Almost Spring '16...what are you doing (or have done) Today?

[JayPoc]

Still a bit too early here to plant most things outsides, but I do have a big day planned.

-First project, start my peppers and tomatoes on the heat mat inside.

-Second project, prep all my outside containers. I have dozens of containers from 5 gallon buckets on down to half gallon containers that I use for all sorts of things. I'll dump the dirt from last year in my wheel barrow, removing the root balls that can be easily removed. I'll thoroughly mix in some fresh potting mix as well as my own compost, and then refill my containers so that they're ready to go when the time is right.

-Third project (time and energy permitting), plant some peas. It's supposed to be warm for the foreseeable future, so why not?

So what do you have planned?

[imafan26]

Since I only have wet and dry seasons, I have harvested 5 cucumbers already and another may be ready today, napa grape tomatoes, and kai choy, komatsuna, cutting celery, are ready. Still waiting on the broccoli and Brussel sprouts. I waited too long on some of the kai choy and tatsoi, they are compost now. I planted UH # 10 sweet corn on February 28. I will check again today to see if they have sprouted.

The first second Saturday sale was successful and I am gearing up for the second one this Saturday. I am going to try to pot up kale and dill today and maybe make more pepper starts and sow some other seeds if I have room and take more cuttings. The gallon pots take up more room on the bench so I will have about the same number of trays just fewer plants (around 400 plants)

I weed whacked half the back yard yesterday and made space on my bench for more trays. I am going to try and get a little more weed whacking done today.

I am going to the community garden to water and spend an hour or two weeding and take the weeds to the dump.

It also looks like my beans are making more leaves so maybe I will get more beans out of it after all.

Hopefully, I can get most of this done today. I might run out of energy or willpower (especially when it comes to weed whacking) but I have ambition and a pretty nice day to garden. High temps will be about 77, the winds are from the south so basically not much except for vog and a slight chance of rain from convection heating after noon.

[applestar]

I Uppotted the Chinese cabbage and Asian greens K cups yesterday by double-deckering them. This morning, I just finished uppotting some Venus flytrap babies and sorting through all the photos I took. I'll post an update soon.

Last night, I went overboard with varieties of tomatoe to start for this year by putting the selected seeds in zip seed bags and adding water to soak them, which means I can't change my mind and put them back afterwards, I realized there were still some dwarf and micro varieties that I held back on last time, and I will have to decide whether to give up on them or not. The soaked seeds will need to be started in some way -- either Spoonzip method or more Doubled K-cups. I found more sandwich/bakery clamshells I had been saving and DH is drinking more coffee on weekends since he gave up on sugar substitute sodas, so I might have enough K-cups to start one more batch today.

If we're done with mid-20's night temps, I'll put some of the broccoli back outside to harden off. Maybe sow some peas and spinach....

[rainbowgardener]

Right now I am still trying to get all my beds ready to plant in, having moved last fall. So yesterday and today and probably tomorrow, I am hauling cart loads of composted manure from the horse ranch behind us and putting them in the beds. It is lovely stuff, well broken down, no odor.

Then in the next couple days a truck load of "premium planting mix" will be delivered. This place is in my little town:

http://www.windwoodbulk.com/ This is what they say about their planting mix: We have been making Planting Mix for over 20 years. It is a weed-free planting mix used for raised beds, shrub planting, annual flowers, perennial flowers and vegetable gardens. Planting Mix is made in Ringgold Georgia. It is used throughout the Chattanooga, North Georgia, and Ringgold area. It is a special blend of aged soil conditioner, mushroom compost and composted leaves. (We compost the leaves for over a year) It’s basically weed-free.

I'm planning to just put it down on top of the manure, which probably has a lot of weed seeds in it, without mixing them, hoping that will slow the weeds down. And of course once plants are up, I will mulch well.

So within a few days I will finally have some beds ready to plant in!

[Taiji]

Well, yesterday I started broccoli, cabbage, and peppers, (green and jalapenos) in cells with heat mat. I only wish I had started the brassicas a month ago or more, I could almost put them outside by now.

