Weather missed us. I was worried about you and Rick, Jennifer. Others have checked in on Facebook. My brother in Edmond had a limb across his driveway this morning.

Ron had a fender bender yesterday. He's fine, the Toyota isn't.

Looks like we have a sick dog. My son's dog. Isn't eating.

Gotta go call the vet.

Jennifer, thanks for starting the thread, I tried, but my 79 year old brain is trying to act like an 89 year old brain, plus my computer is not getting along well with Houzz.

Amy, I am glad Ron is okay, and I hope the dog is okay also.

We got some wind last night, but it could have been a lot worse. I drove around on part of the place this morning, and found I had a few more limbs down, but I have clean-up to do every year. I will just wait and just drag limbs to the brush pile to burn when its handy.

This is a beautiful day. It is already 62 degrees and sunny. The wind was blowing when I left this morning to open up neighbors greenhouse, but it looks calm now.

I have placed some sweet potatoes in potting soil to make slips. I also need to plant more onions. I sure wish I had a tiller that would run, so I could bust up some soil. Using a tiller is so much easier than trying to bust up soil with hand tools. I hate to start working on my tiller, I might be able to repair it in 30 minutes, or I could waste all day on it and still not have it running, and these pretty days are too few to waste this time of the year.

For those planting potatoes , has anybody seen what's called 'Black Heart" in their seed potatoes while cutting them up?

http://ephytia.inra.fr/en/C/21136/Potato-Black-heart?fbclid=IwAR3QTLrQCQ1reEVDVmuTTGRBgMVSKE1c75G1h1vKGL-6QKauhpOYf4x2RIg

I've ran across a few like that while cutting ours up.

Rick

I haven't noticed any black heart in our batch of potatoes. But the yukons were huge. And most of the eyes were concentrated on the end. Made it a little difficult to cut down to a few eyes each. The blue and red potatoes were sized pretty good. Almost time to get em in the ground!

I don't know what the proper term is, but Madge wont let me plant "White" potatoes because she thinks they are worse about getting the black insides. I don't normally grow potatoes because I have sorry, shallow soil. We have 18 rows at neighbor's place, his soil is not great either, but it's on a hillside and drains better than mine. If we can get the ground ready we want to plant potatoes about 3 or 4 hundred yards behind my house. We hope to try a few things in the field I am referring to and water them from the pond. We will only try a few of the white types, because of our fear of disease, and low production.

Red LaSota were the ones I had that had the Black Heart the worst , a few of my Red Pontiacs had them too.

Rick

I originally wanted to wait at least another week, but went ahead and sunk the potatoes today. Think we ended up with about equal amounts of red lasoda, yukon gold & adirondack blue. Did it different this year and used post hole diggers to take out about 60 plugs and dropped em in and back filled.

Hope i'm not out there covering with straw in mid/late march with a freeze warning in effect, but it will probably happen.

Thank you Jennifer for getting us going in new thread. I too tried to start one but my phone will not let me

Amy, how's the pup? And is the Toyota fixable?

The rain gauge said we got a little under an inch of rain Sunday night.

All of the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and tomatillos are now started. I only did 16 of the Jet Setter and Heinz. Rick and I usually squeeze in about 24 in each row, but that will leave a spot for the overflow of plants that Rick likes to buy or maybe some cantaloupe. I stuck to my plan of only one seed per pellet/pot. Last year I had WAY too many plants because I doubled seeded each pellet. It's fine when you can share them, but it's the caring for them on the light shelf/ hoop house that gets to be too much. I only wanted 48 tomato plants for the SG last year and had nearly a 100. It was nice to share them but....

This will be the year where I have poor germination. LOL.

The broccoli did fine in the hoop house. I was a little worried about it yesterday because they haven't been hardened off and the bright sun on them could have been a disaster. However, I set the tray on the floor of the hoop house where it got shade from a box. All is well so far.

The cabbage plants will be moved out next. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I'm working today. It's normally my day off and I have Pilates tonight so there won't be much time to do anything else.

I had weird and disturbing dreams last night....some involving the garden in creepy ways.

The roselle was nearly forgotten! Thought of it last night at bedtime. It must be started this week too. And the lettuce. My Facebook memory from a year ago today, was a post about how I was cutting lettuce leaves to make salads while they were still in their little pots.

