March 23, 2010

Today I spent some more time outside.  The weather is cooperative and the kids LOVE the fresh air.  Most of the time it's just watching the kids ride their bikes or play in the dirt with a neighbor kid.  Today however, I took the seedlings for their second walk.  They're actually getting a bit long in the tooth to be out of the ground, so I'm doing a crash course in hardening off.



I wasn't kidding when I said I didn't know if I should plant them out or harvest them.  We could have a nice salad from these two-inch soil blocks.  I think I'm going to plant them out tomorrow and let them deal with mid 40s night time temps.  Speaking of which, it's 1 am and the seedlings are still out there. BRB. hehe

Today I also played musical seedlings.  If you recall, I set up an impromptu light system in my kitchen to let the cole crops germinate before moving them upstairs to the real light system.  Well, today all my broccoli and cauliflower had officially germinated (five of each, which rocks).  I wanted to move them upstairs, along with the three germinated tomatoes. 



Carefully I moved the seedlings upstairs and rearranged the kitchen area.  I took a picture of the upstairs system which looks very baren while the original seedlings were outside.



Notice how steep the slope of the light fixtures is?  That's to accomodate the cup-o-tomatoes and the new cole crop seedlings. From not on out this season, the fixtures will look like that due to the tomatoes.

To end, I'll share two random comments and pictures.  The first is a stubby carrot my youngest pulled from the garden. 



He said he thought it was ready.  I can see why he thought that.  It's fat, but short.  I wonder why that happened?  Anyway, my eldest loves baby carrots, so he ate it up in two bites.  I hope the rest aren't like that.

Secondly, the neighbor my kids play with have several towering pine trees in their yard. They hate them because of all the pine needles and cones they drop, but I have been looking for a local source for pine needles.  They're very acidic and make a great mulch for acid-loving plants.  So today while the kids were playing, I got a kitchen garbage bag and convinced the kids it was a game to fill it with needles.  I took them and spread them liberally around the base of my blueberry plants.  I hope I'm not too late and all the acid's run out of them.



As you can also see in the picture above, I still need to thin my garlic.  I never harvested last year's heads, so they went to seed in the ground.  Each of the cloves sprouted.  They're way too crouded to grow properly, so I need to pull all but one per few inches.  I'm thinking I could probably transplant them, but don't really have the space for it.

Well, that's about it for tonight.  Enjoy your garden!