How fortunate you are rainbow to have the horse farm so close! I can get free manure around here too, but it always seems to have so many rocks and dirt in it. I like the idea of that premium grow mix too! I suppose to bring me some they'd want a trip charge.

[imafan26]

Usually stables want people to come and take it away, all you have to do is ask , but they prefer you bag it yourself.

[Taiji]

Yeah, most of the stables here scrape their barnyards with front end loaders, and so, scoop up rocks and dirt at the same time. Hard to find nice clean manure. Maybe I will check around some more.

[rainbowgardener]

My composted horse manure is very nice, with very few rocks in it. It's a place with only a few horses (less than ten I think), so small scale operation. I didn't bag it at all, just shovelled it into my garden cart and then dumped it out again.

If I take ten scoops (one scoop = 5/8 cu yard) of the premium planting mix, they deliver it for free... I may become one of their best customers for awhile. They sell all kinds of stuff in bulk: worm castings, lots of different kinds of bark mulch, sawdust, paver sand, various sizes of gravel. I have uses for all that!

Seems very late to plant broccoli and cabbage in AZ. Once temps hit the 80's consistently the broccoli will bolt.

[JayPoc]

Well, I'm quite a failure....ALL I did today was the inside stuff, plus turned the compost pile a bit. I managed to plant 40 maters/peppers of all sorts. On the porch, I'm bringing along quite a few broccoli plants left over from the boy's science fair project, and six lettuces in individual pots (3 butter crisps and 3 red romaine). Those will go in the ground when I'm reasonably sure it won't be getting below about 30 degrees (which is still a month or more away for me). I do have collards and kale that overwintered, and I expect they'll snap out of their hibernation this week when the temps get in the 70s!

[lakngulf]

Up potted a bunch of little tomato plants---Brandywine, Fantastic, Lush Queen, Better Boy and Gary O'Sena. Weather was great so I was able to open my big Greenhouse door and expose plants to the sun.

But the most important thing I did today was install a new ladder that the grandkids will use after they go down the water slide.

[Allyn]

I made a dozen five-gallon-bucket SiPs today. I have flats of tomatoes, beans, parsley, par-cel, and peppers that are hardened off and need to be planted. I checked the forecast (my last danger-of-frost date is March 15) and for the next 10 days, overnight temps aren't supposed to get below 50 degrees F. Woohoo! These SiPs will get dwarf "patio" tomatoes, pole beans and peppers. I have 27- and 33-gallon tubs to make SiPs for the rest of the tomatoes and melons. I planted lettuce out a couple of weeks ago and they're all doing good. I'm going to start more lettuce seeds for the next round of lettuce.

[j3707]

Got rained on a lot today, some hail too. No garden work today. I put 4 apple trees in the ground and caged them to keep the deer out. Apricot and Asian plums are in bloom.

[jal_ut]

Almost Spring? Here this morning 34 degrees with two inches fresh snow on the ground. Not much growing but ice. Guess I will play on the computer?

[DBG]

Started peppers and tomatoes indoors.
The weather has been unusually warm around here thinking about planting peas, lettuce and spinach in the garden later today.

[gumbo2176]

We had very little real winter weather this year and it's getting in the 80's this week. A lot of stuff I planted in October is still going strong. I'm getting tons of side shoots off my broccoli plants----more than I ever have to be honest. My kale is flourishing, as are the leaf lettuce plants that I picked 4 grocery bags of yesterday and enough collard greens to make 3 quart bags of finished product.

The seeds I have already coming up that were direct sown are yard longs, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, beets, 2 varieties of cucumbers with some for slicing and some for pickling. I also put in a dozen or so strawberry plants and my garlic and onions are growing very well. I got a few tomato plants in the ground today along with some herbs.

I have my ridiculously hot pepper seeds in pots that should be sprouting any day now and milder pepper plants almost ready to go in the garden.

Now I just need the pests to cooperate and Mother Nature to not drop the amount of rain she did last year in late spring that took a serious toll on my tomato plants. I had to toss more tomatoes than I picked due to splitting from all the rain that fell last year.

We all know gardening can be a crap shoot from year to year with what will do well and what will fail---even when successes and failures were reversed the year before.