And I realized I didn't leave a spot in my garden layout plan for chard, kale, and collards. What do you think about putting them around the perimeter of the strawberry beds?

Last year my strawberries all died. Maybe it was the weather? Maybe it was the soil/compost in the new beds weren't completely ready for them? I'm only adding 12 plants to those beds this year to see how they do. My old strawberry bed did very well. I missed having berries last year. Anyway, there would be room for some greens unless anyone knows of a reason they should not be planted alongside strawberries.

The plan for those strawberry beds is all June bearing. And eventually buy a Greenstalk for the everbearing ones. If the Greenstalk was sitting on my patio, it would be easy to grab berries before work for lunch. I've decided not to buy one this year, tho. Need to get a plan for patio shade first.

Well, since I'm at work, I guess I had better work.

I just came in from busting up more soil. I hope to have a lot of overflow area. The soil I busted up was too wet to work properly, but that is a problem I have every year. I worked up a spot about 12' x 200'. I am not sure what I will put there, it really needs to be something that the wildlife does not like, but the problem is, the wildlife seems to like everything that I like, plus many other items.

I would love to have berries and fruit trees, but I have never been able to make that work, because I have always had too many critters around.

I started some tomato and pepper seeds today. I will try to use my neighbors greenhouse when I up pot, that will save me a lot of space here in my spare bedroom. I also plan on placing a lot of sweet potato slips there also.

Well the dog has lots of medicine, but the bump on his side is benign. The Toyota is in the shop. One of my brothers was very close to one of the OKC tornadoes and the Norman tornado got the house of the son of a friend, extensive damage. Another friend had a grass fire that got one outbuilding. Hope March is nicer. Houzz doesn't want me to post, so, XOXO.

Amy, I hope the dog in on the mend now, and the Toyota repairs well. I am sorry for all the other bad news.

I am sore today. Late yesterday I saw my neighbor going into my pasture, and went down to check, I had worked up a strip over near where I saw him, I got my rtv and went over to check on him. ( we are planing on planting in the area). I wanted to see if he could get his small tractor over the ground I had worked, he could, so we worked up an acre +. We plan on plant potatoes on about half of the ground if he gets back from town early enough today.

I need to get out and get some work done, but I am so tired and sore, it is much easier to sit in this recliner, but I don't get much done sitting here.

I have a problem with my John Deere, it is starting to grow taller, it is much harder for me to get on it than it was last year, maybe I should let the air out of the tires.

When to start pepper seed ? According to the pepper growing guide at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, I should've done this 4 weeks ago. But I planted some jalapeno, bell, and haberno seed today.

How to Grow: Sow seeds 8-10 weeks before planting out after last frost.

I started mine late also, but I live in a crazy area, I have had frosts around the first of May many times, but I put them on a heat mat last night in hope of speeding them up.

Mine are on a heat mat also and I got the temp set for 83*. See what happens.

Taters are in over at Jennifers:

Now I need to do the same over east this weekend but weather boy says 2 or 3 inches of rain tomorrow...

Rick

My neighbor did not contact me today, and, as far as I know he did not show up in the field where we have the land ready to plant. We have 100% chance of rain tomorrow, 85% chance Sat, and flood warnings west of us.

I would have liked to put the rest of the potatoes in, we have about 1/2 acre ready for potatoes, but my joints are so sore I can hardly move.

I started some peppers a few weeks ago, then some more over the weekend. Now the first batch are sprouting (of course). Tomatoes are coming along nicely, I noticed that couple are starting to show their true leaves. I see a up potting in my future.

Kinda yuk weather here. Neighbors had windows busted out.i have hail and wet chickens

Kim, I don't like your "Yuk" weather, I bet the chickens didn't either. I started raining here about dark, but nothing other than a little rain so far, but quite a bit more rain is expected.

I had a few wet chickens too, Kim, but luckily no hail.

I'm not sure how much rain we got. Didn't look at the gauge this morning. It was chilly tho!

But have y'all seen what is coming next weekend?! What?! Back into the low and mid 20's. That is yuk, too!

Plan is to plant the broccoli in a couple of days and cover next weekend. The cabbages are in the hoop house now, but I will not plant them until after next weekend. They'll stay in their pots where they can be moved indoors.

