It finally feels like Spring is here

On Friday morning i was taking the dog out to do her business and i saw this:

Worm Castings


It doesn't look like much but if the worms are tossing up castings it means the ground is thawing out.

This is what was left of the snow in the yard on Friday:



Did i post that my Ancient Sweet Peppers came in?


My Hoya pubicalyx philippine black chimera is getting ready to bloom for the first time:



The rhubarb is waking up:



Saturday was beautiful and warm,  i had the windows open and i spent the day out in the sun just soaking it in.
Sunday was bright as well,  but the wind was chilly.  We got rain Sunday night and into Monday,  which melted almost all the rest of the snow in the yard.  The weather cleared up nicely later on Monday.  I took my 4 year old daughter out to play for a bit,  but she started misbehaving so we had to go back in.
Today is cloudy and chilly again and tomorrow is supposed to be quite cold,  but the rest of the week  is forecast to be around the 50's and sunny.  I'm actually seeing flurries out the window right now.

Three out of the 5 gojiberry seeds i planted for my mom have come up.  Aunt Molly's ground cherries have too.  The schizandra seeds are done with their 30 day stratification and need to be planted.   I haven't gotten any more seeds started lately,  i had planned to over the weekend but i spent Saturday enjoying the weather and spent Resurrection Sunday with family.  I need to get going on those peppers and get those tomatoes started!

Seedlings up

Looks like the Hoya is very close to blooming.








Yay!  It also looks like my very last and very old Cherokee Purple seed was viable and even vigorous. The seed leaves are well formed. When they are shrivelly , i am told, it means that the seed was essentially no good.  If i don't accidentally murder this seedling i hope to save the seeds so i can have some for next year.  They are suppsed to be a very sweet tomato, even better than Brandywines perhaps.  I can't wait to find out.

 

Snapper, a sweet bell pepper is up.

 Slim Jim eggplant is just starting out.  I got no fruit from this last year- i think wintersowing is not beneficial to eggplant. I think exposure to so much cold does not allow them to get in gear soon enough. This flat of seeds was germinated with bottom heat from a 60 watt incandescent bulb.  I hope to get sturdy plants by planting time.

 

 Below is another eggplant i am trying. Like Slim Jim, this one is a long , slender type, only green rather than purple.  The entire Slim Jim plant is a velvety purple- the two of these plants with or without fruit should be an interesting contrast in colors.  This variety is compact, can be container-grown and is described as being suited to my cooler climate.

 One of the Stocks are up...but that's it so far.

I'm still waiting anxiously for the durned snow to melt.

 It really is giving way, though slowly.  Along the roadsides, the snow is all but gone. Many yards are free of snow. The last few days of cold has not allowed the grass to green up yet.  Its been in the 30's and very windy. After Monday the weather forecasters are saying we should have 40's through the remainder of the week. I wish i had enough black plastic to cover the whole garden and absorb that sunlight!

Spring is experiencing a slight delay...

Or maybe its not.  I'll have to look back and see what i complained about last year in regard to snowmelt and temperatures.  I'm sure i'm just being impatient.  The forecast is for temps in the 30s through the rest of the week.  We got about 5 inches of new snow that turned out to be less slushy than expected.  If the sun is strong it might melt quickly but if it stays cloudy it may not.

The Rose Orach sprouted- i noticed this yesterday. All the other seeds are still sleeping.

I'm still in the process of deciding what i will grow this year. I'm considering crossing the leeks off the list.  I'm not sure my method of planting would suit them.  Their need for a long growing season is discouraging.  I tend to plant in wide rows and leeks need to be 'hilled', and this will be difficult in wide rows because the soil i would need to use to build up around the leeks will be inhabited by more leeks.  I won't have a spare spot in the garden to dig out soil to hill them up and then i'm not sure how much yield...  They are expensive at the store and because of that i don't use them much- which means i can technically live without them. Also, if they don't size up to what i see in the grocery store i'll be disappointed- and its unlikely they will grow that large.  In the recipe i use them in, i use 3 at a time. My garden planner allows for 50 plants in the space i intended for them.  Not sure if i'll ever use that many before they go bad- and i don't plan to overwinter any plants in the garden, and and and i don't know if hubby will get on board with using the cold side of the basement as a root cellar.

