Garden clean-up, potting on seedlings, and sowing more seeds

March was a cold, windy month. I carefully tended to the seedlings that I had growing and I sowed my tomato seeds towards the end of the month. In the past two weeks I have been slowly potting up my largest pepper plants and several of the fig cuttings. I did a second round of garden cleanup at the end of March and spread some of my homemade compost in the greenhouse.

The sorrel and chives are putting on lots of fresh growth due to the warmth in the greenhouse. The sad looking kale on the right actually had several new leaves coming off the base of the stem. I trimmed the upper part off, but should get a few baby leaves for salads in a couple weeks. After I spread the compost, I direct sowed some lettuce, spinach, and pea seeds in the greenhouse.

My garlic is looking pretty good for this time of year. The fresh shoots are pushing through the leaf mulch, and I will need to fertilize them soon so they can put on lots of bulb growth over the next few months.

I checked the fruit trees, and the Cortland apple is starting to bud up, so that is exciting. Our huge magnolia tree has a bunch of flower buds that are almost opening up. The crab-apple bush is covered in buds. The two clearance rose bushes that I got in the fall survived the winter, so that is exciting. I kept them covered by plastic domes all winter to give them a little extra snow protection and warmth on the sunny days.

I planted several small poppy plants in the fall, a couple in raised beds and a couple straight in the ground. This plant is in front of some daffodils at the end of the garlic bed next to a tree stump. I’m hoping the overlap of the daffodils and poppies will provide flowers for multiple months.

The daffodils at the back edge of the garden are filling in nicely, I expect to see flowers soon!

I have a few tulips along the side of the driveway, and I noticed some of the leaves had been munched on about a week ago. I expect it was a rabbit. I put mesh covers over them all and they have recovered and are growing new leaves. I don’t like the aesthetic of the covers, but since these are the only tulips I have and they are outside the fence, I will do what I can to protect them so I might actually get flowers.

Yesterday my dad and I flipped the current compost pile from one bin to another one. Now it will all sit and decompose over the next year. I should have nice compost to spread next spring. Slow composting is pretty hands free. We just throw all the grass, leaves, and garden clippings into a pile and leave it and we only turn it once a year. The top layer is the leaves and needles we raked up to set up the new bin. My sandy native soil needs all the nutrition and water retention that it can get from adding compost.

It might not look like much, but this is last year’s compost pile. Mostly broken down and certainly ready to be utilized in the garden. After I went back inside, I saw a couple robins scratching around in the bare ground/dirt that was left from flipping the pile. Hope they found some bugs.

I also spread a nice layer of last year’s compost on two of my raised beds yesterday. It’s mostly nice and crumbly, any really large twigs or stems I just tossed on the current pile. I weeded the two beds and removed most of last fall’s leaves which I had been using as a mulch. Took a few buckets worth of material and dumped it on the compost pile.

This is an overwintered kale which has grown several new leaves this spring already. I should be able to get a few small harvests off of it before it bolts and goes to seed in late May. Kale is a biennial plant, so it naturally will produce seeds in its second year. I may leave it to flower for the pollinators.

Indoors I’ve been keeping busy the last few weeks. All stages of indoor seed starting are ongoing, from freshly sown pea seeds to potting up one, two, and three-month-old seedlings. These two trays have kale, peppers, broccoli, coleus, figs, and hibiscus, as well as a recently purchased lemon verbena plant. Now the game of Tetris is in full swing as I try to fit as many plants as possible either under the grow lights or by the sliding back door so they can get the natural light.

So much potential for the garden: flower, tomato, pepper, leek, and basil seedlings.

I am really proud of how nice my kale seedlings look at this stage. They are big enough to go outside but I’m going to wait a couple more weeks, since my neighborhood got a dusting of snow this morning.

I am trying onion sets for the first time this year. I purchased both red and white last week and have planted a few inside to give them a head start before transplanting outside. I grew a few onions last year from seedlings, but they didn’t develop into large bulbs. I’m not sure if that was my error or the type of seedlings. Going to see if sets perform any better.

I’m also attempting to grow hibiscus from seed. I had 5 of 6 seeds sprout, and they are all growing their second set of true leaves now. Don’t know how big they will get this year, but it’s fun to try new things. I will keep them inside for a while before putting them out in the greenhouse. I do enjoy hibiscus tea which uses the flower calyxes for the sour flavor and pink color. With my short growing season, I had to get a big head start on the season, since they like tropical weather. I will put them in pots so that I can bring them inside in the fall because they are not frost tolerant.

Lots of pepper seedlings are now in 3- or 4-inch Epic seed cells. I should get a good variety of colors and sizes to harvest over the summer months. This shelf also has calendula, cabbage, and sage seedlings.