Too Early to Plant

35 countries and counting!  Welcome to Columbia, Czech Republic, Romania, and Spain!

pansies

Touran Neon Rose Saxifraga

hellebore

Earliest flowers

Well, it's been one whole year since I started this blog.  I feel like I am starting all over again!  Seed catalogs have been scoured, existing seeds counted and ordering of new seeds has begun.  I will be setting up my lights this month to start a lot of seeds.  Learned a lot, that was my goal with this blog.  I wanted to keep a good record so I knew what to change the next year.  I will not be growing potatoes this year.  I had a wireworm infestation last year.  That is the larval stage of the click beetle.  I really didn't like paying too much attention when I cleaned the potatoes and had to cut away the parts that were eaten. Yuk. The stink bugs did a number on my tomatoes at the farm garden, but not in my garden at my house.  So, I am trying sweet potatoes at my house this year, and I will plant my tomatoes in my back yard.






I do use seeds from other planting seasons.  The rate of germination goes down, but when they do germinate, the plants do just fine.  The trick is to put an extra seed or two into the planting cell.
Look for the strongest seedling and then cut the others down to the dirt with a pair of scissors.  Pulling the weaklings out will disturb the root system of the remaining plant and possibly weaken or kill it.








I still have to clean up my perennial beds here at the house and up at the farm. I am waiting for a nice warm day, though.  My hellebores are blooming nicely.  They are also called lenten rose, I assume because they bloom around Lent. The Witch Hazel at the Demonstration Garden is in bloom also.  Smells medicinal, and very clean.

 Our Master Gardener group has taken on a huge project this year.  We are adding on to our existing Demonstration Garden at the Extension office.  A HUGE vegetable garden.  I have even started a blog for that garden for the MGs.  Check us out at  FREDCOMGDEMOGARDEN.BLOGSPOT.COM.

     

On the Mother Earth News website I found a really nice garden planning program.  You design your garden and then post it to the web so others can view it.  I put my first rough draft of one of the garden beds on the web  so my team members could view it and have ideas to change or add when we have our next meeting.
 http://gardenplanner.motherearthnews.com/garden-plan.aspx?p=238647

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Also on my list of garden chores is pruning back my Japanese maple and my magnolia shrub/tree.  We had a professional arborist come out to do the big trees.  Looks great, lots of dead wood and broken branches were taken out.




Checked my oak log inoculated with shitake fungi, nothing yet.