I think i should stick to what i know- tomatoes, peppers, onions, eggplant, summer and winter squash, green beans, brassicas, herbs and some lettuces.

Experimentation will be limited to  houseplants.  Speaking of which- the buds on the hoya are sizing up:

Maybe not dramatic, but i noticed.


I took a look at the garden the other day. It had melted enough that i could locate where the kale and chard had been and other things too.

I've read that kale can sometimes overwinter- but i don't think it happened for me, lol.


But it looks like at least one of my Comfrey crowns did ok. Of course its way early to expect much, but i found a bit of green

I can't wait to see how my asparagus does this spring.  According to Steve Solomon, asparagus from seed can be harvested as soon as the second year as long as the spears are 3/4 of an inch in size.  But i don't have any idea if they will be that large and anyway i'll need to let them grow freely so i can locate and remove the female plants.  Doing this prevents the plot from going to seed, the seed germinating and leading to overcrowding- which leads to the demise of the plot.  With only male plants left and good fertilizing a plot can last about 50 years.

I never did try harvesting the horseradish i planted last spring.  I have tried planting it before in my parents' garden.  When i dug it up it was full of holes from soil bugs so i'm curious to see what i'll get this fall.

Yesterday i heard robins for the first time this year. It sounded like they were squabbling over some territory.  Despite the snow it shouldn't be long until the weather fits the part of the season i like so much.

Yay, then...not yay... ha ha

Yay-  my laptop survived!
Not sure how it lived, but so far it is back to normal and no sticky keys (i don't sweeten my coffee) even.
Hubby thinks i may have saved it by flipping it over to drain and yanking the battery as  soon as i could. I also put the blow dryer on cool and set it up against it for a few minutes.  WHile that was working, i got out mini box fan and set the laptop up so the air blew into the keyboard so i could put away the blow dryer.  Another thing that helped is thta keyboards have this  failsafe sort of thing, kind of like GFCI....  if there is a sudden voltage change it shuts down automatically.  So when the spill happened, the computer got itself shutting down and i just had to clean it up and wait for it to dry.

So there ends the drama of the day for Tuesday.

One thing i did do to change my laptop's settings to hopefully protect it was to go into the energy settings and tell it to do nothing when the cover of the laptop is closed.  This way when i leave the room for a few seconds, i can close the cover and this will protect the keys and screen from tiny, nosy,  little fingers---and spills.
I keep my laptop on all day and i check something on it a number of times a day. Shutting it down after each lookup  is not going to happen, so this might be the next best thing.

But i am grateful that i don't need to get a new one at this point.  I have been very good at archiving things into my external hard drive, so i would only have lost my huge bookmarks list and a few inconsequential things.

So, all is well that ends well... hubby said just to watch for overheating.

Last night large regions got snow. Our mountains up here got as much as 2 feet. Some spots a few miles East of us got some freezing rain, but i don't think we got any of it.  I think our night time low temperature got down to 38 degrees. I have not been out to see the mini greenhouses yet this morning. I haven't even been over to the window that has the indoor/outdoor remote thermometer in it.  I have the wire of the outdoor thermometer inside one of the greenhouses and then i have the 'indoor' part on the shelf of the gas grill where i can see it through the window (and it won't get rained on).

So there isn't much to report on sprouty things or gardeny things since it just raining out and its not a weekend, so nothing is being done.  Hopefully there won't be too much rain and my dad will be willing to get the compost over here for us.
I hope to have it get tilled in so i can put  clear plastic over the soil to wake up the weeds then run the Mantis over it a week later, then black plastic to warm the soil faster. 
According to the Johnny's blog and according to the book by Eliot Coleman (that i am reading now) i should be able to plant out the hardies within a week or two- and possibly as much as a couple weeks ago-  under the hoops of course.

