At last, some sunny days!

I've been able to spend 6 to 8 hours a day getting the garden in shape and planting, as the last few days have been sunny and gorgeous.  Make hay while the sun shines, they say.

The whole shebang: left: in progress perennial bed; top: vegetable garden; 

bottom left: rose bed; bottom right: cut flower bed. I need espalier fruit trees on that shed wall!

The seedlings in my portable greenhouse are coming along.  Those that have to wait until consistently warm days and nights before being planted are looking good.

This year I only planted one variety of slicing tomato:  'Missouri Pink Love Apple'.  For all the other varieties and colors I've tested, this is the best one for flavor and quality, so I've quit trying others.  It's classified as a pink, but it's actually red - just not as deep red as the so-called red tomatoes.  

I started a couple of varieties of French melons, because one I tried last year was so delicious: 'Savor', and one is a new one for me: 'Petit Gris' - just to see how it compares.  

I don't know why some of the melon seedlings are so chlorotic looking.  They should come out of it okay.  I can only think that maybe I germinated them in soilless seedling mix.  Most of the time I fill the packs about halfway with potting mix and then top them with seedling mix, but I remember filling some completely with seedling mix before I caught myself, and maybe those were them.

I keep planting prairie gentian (lisianthus) flowers although they can be difficult in the germination process.  In the picture below, the left are seedlings from saved seed which I assumed might not germinate well and was very wrong.  On the right are some I purchased.  The seed is so tiny that the nursery "pelletted" them (coated in a process that makes each seed more easily handled, but the germination rates are unreliable), so I ordered the colors I want and  will hope for some blossoms from which I can collect seed.

The other issue with them is they take forever to get to a size they can be planted out.  I sowed these at the end of January and beginning of February, and this is all the further they've gotten.  Those on the left are going to be difficult to separate for transplanting, and I'll no doubt lose some.  It's amazing that the seed is much smaller than grains of salt, but eventually the flowers grow to be 8 - 10 inches tall.  And, yes, they're worth it.

Some of the seedlings I've already transplanted into the garden.  Never having grown celtuce before, I didn't know whether I need to start indoor plants, so I did, and they didn't appreciate it.  I transplanted what managed to pull through and sowed seed directly in the bed around them.  They've yet to come up.  The leaves are actually a very nice taste and texture, so if I have good luck with it, I'll be planting it again in future years.  It's a Chinese lettuce that grows a long stalk that's also supposed to be good eating.  We'll see.

Celtuce

There's a rabbit in the neighborhood that likes it as well.

Which brings me to the cabbage.

I had such a time with cabbage loopers in the spring and cross-striped cabbageworms in the fall, that I decided not to plant cabbage.  Then when I was starting seeds, I forgot that decision, and when I found I had some seed left from last year of 'Verona' and 'Kalibos' varieties, I sowed them on January 11.  Germination was very poor on both varieties, so I took what remaining seed I had and soaked it in paper towels to see if it would germinate.  After I inadvertently let them dry out and resoaked them, a few germinated, so I put them in soil.  When they got big enough, and I set up the portable greenhouse, March 8, I started putting them out there during the days and bringing them indoors at night.  

After all that trouble, I had eleven little plants that I put in the ground on April 2.

On April 4, the rabbit found them.

Kindly, Mr. (or Ms.) Rabbit left the growing tip on most of them, and they're coming back.  So now I'll have another year of cabbage worm control to deal with.  Unless Rabbit comes back for the new growth.

A couple of years ago, my grandaughter helped me hack out some old yew stumps from around their house, and I brought them out to the farm to use for firewood.  Maybe, some day.  Yesterday, I repurposed them to support an old wooden wagon wheel.  "Planting" them was infintely easier than hacking and sawing and digging them out of a bed that had been mulched with large gravel for years so that the gravel was compacted into the soil over a foot deep.

This solved two issues:  what to use for a cucumber trellis since I put in permanent grape vines and climbing roses on the arbor that supported the cucumbers last year, and how to incorporate that wheel I've had my eye on for three years into the garden.

I've been watching the two muscat grapevines I planted, every day since they went into the ground, looking for signs of life.  As a watched pot never boils, a grapevine never leafs out.  The buds are swollen large, though, so surely it's not long now.  

Some of my first seedlings have been flowers that I'm growing for my new perennial bed.  I planted nearly 200!  Yarrow, dianthus and globe amaranths (which are not perennials, but I liked the orange ones so much from last year that I bought seed for all colors this year and didn't have enough room in the cut flower garden to plant them all).

I laid them out where I wanted to plant them, and since I hadn't amended the soil with bonemeal, I sprinkled it directly on them before putting them in the ground.  If it helps at all, it was a lot easier than working it into the soil.

 

At the other end of the perennial bed, I prepared space for oriental poppies that I'll sow in late summer.  The perennial bed is the third I've created by digging up years-old perennial wildflowers.  (Don't worry, there's a whole yard of them - being overgrown with grass.)  It's not a fun chore.

The roses are leafing out, so I cut back all their dead wood, which after the harsh winter was most of it.  They're nearly lost in the mulch now, but I have no doubt they'll grow up nicely.

The Emperor Orange tulips I potted up last fall are just about ready to open.   I think they're lovely right now.