Spring has been very slow this year, very cold with a lot of snow. It's as if Old Man Winter just doesn't want to let go this year.
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| Carola's garden is still covered in deep snow, April 9/18 |
On March 28 I finally got the chance to plant some seeds in the laundry room.
I usually end up with far too many tomato seedlings (which I am so reluctant to cull) so I often end up with so many tomato plants all vying for space in the greenhouse and later in the vegetable garden or deck. I do give many of the away, but this year I am making a concerted effort to limit that number, thus less work involved.
All the tomato seedling have sprouted successfully (Lemon Boy was first followed the next day by Early girl).
On April 5th we turned the heater on in the greenhouse to start warming it up, (later than last year.) A few days later (April 9) we took the seed tray into the greenhouse and carefully took each seedling out of the starter tray with a teaspoon.
We have 3 or 4 of each tomato variety:
Lemon Boy
Early Girl
Beef steak
Super Sensation
Purple Russian
Tumblers
Patio
The Patios were too small to transplant yet so they are still in the tiny seedling cells until they grow big enough to transplant.
I also managed to germinate 2 English Cucumber plants, but as per usual, the zucchini seeds did nothing. I do have 3 spaghetti squash seedlings that are growing like weeds though! This year I will try and buy zucchini seedlings and some other types of squashes too. (I like the butternut and the kabochas.)
I also started 4 Lavatara seedlings and some "Ocean Foam " sweet peas. Two Lavatara sprouted quickly but got too long and leggy in the house. The other 2 were slower, but developed a larger set of leaves and a shorter stem. None of the Sweet peas germinated but thats because I forgot to soak them overnight as the package said. I am in the process of soaking some sweet pea seeds that I collected from my flower bed in the fall and will be planting them today (April 12/18) along with 3 or 4 more Lavatara and maybe a blue columbine from some seeds I got from a friend ( Thanks, Chris W!)
April 10 was a beautiful sunny spring day and the temperature on the deck was close to 20C. :D
I took my dahlia bulbs out there to plant in the warm weather. Yah, spring!
Re: Dahlia bulbs, I overwintered some Firebird tubers, some Tahitian Sunrise tubers and what I think is my longstanding red "Thompson" dahlias ( which I have been growing and overwintering for about 14 years now!)
I saw some beautiful healthy Dahlia tubers at Wal Mart and bought 2 new varieties, A dark purple "Thomas Edison", and a beautiful pink called Yarra Falls.
I had managed to dig up and keep 4 Gladiola bulbs from last year, 2 red and 2 white (planted for Canada's 150th birthday) sentegenarian, which I put in a tray with a half inch of water to start root development. I also added a dozen new ones from a variety pack of Red, yellow and purple gladiolas.
I still have 23 or 24 left in the package so I will just give them away. (They are hard to keep for another year as they usually dry out if you don't plant them. If there's a trick to that, I don't know it.)
Now if we could only somehow convince Old Man Winter that he's overdue in the southern hemisphere and to take a hike (please!), we would all be much happier here in Canada. :)
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| Lots of snow to melt yet |
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| My 3 main flower beds are still deep under the snow. April 12/18 |
