Bloomin' Spring!

Beautiful...My Daffodil...

First Tomato Flower Bud About To Open!

I didn't even know this plant had a bud set yet. I was checking on them last night & saw a good sized (about 1 and 1/2 cm) bud on one of my tomato plants that looks like it's about to open! =) I'm excited, but this means I need to get them outside in the cold frame soon, or the flowers may drop off the plants. Here's a pic of the bud. The color in it is miserable cuz it was taken at night with my camera phone.

Garlic, Lots of Irises & Tomato Buds

First off, I finally received the last 2 items from my Jung order. The St. Croix Grape plant looks great, but the California White Garlic was ridiculously moldy. =( I called Jung immediately after I saw this. The lady was like, "Well, sometimes there's surface mold on the garlic. Is it squishy?" I told her that yes, it is squishy & that the mold runs halfway through the cloves. Not too big of a deal, as I just received about 30 garlic starts (4 different kinds) in the mail this weekend that are perfectly healthy (no mold). So, i'll plant some of that instead.

Some of you may have heard of my great Craigslist find. I bought bag of easily 40+ heirloom Iris starts from a nice lady in Brentwood for only $5! I potted up as many as I had pots for this weekend. I should have several to give away at the MTPS, and also several for my 2010 Flower Garden. Yay! =) I also gave about 10 to my neighbor and still have 10 or so left I didn't have pots for. I'll have to figure something out soon before they go bad/die/rot. I've been meaning to call this guy who owns a nursery in Murfreesboro. He's going to sell me 1 gallon nursery pots for 5 cents & 5 gallon ones for 40 cents. Great deal.

Tomato Buds Are Here! =)
I have 2-3 sets of tomato buds growing now on the 7 plants I have left from the seeds I started January 23rd. It's gonna be great to about have little tomatoes growing right when I put the plants outside in their final homes mid to late April. Below are 2 pics of my indoor setup (mostly tomato plants with some peppers in the 72 cell flat & some Stevia in the 6 cell coir flat) along with about the best pic I could get of one of the bud sets.





You can kind of see the bud set growing off the main stem about in the middle of this picture. =)





An Update on the rest of Steve's Garden: My garlic chives continue to grow very well. The Triple Crown blackerry plant has a ton of little 1 cm or so long leaf buds/starts on it, along with a new cane stub growing. The Wineberry Raspberry plant leaf stubs/starts are growing excellent! They are all over an inch long now & you can see the little leaves growing out now. Both my strawberry bed & container strawberry plants continue to grow, just new leaf sets for now. I have about a 40% germination rate so far on the flowers I started from seed about 6 days ago. =) They are outside in my tall shelf greenhouse & seem to be doing fine with the bit colder temperatures. I have yet to have my Canna's, Sunflowers, Nasturtiums or any other buds/seeds planted straight into beds/pots pop through yet though. I'm hoping I'll start to see some this week.

More signs of Spring...Berry Growth...Yay!!!

I checked out all of my plants after I got home from work yesterday, like I always do. No bulbs popping through yet. I do have a good bit of berry growth though. My strawberry bed is showing a new leaf set on almost every plant. I went to take a close inspection of my Wineberry Raspberry plant & saw hundreds of little cm or 2 long buds (about every 2-3 inches, for new branch with berry growth) all along each of the canes! I'm so excited to finally get some berries this year. Also, my Triple Crown Blackberry plant is showing the same kind of growth, but they're a bit smaller on it & much harder to take a picture of. Here's a slightly blurry pic of the ones on the raspberry plant. =)

Greenhouse #1 Put Together!

This is the one I bought for $40 at Lowe's. One heck of a deal, IMO, as i've seen it sold for $60-$70 other places! =) It didn't require any tools. All snap together type stuff & sturdy too. It took a bit of strength to get it all secure, which is a good thing. It has a nice clear cover with zippered door. I plan on putting my cold frame together soon. This greenhouse will hold me larger seedlings that will not fit in the cold frame. I will probably take out the 2nd & 4th shelves so I can fit up to 3 ft tall seedlings on the two that remain.

Sowing my 3rd set of seeds: Flowers & Herbs

Yes, I started more seeds! ;-) It's looking quite hopeful that I may actually make it to the Spring MTPS (Middle Tennessee Plant Swap)! Yay! So, I should have plenty to give away there. I have been mainly a vegetable and fruit gardener up until recently. This year, I wanted to start some flowers for my daughter and to pretty up the garden a bit. Most of them are great companion plants for veggies anyways. So, last night I sowed 50 more coir pots of seeds (anywhere from 1-4 seeds a pot, depending on seed size, etc.). I did about half flowers & half herbs. Below are lists of the items sowed, along with some example pictures of the flowers. I hope they germinate well, as they're all so beeautiful! =)

03/17/10: "Plant Care" links added for me as a reference for taking care of these flowers I know nothing about...lol.