The little citrus trees seem to be doing fine so far. The venous orange still has those rolled leaves, but there isn't any real info on this plant online. Some posts about them that result from searching, seem to imply that 'venous' is a made-up name by Gurney's/Henry Fields.  There was one suggestion that it might be Madame Vinous orange...which is a known type.  But its hart to tell because people are in general so dismissive to HF and their products, that nobody will say much even if they did know.

I don't know myself right yet,  i just want to get some nice smelling flowers. It doesn't even have to set fruit, but if it does i would love to see some fruit with at least an orange blush.
 I do want a variegated pink Eureka lemon soon.  I saw it first at Springhill's website... but i don't remember their reputation so i'd check in on that before i would consider them .  Territorial also sells it and they have the Kaffir lime that i want to replace the one i accidentally murdered.  They also have the Kumquat plant i want.
They also have one of the better reputations, so i might go there for "all my citrus needs"...  since hubby was kind of freaked out by my idea of turning the front garden into a Milkweed festival, i may have to console myself with a collection of a different sort.

The Goji seedlings are taking off like crazy, and i did manage to find the charger for my camera after an hour of searching the other day.

I also think that  my Hoya shephardi is setting a penduncle.  This is pretty exciting since this can take years to happen... of course it can still take years to bud and then bloom from this point i guess. But the fact that it seems to be starting something after less than 2 years from being a rooted cutting...  its pretty cool.  One out of 6 of my Hoyas might bloom within the next three years.  Yay!

 I forgot two of my Passiflora outside, i'm going to leave them out until it warms up cause i think if i bring them back in they might go into shock if they aren't there already. But i did repot the P. lavender Lady the other day, it looks happier in a bigger pot.

Well, i guess that is all.

Some pictures

Makeshift coldframe of sorts... or maybe a frost chamber...where the wintersown sprouts go to wait out the frost, but it allows them to get full or partial sun during the day and shelter at night.

Broccoli (gypsy) in the front, buttercrunch lettuce next, then cauliflower (graffiti) in the back.
Its a Rubbermaid or Sterilite semi-transparent tote with a scrap of 2x4 and a recycled, frosted, plastic shower curtain folded over it.

Rhubarb.
I think this is the first garden item we planted when we moved in. It does well every year, but i never had the chance to make much of it, but i could have.  Anyway, when its up you know the ground is thawing out for sure!

Hoop test.
One of the 1/2'' PVC pieces, bent to a 4' wde base, steadied by a makeshift footing of cinder blocks. This way i know how high the hoops will be at the center....about 48".  I wanted to see what the minimum straddle i could get, 4 feet will be perfect since i am thinking i might try a hybrid Square Foot technique.  The hoops placed 4' apart and spaced 4' wide will mark my plots nicely...convenient. :-)

Lilac buds are swelling.
My camera can't take macros to save its existence.

Daffodill.
Trying to open, maybe by the time this area gets full sun today, it will.

Houseplants.

Goldfish plant. 

It finally bloomed. I grew this plant from a clipping i took from the waiting room of my Dr's office when i had my test to confirm my pregnancy that resulted in my second daughter. She turned one last month. :) It is quite lush and full now for starting from so tiny a piece.  I wish i had done something like that for my first daughter.

 

Bay Laurel.

 This foolish thing has been little more than a stick for over 8 years.  I have had this plant for a long time. I have used a few of its leaves. I think three years ago it finally developed a second branch- that forked bit at the top,  the shoot from the bottom developed around December of last year.  It has got to be the ugliest plant i own, but i keep it cause it is legitimately a useful plant.

I need to find a way to make it branch out more. I'd snip the tips, but since there are only 3 and they contain all the leaves i don't want to murder the thing.   I have been told to pot it in bigger pots, and in smaller pots... i fertilize it carefully.  It just drives me nuts for being ugly.

This is the plant shelf i made to hang above the sink, under the light.

I overwintered my 6 Hoyas and two of my 3 remaining Passiflora there. Darned spider mites took out my other Passiflora plants.  The window gets nice and bright and there is the tube light up there that comes on in the evenings.