Behold! The Sun!

What a fabulous couple of days we've had.  Perfect (if a little windy) for getting some things in the garden.

First, though, the chickweed has taken over!  It's especially thick at the garden edges, and when I pulled several inches of it away from the west end, there were at least a half dozen grubs per handful.  No wonder the moles make tunnels all around the edge of my garden.  (Which would be okay if they didn't feel the need to cross through.)

bird feed

I went ahead and set my little cabbages in the ground, along with a few marigold seedlings and some nasturtium seeds.  Hopefully, the strong-smelling flowers will either repel or confuse cabbage worm moths.

I also got a long row of little onion bulbs in the ground.  Hopefully it won't rain quite as much as it did last year, when I lost over 3/4 of my onions to rot.

cabbages and onions planted and watered, peas coming up, Egyptian walking onions going crazy

I planted a lot of cabbages hoping to get at least a few decent heads out of it, because I didn't have much luck with them last year - my first year growing cabbage.  Most of them didn't form good heads.  I don't know why, but they were in a fairly shady place, so I've put them out further into the sunny area this year.  Maybe that will help.  And maybe that wasn't the problem at all!

I had direct seeded the Chinese cabbage before the freezing week we had as I read you shouldn't try to transplant them.  I hadn't read that last year, and so that's exactly what I did do.  They started out gangbusters but didn't form heads well either.  This year, I've got a lot of thinning to do now, and these little snippers I got that aren't good for much else work like a charm for thinning.

My little rhubarb plants are looking suspiciously like the ones I started last fall and gave up on.  They just don't seem to want to grow, although their roots are long enough to be forming along the inside edges of the 4" pots they're in.  I saw a video about growing rhubarb where the guy said that given more soil space, rhubarb seedlings will grow much bigger and faster.  I went ahead and put a few in the ground, and later I'll "pot up" the others, even though they aren't root bound, to see if that's the case with mine.  The guys in the ground look awfully small, especially next to the three-year old plants that have been growing there.  Those little stems are nice and red, though.  I hope they stay that way when they're full grown.

Even though I covered the (green-stemmed) established rhubarb plants on the worst nights during that freezing cold week last month, they still suffered some damage, and I had to remove a lot of stems.  They don't look so good right now, but I expect they'll recover without much problem.

The black dahlias I've been growing from seed were starting to get root bound, and since the sun is supposed to be out for a while now, I think the ground is warm enough to put them out.  But, what do I know?  Nothing about dahlias.  I previously turned under some grass and wildflowers in an area adjacent to my rose garden and added some composted manure and humus (purchased in a bag).  Digging into it to plant the dahlias today was a joy.  There's lots of decaying oganic matter and the soil is loose and rich. One thing for sure, whatever else might be a problem for my new dahlia bed, compacted soil won't be.

I'm disappointed that the mixed dahlia seeds I started at the same time as the black dahlias didn't germinate.  That was one of those Amazon seed purchases that you never know about.  But so was the black dahlia seed.  I got some more mixed seed from another seller, and they've germinated without problem, but they're only just putting out true leaves.  Hopefully they'll pick up and catch up once they're big enough to go into the ground, so that the black dahlia blooms won't be all spent by the time the mixed ones come on.

And...that bleeding heart that was buried underneath dogwood and cypress leaves early in the spring...it looks great.  It even has tiny little flower buds on it.

The nameless kitty approves.

Lazy man's herb garden - right by the kitchen door

curly parsley, pineapple sage, patchouli, oregano, rosemary, lemon thyme

(waiting for basil seedlings to get large enough - and then try to take over)