Today is April 19, taxes are done, snow is gone and sometimes we are even getting a bit of warm weather. I thought I would include some things that I have learned (as if I can ever learn everything) and write down so I don't forget.
1. There is no real rush to start warm weather vegetables early. As you can tell from the photo, my different variety of tomatoes are doing just fine and since I can't get them out until around May 10th or later (depending on the timing of the full moon), it makes little sense to start the seedlings in February. I started these after we got back from our southern trip (March 17) and most of the seedlings have taken. I did have issues with lettuce this year and don't really know what that was about.
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Tomato seedlings with some Artic lettuce seedlings included (in the large planters). The tray has a variety of different seedlings and are only about 2 weeks old. The planter idea came about as our old window planters are just about rotted out. So, I thought, why not buy new ones, use them for seedlings first and then put them up as window planters once it got warmer out.
2. One or two tomato plants in pots is fine and dandy to kind of get the season going. These are called Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes and they are actually cutting from self grown plants from out in the front yard. I took a few cuttings in October and nursed them through the winter. I lost one plant by being careless as I brought them back out to the greenhouse. The other two are doing fine, flowering and looking healthy.
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| Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes from cuttings in the fall. |
3. Don't grow warm weather vegetables in the greenhouse early in March or even April. The greenhouse, unless you heat it or insulate it with two layers of plastic and air, will have almost the same temperature at night as outside. Yes, the wind will be blocked, but if the temperature drops to 30º outside, it will be close to 30º inside. So, this year, I only planted lettuce, radishes, kale, broccoli, carrots, spinach and onions in the greenhouse. As I mentioned, the lettuce struggled, but you can see two head growing slowly. The kale and broccoli did the best in terms of coming up and getting larger. Carrots have been very slow to germinate. Spinach not at all, similar to the lettuce. Radishes took about a week to come up.
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| Three lettuce plants and some transplanted parsley |
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| Mainly Kale and Broccoli in the greenhouse. The idea was to start them up and then transplant them outside, which is what I did. |
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Hard to see, but those are kale seedlings I transplanted from the inside of the greenhouse.
4. Don't rush outdoor plants, even peas, potatoes and onions. In the photo below, I have two rows of peas, not yet coming up and then a row of Yukon gold potatoes and a row of Pontiac Red potatoes. The cow panel on the right, used last year for tomatoes, will be used for cantaloupes this year.
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| The beginning of the outdoor row plantings. I am using string lines for staighter plantings and to know where I planted. From left to right I have two rows of potatoes and two rows of peas. I will probably add another row of potatoes and a few more rows of peas. |
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