One of the joys of getting a bit older is having the time to putter around in the garden. Below is my garden blog. This site also contains sections of recipes and features about specific, and often obscure, gardening lore.

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Sometimes the little cheats I do in planting catch up with me. While looking over the plants under our plant lights yesterday, I realized I was way behind in uppotting plants started in communal pots. There are communal pots of celery, snapdragons (2), parsley, impatiens, daisies (2), and milkweed all about ready or way past ready to move to larger quarters. The celery and parsley turned out to be not as far along as I thought, so they didn't get moved. And I forgot to bring the milkweed upstairs for the repotting. It wouldn't have made any difference, as I ran out of potting soil fairly quickly.

Our painted daisies, snapdragons, and impatiens appear to have handled the transplanting well. Some of our Alaska Shasta Daisies were a bit too large for transplanting and may not make it.

I did the transplanting on our back porch, standing off the porch and using it as a table. All but a few impatiens went into deep sixpack inserts. A few impatiens went directly into a cocoa basket hanging planter. It went to the sunny bookshelf in our sunroom, as the cocoa basket had sat outside all winter.

Sorry about the plant rack photo at right. I took it on manual, which is usually just right for photos of stuff under the lights. But the bench holding a flat of plants in front of the plant rack is pretty dark.

You may have noticed the onions in the background of these photos. The onion plants are thriving, but are also ready for their second haircut (trimming). Cutting them back produces sturdier plants and also prevents them from falling over. After a trimming, probably tomorrow, they'll still need one more trimming before getting transplanted into our garden.

Tuesday, March 2, 2021 - Hanging Basket Petunias

I moved some petunias to large hanging basket pots this afternoon. With the temperature outside around 50° F, I chose to do the transplanting on the edge of our back porch. I'd left a new bag of potting soil on the porch through our recent cold spell. While the bag of soil had thawed out, I watered it in the pots with some lukewarm water before transplanting.

I used petunias that I'd started in egg cartons just before Christmas. When they outgrew their egg carton cells, they got moved to fourpack inserts. When I moved them to the hanging basket pots this afternoon, the plants had lots of roots showing at the bottom of their soil ball. It was definitely time to get the petunias into their final homes.

I've happily used the Supercascade and Double Cascade petunia varieties for years for our hanging baskets that line our back porch each summer. They produce an abundance of large single and double blooms, respectively, throughout the summer months. They really don't cascade all that much, but they are pretty.

I moved our most recent planting of egg carton petunias to our kitchen windowsill to make room for the hanging baskets under our plant lights. They'll stay there for a few days before being moved to our sunroom or dining room table. Our plant rack is once again full.

A mistake I've made with our hanging basket petunias is to hang the pots in windy weather. While the petunias usually survive, they get damaged by the strong winds that frequently sweep across the fields west of us. I'm going to be a bit more cautious this year in getting our hanging baskets hung as early as possible.

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Monday, March 1, 2021

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We're starting the month of March with a favorable extended weather forecast. It appears we'll have daily high temperatures for the next week or so slightly to well above average. But March weather is fickle. We often experience snow and even a hard freeze towards the end of the month.

As we begin this month, we've already exceeded capacity under the lights of our plant rack in the basement. Sage, hosta, asparagus, and geraniums have been moved to our sunroom windows. I'll soon begin moving gloxinias out from under the lights to our dining room table by some large bay windows. Hanging basket plants will also go there on days and nights too cold for them to be outside.

Some relief from the overcrowding will come about mid-month when I set up our cold frame. Cold hardy transplants such as onions and brassicas are usually the first out under the cold frame.

Counting back on the calendar from May 1, we're six to eight weeks away from when we hope to transplant our first tomato and pepper plants into our raised garden beds. Our frost free date for this area isn't until April 14. We transplanted tomatoes last spring on May 1, only to have them stunted by a late cold snap followed by a dry spell. I may be a bit more cautious about when I start and put out our tomato plants this year. Having the earliest tomatoes hasn't been a goal of mine. I'd much rather have lots of healthy, productive tomato plants later in the season.

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