SO!
Last fall because of an early frost and my frustration with losing just about everything in my wonderful outdoor garden I completely forgot about my carrots!! I never harvested them and they are still alive out there!!! And, THEY LOOK GREAT!
I am curious to see how they taste but they look awesome.
I will post pictures in a future post. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!
~Sara
So after a fun talk with one of my good friends I have a new plan for the “greenhouse.”
My vegetable garden is up against my garage and has a Victorian fence around it. So my new plan is to put up plastic awning and curtains that can be rolled back, or rolled down! Picture an awning rolled up in back about 7=8 feet up the garage. When I take it down it will form a lean-to looking slanted green house roof and drape over the fence for support and secure on the out side of the Victorian fencing on the ground with a tent type opening in the middle!
I will use shepherds hooks to have flowers starting and to help support the plastic in the middle. The soil here has been workable for a few months but it gets so cold at night that you can only put certain things in the ground. But with plastic I can start my garden right *in* my garden months earlier and I can extend my growing season by at least a few months in the fall as well!!!!!! We have warm weather until about November but the nights get very cold starting in September.
Last September we had a very early frost and I almost completely lost my fall harvest. No one knew it was coming so there was no opportunity to cover the garden with sheets that night. But we had fabulous weather all through October. But I was so sad because my garden was done. 🙁 This will prevent that entirely!
I will post before and after and also post pics as I build my “greenhouse” as well.
Thanks for stopping by!
I got the majority of my outdoor weeding done yesterday!
The vegetable garden was full of thistles and other odd looking plants I didn’t want in there. I also found a whole patch of volunteer tomatoes! They will need thinning so now I have a serious amount of tomato plants! The two strawberry plants are very happy and already have several large flowers. The radishes are doing great and the peas are as well. The onions are just up and about 2 inches above the ground now.
I didn’t do anything to my “knock-out” roses over the winter to protect them and they did just great. I even have a few buds already! I had to prune them back in to shape, but they are a lot larger this year. Roses are very hardy. I recommend them to anyone looking for an easy to care for perennial.
I also have babies breath, mallow root, and pink yarrow perennials in the vegetable garden. I will try to get some pictures up later on!
In the flower bed there were also thistles, and I have discovered that chives are thriving through out the entire garden out there!!! I need to put a can around the root ball and make sure I pick the tops before they seed so they don’t spread further. If that doesn’t work I will need to get rid of it. Nothing like a flower bed that smells strongly of chives!
Stay tuned for my green house plans as they have changed dramatically!
Thanks for stopping by!
So, I have discovered that tomatoes need a lot of light. Mature plants need more light especially if they are going to flower/fruit soon. So I am increasing the light on my mature plants to 18-20 hours per day. That should get them to flower/fruit. 🙂
The seeds and seedlings that I have started for outdoor transplanting will still have 12-16 hours of light until they are larger.
I am also going to fertilize the mature tomatoes for 2 weeks when I water them. That should give them enough nutrients to flower.
I will keep you up dated on their progress!.
I planted my onions, radishes and peas today!
A ton of large yellow onions, snow peas and dwarf peas, and cherry globe radishes! I planted a ton of radishes because once they are done I will clean out that part of the garden to plant other things in, so I use more than I normally would.
Here is a nice little guide for when to plant stuff:
Very early spring (as soon as the ground can be worked)
* Onions
* peas (Martha Stewart plants hers every year on St. Patrick’s Day – she lives in New England!)
* spinach
Early spring
* lettuce
* beets
* carrots
* radishes
* dill
* cilantro
* cabbage
* broccoli
* celery
* kale
* potatoes
After last frost date
* beans
* corn
* melons
* cucumbers
* squash
* tomatoes
* peppers
* pumpkins
* eggplant
* basil
Happy Planting!
I finally got my outdoor seeds started!
I live in Minnesota so my first day of safe frost-free planting is May 20th this year according to my handy Farmer’s Almanac. There are seeds that you can start outside before that, but not many. I like to transplant plants to the garden for a lot of veggies.
Carrots, tomatoes, and several others can take 75+ days to harvest. With only 3.5 solid months of growing season I need to maximize my garden time, and that means starting from plants, not seeds, for anything that has a growing time of 60 days or more. (You don’t want your first harvest to come during your frost! What fun would it be to not eat anything out of your garden for months?)
Here is a picture of the seed flats I have started:
I have press-and-seal wrap over the trays to preserve moisture and warmth which will start the seeds faster. I have 2 kinds of trays: small egg-crate style, and large potter style. I use the large pots for things that need to get pretty big before transplant like carrots and tomatoes. I use the small egg crate style for flowers and smaller veggies, and things that can go in the garden sooner size-wise as well as colder-tolerant.
So here’s what I have started:
- Yellow Onions
- Long Carrots
- Jalapenos
- Bell Peppers
- Broccoli
- Beef Steak, Roma, and Salad Tomatoes
- Petunias (regular ones :))
These I will sow right in the garden:
- Beans
- Peas
- Short Carrots
- Cilantro
- Basil
- Radishes
- Zucchini
- Cosmos
- Morning Glories
These are either fast growers, or cold weather tolerant and do well going right in as seed.
Thanks for stopping by!
