Uh-oh tomatoes

I planted my tomato seeds in the basement about two weeks ago, maybe a few days more than two weeks. I was a week late planting them, but figured with the propagation mat and grow lights they would catch up. So far, of the 25 or so seeds that I planted, only four have germinated. Oops. And they're tiny. And none of the pepper plants have germinated. Nor the asparagus. I will be very sad (not to mention discouraged) if I have to abandon my Mountain Princess and Green Zebra tomatoes, among others. If they don't get growing soon, I'll go buy some two foot tall plants from a nursery so that I can have tomatoes by August. But they won't be as good...they won't be old, hard to get varieties. Scott says my seedlings will be good for next summer. Hmm...I wonder if I can keep them growing in the basement for a whole year?

Germination has begun!

Tiny leaves of spinach, lettuce, and snap peas are all beginning to come up. In addition, Scott planted a few more strawberry plants to fill out the row and I put two rosemary plants in a tiny empty spot near the tomatoes. I think we lost a few of our old strawberry plants when I was savagely turning the soil this year. I worked the soil in early March, adding a bit of sand (to help break up and drain our heavy clay soil) along with some peat moss and dairy cow manure. The manure came from the farm where we keep our cow (yes, we have a cow share so that we can drink raw milk). Next time we go collect manure, we'll be sure to take stronger bags. Ours were wimpy, wimpy, wimpy and broke when we filled them more than a third full with the heavy, dense manure. Scott was having some issues at work that day, despite the fact that it was a Saturday, and so he ended up on the phone most of the time while I shoveled manure. Ahh, the delights of making his way up to management!

Here are some photos of what's going on in our garden today:

Lettuce. There are three seeds coming up there -- can you see them all? Tiny, I know.

The strawberry patch. Or, in this case, the strawberry row. Last year we had lots of half strawberries. Most of them had big bites out of them from birds. This year I'll cover them with netting when they begin to fruit. Or leave the dog in the sideyard. Or maybe both.

The rosemary I bought today at Whole Foods. I wish it could be grown as a perennial here, but it usually freezes and dies by October.

These are actually Brynn's snap peas that she planted back in late February or early March when we were just starting the process of amending the soil. They're finally starting to come up...although only two out of about ten seeds have germinated. I planted more so she won't be disappointed with a meager harvest. Although, we usually don't get a chance to harvest snap peas. The girls eat them all off the vines before I can get the peas inside!

As a bonus, here are two photos of my Rose Tree of China. It is one of my favorite plants in the sideyard. It's on the perennials/non-veggie side of the yard (although I'll probably be planting tomatoes around it a month from now). I bought it from Lowes as a bare root plant in the spring of 2006. I've not had good luck with bareroot trees or shrubs, but this one seems to be proving to be an exception. If it were outside the fence, I'm sure it would be pilfered by the deer. Inside the fence, safe and irrigated, it seems to be happy. Here's one photo of the shrub itself and one close up. The flowers should open up in the next few days, so I'll take a photo of it then so you can see it in all its glory. I'm glad it blooms early...it gives me confidence that summer will come, eventually!

Once in a lifetime?

I did something today that I hope not to ever do again. On a day when my kid had a two hour delayed start at school (because of the eight or so inches of snow we got yesterday and this morning), I planted parsnips outside in my garden. How many people plant veggie seeds outside on days when the school district has a snow delay? Is this normal? It doesn't really seem normal. Welcome to Colorado gardening. Not to mention the fact that I'm not sure I know anyone else who even eats parsnips. Somehow, parsnips have been a welcomed addition to my family's veggie assortment. For those who are not familiar with parsnips, they resemble carrots in size and shape, although they're a bit wider at the top. And they're white or off white. And they have a different flavor. They're great cut up and roasted with carrots, whole garlic cloves, brussel sprouts, olive oil and lots of salt and pepper. My kids avoid the sprouts but eat the rest.

