Basil!!!

I saw my first basil sprout on Monday. Yippee!

miscellaneous spring pictures

These pictures are from the beginning of April. First, you can see the strawberries and the artichoke in the background. Then, you can see the hills for the peas, collards and cucumber. Last, to the immediately left, you can see our tomato plant.

Spring planting

Well we began our spring planting.
On March 21, we put seeds in the ground for Collards, shelling peas, lemon cucumber and Big Dipper Pepper. For all of these, we used Burpee seeds. The peas and collards took almost immediately and I believe we saw sprouts within a week or so. As of today, the peas are about 3-4 inches high. Jason made a trellis and we put this in between the two rows. However, I am hoping that this weekend, we can put another row in and Jason is going to build one more trellis, about 1/2-2/3 the size of the one we are currently using.
The collards are also growing well. We should probably be looking at thinning them out soon.
The bell pepper and lemon cucumber have yet to do anything. However, the bell pepper package did say to start in a container and then transplant. But, I don't know why the cucmber aren't growing, and I really really want to grow some cucumber. I may try planting some more seeds or a starter in a couple of weeks if we don't see anything soon.
Finally, last weekend, April 10-11, I put some sweet basil and cilantro in from seed. The basil is ferry-morse start-smart and the cilantro is ferry-morse organic. I have yet to see sprouts on these. But the basil says it takes 5-10 days for germination and the cilantro takes 7-10, so we still have time before I need to worry.
We also planted a couple of starters on March 21. We put in a black cherry tomato plant, an artichoke plant and strawberries. It looks like all of these are doing very well.
PS- the bearded iris that Erika gave us is about ready to bloom. Yay!

winter vegetables

Alright, so I completely and totally slacked at following up on the winter vegetables. The brief recap being:

• Celery- grew healthy and happy. It didn't ever get large enough in the stalk to become snacking celery, so we didn't use as much as we should have. We used a bit in soups etc.
• Peas- they grew very abundantly and healthy. We got a small bag a week for over a month.
• Brocolli- it was fruitful. Slightly spciy. We enjoyed it for probably a couple of months.
• Brussel sprous- got attacked by a bug so we didn't eat it.
• onions and leeks- we planted the starters from the nursery, but did not thin them as I gues you are supposed to do. Note for next year, thin them out.
• Beets- they came in pretty good, but really got healthy a little late. While they tasted sweet, we thought they might have been in the ground a little long. They may have benefitted from going in a little earlier. This was the only thing we started from see.

I think that's about it. The brocolli, peas and beets were all very exciting. I'll keep better tabs next year of what we get in the ground, and maybe we'll aim for September.