The broccoli is too big to wait.

And the light shelf is officially full. Once everything is up-potted, it won't be able to hold it all. However, by that time the kale, chard, etc. should be able to live in the hoop house and even be ready to plant. Once I find a place for it. I did some thinking on that early this morning. I've considered getting one of those long "raised bed" SmartPots. But, I haven't checked the price on one yet. Maybe just gather a few pots??

This morning I peeked at the tomato trays. They're just barely starting to push up from the potting mix. Yay!

A couple of nights ago, the lettuce, flowers, and roselle were started. I'm super excited about these Queeny varieties of zinnias. Other than those, I started a Peppermint Stick zinnia and white cosmos.

Wow. I was low on lettuce seed. I sorta remember dumping several old packages in a bed to see what would happen.

I'm just now remembering I forgot to start arugula seed. Anyway, I only had Bibb and Red Salad Bowl. I'll just buy a few romaine plants this year.

Speaking of lettuce, I pulled all the fall lettuce plants out of the hoop house beds. They weren't even bitter. They were triple washed, tho. I have enough lettuce to last a week or so. I eat salads every day. I don't remember all of the varieties. Some of it was started from seed at my house and I purchased plants from Looney Farms. Did y'all see that she's selling her farm?

I'm rambling all over the place. My point of all of that is, the hoop house beds are now cleared out and ready for the broccoli.

Back to work now.

Have a good day, Friends.

Jennifer, your comment about the lettuce reminded me about the time I did the same thing. I most often buy my seed from the Farmers Co-op because they have much larger packages as a cheaper price. Anyway I had a lot of extra lettuce seed, and a few bare spots in the pasture. This was not long after I had bought my first tractor, and wanted to play with it anyway.

There is a knoll about 200 to 300 feet south of our house. I though that I could make the knoll look nice, so I disc up a fairly large spot and planted a lot of my excess seed. The knoll did look very nice, I had all different kinds of lettuce and green planted of the knoll, Madge and I enjoyed it, but not near as much as the deer did.

I am grounded, I got my arthritis and gout so flared up that I get to sit in the house and take medication for a few days. I might as well sit around, because it is just soupy wet outside.

" On This Day " pic from 3 years ago, I had already potted up my tomato plants twice. My current plants are just now sprouting their first true leaves. What a diff. Should be a lot easier to deal with and I won't feel pushed to get them in the ground.

Good looking plants , but a little too early.

Looks like we're fixin to get slammed again with arctic air late next week.

Hope I don't end up having to cover up onions again.

a-hole weather.

Rick

A few years ago I covered my onions with leaves and then watered it down heavily. We had snow and an overnight low of 6* and they came out of it just fine. I did the same to my cilantro back in Dec and it survived a 1* night and is a full healthy bed of cilantro right now. More than Mrs Dollar and I will eat.

I got a new barbecue toy. Its an infrared temp gauge gun. Cost $24 at Harbor Freight. I use it to measure the temp of my grill grates when searing meats. But I found another use, I'm monitoring my pepper seed planting to make sure the mat is keeping it at right temp.

Can't tell it by this pic, but I've got the mat set to maintain 85* and my temp gun usually says 83*, which is close enough for me. In this pic, it says 81* but I've had the dome off the plant tray and I've found the surface temp cools rapidly when its off.

I think I could use this also to measure soil temp in the garden. Just dig down a few inches, point the laser beam, and get a temp.

Lynn, I have one of those guns from harbor freight also, but I have never used mine for cooking. I have used my gun like you are doing, plus ground temp, engine temp on my tractors, and on any thing I want to know the temp on, I have never checked it, but it seems to be pretty accurate. I would expect that mine should be ready for batteries by now ( if they even use batteries ). I have not got gun out this year.

I am going to move most of my flats down to my neighbor's green house. I notices when we were coming back from town that the greenhouse was still shut up, so I hoped on my RTV and went down to check on the greenhouse, most everything was in need of water but it was fine, but we have things coming up too early. We have squash and pumpkins coming up now, I have no idea what we are going to do with them.

Well I tried to start a new thread, and goofed, some of you with more brain power will have to step in and get the new week started.