So, after today's planting, here's what I've got in the ground:

Heirloom salad blend
White Lisbon bunching onion
Red burgundy onion
Certified organic monnopa spinach
Ruby lettuce
Hollow crown parsnip
Certified organic Amish snap pea
Strawberries (they're a perennial so I didn't have to re-plant them this year)

According to the seed packets, all but the Ruby lettuce could have gone in the ground a week and a half ago. A week and a half ago I was still concentrating on skiing, so I didn't have the yard ready for planting. Tomorrow I'm planning to get the carrot seeds in the ground and then I think I'm free until May 24th when I can put in the pumpkins, melon, fennel, cucumbers, and zucchini. It's going to be difficult for me not to start those earlier out of pure excitement about summer. But I think they're all supposed to go in after the last frost which is typically around May 15th...or so they say. I do remember camping in snow one Memorial Day. Hopefully not this year!

Prepping and planting

Yesterday and today were both beautiful, warm, cloudless days. In anticipation of the coming snow (supposed to be here tomorrow afternoon), I spent a few hours in the garden re-designing my drip system. For the past two years, I've been unhappy with the drip system. We use a true drip system, not micro-spray sprinklers, but I think the micro-sprays would be much easier. My sprinkler guy, though, says that micro-sprays waste water and are easily damaged by our mid-summer hail because they stick up so high above the ground and they're so skinny and fragile. So, I added several more driplines to my garden this week in hopes of covering all of the dry ground. If I knew how to do it, I probably would have installed micro-sprays; they just seem so much easier. There would be fewer lines to pull up every year when I dig in more compost, and I think they'd help seed germination, too. Once the veggies get started, the old drip system seemed to work fine. The problem was in keeping the top layer of soil moist in order to germinate the seeds. Hopefully the added drip lines will take care of that problem. After adding the new lines, I tested the system today and it seemed to do a good job. That's when I got to planting.

Yes, we're expecting snow tomorrow but, never the less, I planted quite a few seeds today. We now have green onions, salad greens, spinach, red onions, and snap peas in the ground. Brynn actually planted her own snap peas, carrots, and snow peas about a month ago, and a few of them actually germinated this week. She didn't seem very excited about the little green leaves popping above the ground -- I thought she'd be thrilled, but when I pointed them out, she just looked at them and then walked away. Distracted, I think.

I've also got some seeds started in the basement. Last year I started all of my indoor seeds in February but the basement was too cold and there wasn't enough light, so nothing got as big as I would have liked. This year I started them much later but I'm using seed propagation mats to keep them warm. It's supposed to double or triple the growth rate. I've also got some growth lights that I bought to install above the seedlings, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully this weekend. Better late than never, I suppose. In the basement we've got five varieties of tomatoes, two varieties of bell peppers, asparagus, basil, and our cole crops: broccoli, bok choy, and brussel sprouts. I still haven't figured out where I'm going to put our asparagus patch. It takes three years of growth before you can harvest any spears, so I need to put it somewhere out of the way, but away from the deer, too. Not easy to find a site like that in our yard.

I started more tomatoes and peppers than I'll need. I'm hoping they'll grow fast enough to be given away as teacher gifts at the end of the year.

Now, in case you're not bored enough by all of my talking, here are some labeled photos so you can see where everything will be planted. I'm counting on harvesting the cole crops early enough in the season to plant some mid-late summer crops in their place. If that doesn't work, I'll plant more cole crops for fall harvest.

My veggie journal

For the first time this February, I decided to keep a veggie journal. I was inspired by Barbara Kingsolver in her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It had never occurred to me before to keep track of how I amended the soil, what I planted, and when and where I planted it until she talked about her journal in her book. She can go back through the years and see the precise date when her asparagus came up every spring, or when she had to bring in all of her unripened tomatoes before the first big freeze. Genius. Okay, not genius, but common sense, I suppose. Since I'm just a novice gardener, I apparently didn't acquire the necessary amount of common sense until this year. I started my journal with a list of the seeds I bought (all heirloom, thank you very much) and a sketch of where I'd plant them all in my little garden. Today as I was sticking seeds into the soil, I realized that I should journal here in blog form instead of in a private pen-and-paper journal. I'm sure most of you know more about gardening than I do, so maybe you can leave comments to help me get the most out of my little chunk of land. Or, maybe something I'm doing will inspire you in your garden. Or inspire you to have a garden. Or inspire you to come over and eat from my garden!

So, here we go. Off and digging.