Spring is Back!

Spring is finally back on track! Hurrah!

I checked the cloches this morning to find lettuce and spinach seedlings showing their heads. What a surprise considering the cloches were completely covered in snow only yesterday. I guess they really work.




Here's a picture of the baby lettuce through the plastic:

I'm very excited!

Even More Snow

You can't see it from the picture, but the tiny spinach shoots inside the cloche look OK. Still, when, oh when is spring going to arrive?

SNOW

This is very disappointing!!!! I want spring.

Spinach & Peas

It's now technically 5 weeks before the last frost date, so time to plant spinach and peas.

I did my spinach in a small self-watering planter and put it outside. I also planted spinach about a week ago under a cloche in my raised bed, so it will be interesting to compare the two to see if the cloche is worth it.



I planted peas in my raised bed against the fence. I planted Mammoth Melting Sugar Pea (a heirloom variety) in 2/3rds of the double row and leftover shelling peas from last year in the rest of the row.

The Great Tomato Rescue

Back in February I got really excited about gardening and started a bunch of seeds WAY too early. Most of the seedlings had to go, but I kept 8 heirloom tomato plants by transplanting them into my home-made pop bottle planters. By the end of March they were enormous and I had to decide whether to give them up or transplant them into the containers that I'll eventually put out into the garden.

Here are two of the plants before the Rescue. They're each about 16" tall.

When I transplanted these into their final self-watering containers, I used a tip that I learned at a container gardening seminar and I soaked the root ball in water before replanting it.

On a friend's expert advice, I also took off the leaves from the bottom half of the main stalk so that I could transplant the plants deeper in their new pots then they were in their old pots.

Apparently, the part of the main stalk that is buried will grow roots and these plants will be really well established by the time I'm ready to start the dreaded "hardening-off" process.

Here's what the plants look like after the Rescue:


I'll keep posting about how well these do.