Garden Plants Started and Growing

Planted a flat of sweet onions today. 72 cells, 2 to 5 seeds in each (I will thin to two each). My cherry and yellow pear tomatoes are up about three inches and growing nicely.

Cherry and Pear Tomato

 They are in patio containers and I will add about a half inch of soil every two weeks starting this week. When the pot is full, about three adds of soil should do it, I let them grow. Because they will be on their own before the last frost day in our area I will bring them in at night if needed.

I will be planting some more flowers this week, cucumbers and some ornamental gourds next week.

Tomatoes up and growing about 6 in high

The last date of frost in our area (Zone 5 but we are in a bit of a mini-climate where it is warmer than most all of zone 5) is May 15, but I am not convinced this year. I believe we could frost up to the first of June. Last year I had everything pretty much in by the 15th of May, the year before by the first of May.

Plants outside during the day inside at night.
 



Happy Gardening

-N-

My Quest for the First Tomato of the Season

Onion Sets 1 month old

Maybe we have turned the corner. The weather is warming and the frost is out of the ground in my garden. No, not time to plant yet, but I will be putting in some radishes, peas and carrots the first week of April. If they don’t come up I will replant on the 15^th and put in my potatoes. I start getting serious the first week of May. We can still get the little cold snap in May but I will put out onions and plant more peas, radishes and carrots in early May.

I save my tomatoes for later, around the twentieth of May.

3 week old tomato plants

 I do have two pots that I start tomato seeds in and add soil after they get their first true leaves, a little at a time. This way I have no transplant shock. These plants, a cherry and a yellow pear tomato, are on the deck on sunny days now.

I will get my first tomatoes from these in early June. Hope it will drive the gardeners around me crazy when I have fresh tomatoes six weeks before them.

I am now planting more flowers for my boarders, most of the first planting are growing but others I didn't want to start this early.

Hollyhocks at three weeks

 

Is It Spring Yet?

Signs of Spring-

Portable Greenhouse

Moving my garden outside when it acceptable and inside when it is too cool. At this time of the year I bring the trays in at night. If the weather is good with some sunshine I can get the flats out by 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. They get good sun until about 4:00. Everything seems to be growing nicely, but plants are inside today, still waiting for it to hit the magic 50 outside, and some sun would help.

One thing I have found out using these portable greenhouse, watch the heat. If the sun is bright they can heat to 40 degrees more than the outside temperature. I check and open up as needed throughout the day. If I am going to be away I leave them open just to be safe. Check soil moister and don’t give plants a chance to dry out.

When To Start Garden Plants

My scientific method for when to plant may have taken a hit this year. Last year I started my flats in early March, this year late February. Why, because I decided I could plant earlier this year, not sure what brought that on. Right now it looks like I might be later not earlier than usual.  This is my perennial garden at noon today.

 

Does not look like any color will be soon forthcoming. This is what it will look like in 100 days or so.

 

For now I will settle for this 

 and this

 

 

 

    and what is that you ask. Why, that would be my furnace room flat starting area.

 We old gardeners will settle for almost anything when it is cold snowy and blowing outside. Even a left over, from Christmas, Poinsettia setting in the window. 

Flowers in Wyoming- Indoor Seed Starting

My flowers are up and growing nicely in my furnace room hot house. One week in the soil mix and 70 of 72 cells have nice growth. These are most, not all of my colorful annuals and in the flats now are : Pansies, Petunias, Rudbeckia, Coleus, Snapdragons and Corn Poppy. If they get too big, I will repot, but I rarely have had to.

Today I started some hollyhocks and on the first of March, I will start Onions and tomatoes. Speaking of tomatoes I will put three or four cherry tomato seeds in a big patio pot today or tomorrow.

 Below is one of my two flower flats after one week.

 Spring can't be too far away, but just in case the Blue Spruce are showing a little winter color for us to enjoy.

Wyoming Blue Spruce Winter 2014

Wyoming Wind and a Plug Hat

Wyoming Wind and a Plug Hat

Bill Nye, my all-time favorite western humorist, like the rest of us who live in Wyoming often made a few unpleasant comments about the Wyoming wind. February seems to always be the bleak month in the Cowboy state. Cold and wind dominate.

 Nye entitled one of the short stories in his book, Forty Liars and Other Lies, “The Plug Hat in Wyoming,” and you guessed it, the wind is the antagonist.

Here is what he had to say –

“In the first place, the climate of Wyoming is not congenial to the plug hat. You may wear one at 1 o’clock with impunity, if you can dodge the vigilance committee, and at three minutes past1 a little cat’s paw of wind will come sighing down from the Snowy Range, that make the cellars and drive-wells tremble, and the hat looks like a frightened picket fence.”

He also plays with the idea of the hat maybe being too much of a dudes head topper to be worn in the rough and tumble 1870s – 80s Wyoming. “In former years they used to hang a man who wore a plug hat west of the Missouri but after a while they found that it was a more cruel and horrible punishment to let him wear it and chase it over the foothills when the frolicsome breeze caught it up and toyed with it, and landed it against the broad brow of Laramie Peak.

He does mention that the hats can be found as long as you are willing to travel fifteen or twenty miles, “as the crow flies,” to find it.

 

In the end he explains the hat of the day, the western style of hat. “Time may overcome at last the public disfavor, but until the Rocky Mountain wind is lulled to repose, so that a plug hat will not have to be tied on with a wrought iron stair-rod, the soft hat will be the prevailing style of roof.”

Bill Nye lived all too short a life (1850-1896) and unfortunately his very popular newspaper column was only partially saved over the years. Reading him today, more than a hundred years later he is still funny, no wonder he traveled the lecture circuit with Mark Twain. 

 

The photo is my solution to dealing with the nasty February winds.