First Wineberry Raspberry Flower!

A short post today because my allergies are tearing me apart & I feel miserable. Below is a pic of the flower. Probably 200+ buds on the plant right now. Should get quite a few berries off it this year. :)

The first fruit of the year

With lots more close behind, on this plant & others! =) Grape set on one of my St. Croix plats...

Buds on several plants!

My Kerria Japonica (Japanese Rose), Wineberry Raspberry & St. Croix Grape plants are all budding! Wicked excited to get some berries growing. I can't take a very good picture of the grape bud sets with my phone (not like the ones below are good either...lol), but there are at least 4 of them I counted. Each one usually has about 15 or so grapes on it. Plants look nice, so I should get several hundred grapes off them this year. My Wineberry Raspberry plant is 4 years old & has tons of vine, so I should also get a lot off it this year. At least 150-200 or so. Enjoy the bud pictures below & Happy Gardening! =)

Wineberry Raspberry bud set:


Kerria Japonica bud (should open within the next few days!):

Hardening off the veggies

All of my cherry tomato & about half of my pepper seedlings are ready for the hardening off process. For those of you not familiar with this phrase, it means to take the plants outside on nice days & give them a little "taste" of the outdoor weather a little bit at a time, more & more each day. Mine have been out 3 separate days over the last week or so. Today I left them out for a good 5-6 hours where they got maybe an hour or two of indirect sunlight (through bushes). When hardening off plants, you do not want to immediately put them in direct sunlight or they will die quickly. My plan usually involves 2-3 days of a few hours shade, then a week or so of a few hours each day with 50/50 sun & shade. Then, a few more days of mostly sun for a few hours. Then overnight 1-2 days just to make sure at the end that they're ready for the outdoors. Feels good when you put them out there knowing you hardened them off well & you see no affects at all from sun, wind, etc.. Let's you know they'll be ok. =)

Anyway, I took a pic of them, of course. This is less than half of my total veggie plants (probably after i'm all done, will only be about 1/4th...lol). These are just my cherry tomato plants & 2 different types of peppers that were ready for it. I still have my 2 paste tomato varieties, Rutgers tomatoes, all my habanero seedlings (12 or so) & a handful of others that will need to be hardened off & put out for good over the next month or so. I'm excited that Spring is coming soon, along with the average last frost date, so I can have my garden all together. Last frost date for Middle Tennessee is supposed to be around April 21st, in 11 days. I'll play it a bit safe like I usually do & not put anything out for good until the end of the month. The peppers, loving the extreme heat & not much below 65 at night, i'll wait a bit longer with. One thing I like to do, that helps, is to keep a close eye on the weather, on a daily basis. Last thing I want would be for me seedlings to sit through a storm or whatever & get destroyed!

More updates coming soon. Almost time to pot up the 3 Habanero varieties. Also, my re-seeding of all my non-cherry tomatoes that got killed when I moved is going excellent! =) After only 2 weeks, all cells but one have germinated & they are growing second sets of leaves. I may still yet get a July 4th tomato or two...lol...Anyway, take care & Happy Gardening!!! - Steve

Cherry tomato & habanero pepper seedlings

A few of my cherry tomato seedlings have wee lil bud sets on them now! Yay!!! =) Habanero (Jamaican Hot Chcocolate, Carribean Red & Orange) seedlings coming along nicely as well...

Deck/Fruit Garden

All of my fruit & berry plants have been moved to a nice sunny spot on the deck. The Wineberry Raspberry plant looks awesome draped over the side. Also, in the other pic, i'm going to try and train my grape plants to grow up the pole on the covered atrium thing. :)

Wineberry Raspberry, TC Blackberry, Dwarf Lime Tree, Kerria Japonica, Garlic, Dill Weed, Garlic Chives & one or two other small plants:


Grape plants:

First round of potting up.

And i'm exhausted...lol...below are some pics of the seedlings I potted up today. Tomatoes are: Chadwick Cherry, Chocolate Cherry & Sungold Select II. Peppers are: Golden Marconi & California Wonder Bell.

Tomatoes:


Peppers: