm using to track planting dates, germination, etc. has entries for "estimated germination begin" and "estimated germination end" based on the planting date and the "7-14 days" or whatever the specific plant says. I have a total of 275 plants--plus some that I didn't count numbers such as the carrot seed scattered in my garden--with estimated germination end days between 2/15 and 3/1. In other words, the next two weeks will either be a ton of fun or a massive disappointment!