more seeds

Did a lot of weeding today - about 75% done but it took a while as those weeds were lush and plenty!

Have also seeded new sunflowers into the beds, and made over one for an early sweet yellow corn - so if these turn out yellow with patchy white (due to proximity to the original sowing), it should still taste sweet!

Also watered the lettuces and sprouts but left the tomatoes and potatoes alone as they are doing fine - more flowers on the tomatoes. A few of the hot peppers have flower buds too!

at long last!

Yes, here are Purple Haze sprouts - purple imperator carrots - real purple carrots!



And, I believe this is a dwarf sunflower sprout. The giant sunflower beds were "scrubbed" as it has been a month since the seeding - checked this morning and still no seedlings.


Here are pictures of how some of the other veggies are doing... these are squash sprouts;



Cilantro or coriander have finally made their appearance;

The fingerling potatoes are larger;

And the heritage tomatoes are starting to flower!

After the rain...

Lots of little green shoots coming up after wednesday's all day rain (on and off) - some are likely the veggies, mixed in among the weeds! There'll be lots of weeding to do when the rain stops.
Here's a look at the yard long beans sprouting.

Tagged!

Most of the beds got tagged this morning - here's what the patch looked like - an experimental agri station (got to avoid that "p-l-o-t" word...we've all been very good in avoidance).

Ran out of tags for the lettuces and some other ones - guess we can recall the factory worker of 1 to make some more as we do have surplus wire hangers.

Seeded some more lettuce, radish and beets, and more celeriac -realized we have a humongous bed - have left about half of that for Elzy's celeriac starts...

The plan will need to be updated again.

More seeding

Was at the patch bright and early this morning! Yesterday evening, we (Kat, Roiboos, and I) passed by to check on the transplanted Spinach and Lettuce - here they are, still doing ok...

This morning, decided to dig up the weeds and then proceeded to seed the dwarf sunflowers, fennel, squash, zucchini and melon. Oh, and the watermelon radish. It's going to be very warm this week but weather forecast calling for rain next week (timely).

We should be putting the potatoes, tomatoes into the ground in next day or 2....

A weed by any other name...

Those green thingummies pushing up through the soil...

Here are the transplanted spinach - they look to be doing quite well!

But the same can't be said for the lettuce?

And these - wait, aren't they weeds, nice and healthy - we can always pretend they are a vegetable!

sprouting?

Went by the patch this morning (the rain was coming down gently - perfect!). Ah, the smell of freshly turned soil...

There were little green pushing up through the soil in the beds - not referring to the transplants of yesterday - yes, the weeds are coming up faster than the seeds!

We may have our first weeding party this weekend -

This coming Sunday looks like cool, around 10 which likely means frost overnight. But, it can change... Maybe we can seed the rest of the veggies on Monday? - zucchini, squash?

Seeding

Here we go again - just can't stop 'seeding' (I have an image of Johnny Appleseed aka me walking up and down the paths sowing the beds...nothing like that of course) - decided to get the beans, cucumbers started so spent about 1.5 hrs this morning sewing (oops, sowing) them. And the corn too on the north side for windbreak. It had better rain overnight into thursday.

Then went back to the patch again about 2 pm (after the 'doggies' emergency - they got out of the backyard because gramps left the side gate open...) to transplant the Spinach and "frisee" lettuce into the beds. Elzy had decided that we should experiment - if they make it past this sunday's potential frost for surburbia... It went pretty fast and we were done in about 30 minutes!

Then we watered them - am counting on that rain happening! My voicebox got quite a workout yelling at those truck drivers to slow down - it was quite windy and so dust was blowing from that long dirt driveway...in fact, there was a fine dusting of dirt on our vehicles. Went home and showered (after mowing the "chicabbit" yard...with help from Elzy in starting the mower - the height thing, plus and my bum shoulder).

So that's it on planting until friday. In the meantime, I have started on the tags - will do a "show and tell" when they are done :)

Seeding

So being eager to get going (fabulous weather for most of the week, with rain forecast for thurs - excellent!), I returned to the patch monday morning (yes, next day May 11) and finished outlining the 2 beds left, then seeded the sunflowers - Ring of Fire and Velvet Queen (a dark red) for windbreak on the west side.

Then, back to the computer to revise the plan (which had expanded to a 36x68 ft area on account of those tomatoes and oh yes, hot peppers). Basically worked on it ALL day (and into wee hours of night) trying to take into consideration things like multiple seeding, height, etc.

Tuesday morning, woke up cranky from lack of sleep - back to the patch for about 2.5 hours in afternoon in a rush to get those seeds that can go into the beds when the soil is workable (aha, no need to worry about frost) - our party of 3 got together and raked the beds, divided them up, and then got going. Yep, got all those plants seeded (there were like 49 plant types for the whole patch; we likely got 2/3 in).

we have lettuce galore (no, not a varietal but many varietals!)... someone likes their greens.

Hmm...we decided we would seed in their final spots instead of following the package info (less work we think as will not be doing mega thinning - we hope).

Alright, I don't think we want to risk starting the rest of the seeds (that are not frost resistant) until the last week of May (note to self to check long range forecast for next 10 days). Our precious tomato and pepper seedlings will wait until June - or not - that's up for debate among the group.

Rain, rain - tonight we hope - but thursday for sure (fingers crossed)... now if it can be arranged for it to rain every 3rd night - a gentle, long period.

Ok, next on the list - tags for the beds - but that's another day. That's it for today.