Steve's Flower Garden 2010 (Pictures that follow are exaple pictures from web. Hopefully mine will look even half as beautiful!):

Black Eyed Susan:

Plant Care

Blackberry Lily:

Plant Care

Blanketflower:

Plant Care

Dwarf Cornflower:

Plant Care

Pink Coneflower:

Plant Care

Red Texas Star Hibiscus:

Plant Care

Small Blue Balloon Flower:

Plant Care

White Datura:

Plant Care
***Whoa...gotta keep this one growing in a safe place. Very poisonous!

I am also growing some mixed Nasturtiums & some Sunflowers.




Steve's Herb Garden 2010:

Tarragon
Long Island Mammoth Dill
Cinnamon Basil
Mustard Plant
Broad Leaf Sage
Echinacea Purpurea




Last, but not leat, I received these seeds from a seep swap, finally. With all the maters I already have growing, I still need to try at least a few of Matt's Wild Cherry Tomato! =)

Let me know what you think of my flower selections. Also, I am new to growing all of these flowers & most of these herbs. I will study up on them as I can, but it would greatly help iff you have any hints or tricks for any of them from seed all the way up to adult plant. Thanks!

Weekend Work

I set out wanting to accomplish one gardening task this weekend, prepare my fruit garden bed. Despite the cold temperatures, cloudy overcast & occasional rain, I got about 2 good hours of gardening work done. I got the fruit bed prepared...Well, it's actually the fruit & flower bed now. I didn't want to try and move my Kerria Japonica or UT Orange Canna's. So, flowers on the left (Canna's & 5 Dolly Madison bulbs), Kerria Japonica as the centerpiece. Then the strawberry bed and finally my 2 Niagra grape plants with trellace on the right. The grape plants already have some small growth on them too! I love the way it looks already, even though it will look 100 times better in a month or so when the bulbs start to come up, KJ blooms, grapes grow, etc.. I still need to add a top layer of mulch/soil around the flowers & KJ, but i'll probably wait until after they come up before I add it so it doesn't inhibit them popping through. A few pics I took of the fruit & flower bed after finishing the work...

By the way, I HATE CRABGRASS!!! lol

The whole thing:


The flower bed (doesn't look like much yet with everything still being below ground!):


The Kerria Japonica (Absolutely beautiful plant when it blooms):


The strawberry bed:


The Niagra grape plants (looks like I just stuck two twigs in the ground, huh? =) ):





One more tidbit...I cleaned out all the pine needles, leaves & weeds from my container strawberries. They are starting to grow. =)

The most beautiful sign of Spring to come...A Rainbow

I barely had the chance to catch a double rainbow with my camera phone! =) The first picture is the single rainbow. It must have been visible for at least 2-3 minutes if not more...

Spring is here! First signs of life in Steve's Garden

When I got home from work, after eating dinner, I went outside to give my outdoor dormant alliums, fruit plants, etc. a watering. I find a few late Winter/early Spring waterings will spring (pun intended...lol) things back to life a bite early sometimes. =) Well, after I was done, I decided to do something I need to do for each of the plants, 1 at a time...clean off all the pine needles from the surface & remove any weeds that had grown in the containers over the Fall & Winter. Knowing I had to later unload 500 lbs of Pro Mix potting soil (which I got at a steal of $5.85 per 1 & 1/2 cubic foot bag!) from my truck, I decided to only clean & deweed my 3rd year Garlic Chives. Well, after doing so, I just happened to see that they're growing! I love these things. You could stick them in a closet in your attic & never water them and I swear they'd still come back next year! lol. Anyways, I counted about 12 of them at anywhere from an inch to 3 inches or so. That means they've been growing for at least a week. Awesome. The beauty of Spring starts in Steve's Vegetable Garden...








This discover, along with finding the excellent deal on the Pro Mix has me wicked excited & ready to start gardening! I think i'm going to prepare my fruit bed & plant some of the fruits in it this weekend. I'll post the final product on here after i'm done. Until then, Welcome Spring!!!

An update on the veggies that are growing so well!

The first round of tomatoes, at 35 days from seed in dirt (when pictures were taken Friday February 26th), are doing great! I really think the Foliage Pro 9-3-6 fertilizer & a better container potting mix are helping tremendously. =)












The 2nd round of tomatoes, started from seed on February 11th (except for the 2 on the bottom right, which were started a week before the others in this set):






The wee pepper seedlings. I didn't get that great of a germination rate in this Germination Station. So, next time I use it, I will try a different seed starting mix (one that doesn't dry out so quickly!):