I went to Lowes and got some plants and seeds.

I made some pots to plant some seeds and get something started.

We had some warm sun that kept me cleaning the garden and trying to figure the best pots in which to grow the bigger plants. It would be nice if the sun would stay around, but we’re do to have rain all weekend… again.

Len - Your plants look very happy!

Richard - That salad looks delicious!

We ended up getting rain overnight and we needed it. Dulles had over 1/2" so I think we received a similar amount. No rain gauges out because of unpredictable freezing temps overnight.

Thanks Cindy! Yes, Richard your tomatoes make the rest of us salivate. Have you started a new crop already?

I had a new experience with seeds that won't germinate. My Cascade snap pea seeds are 3 years old and they would rather mold than live. I made 3 attempts now just in the market for a new bag.

Len I have a bunch of tomato, squash, peppers, and bok choy plants started. They don’t look anything like yours-now I am jealous-think maybe I need a wholesale bulb change.

These are my protectors-lol-just kidding-took my nephew to the local zoo last weekend-he loves the alligators

Here is the real protector, although it seems like doves are his favorite. He snatched one out of the tree next door right in front of me last week

Richard your plants all look healthy! Your tomatoes could use a bit of fish emulsion maybe? That hawk should keep the squirrel population down. They are worse than rabbits in my garden.

Pretty chuffed about my tomatoes so far. I have 10 plants, 3 varieties - all indeterminates and about as high as my chest, with lots of fruits setting. Looks like our resident opossum found some of them, I discovered some empty calyxes on one plant, so I've got to come up with protection. I have a roll of wire fencing and encircled one plant with it. Now I think I need to do the rest. Then I need to work on keeping the birds and rats away...

Carol - I found you can cover much more garden space with the fencing all in one block than covering many small spaces.

I had an area with 4 small apple trees and 2 peach trees. Then I encircled two near by trees in one larger enclosure for tomato blight test plots. While taking a break I started to wonder what the total length of all the fencing was. So I did some figuring and post counting and found that I could enclose a 34X64 foot space with one new roll of 5 foot fencing and 2 more posts. In actuality what happened was I decided to make the fencing 12 foot high. I went down in the woods and cut 14 foot long posts from young trees that grow very straight and high in all that shade, Kinda like my tomato seedlings. So that cut down on how many posts I had to buy. I got the height with 3 strands of small diameter steel wire.

I've been turning compost into my early spring planting plot.

I started my broccoli on Sunday and all 12 are up about 1/4" as of this morning. I'll probably start my peppers next weekend. Need to buy my Dixondale onion starts next week too. I have some bed prepping to do but it's been raining too much to work the soil lately. Need to fertilize my garlic this weekend.

Woke to a white blanket this morning. Forgot to bring in the seedlings last night. I have a tray of early spring greens I've been putting out during the day the last couple days in one of the kitchen caps. It's probably a week too early in their transition. But now the cap has a thick layer of snow on it so I'm not messing with the insulation. It's OK, they are the earliest sowing so if I killed them there are more to come. I've other seedlings coming up inside.

No snow here just cooler temps. Our pear trees are now at full bloom and nite time temps will hover around freezing for several nights before moderating, may dip down to 28F by next Tues morning but only for one night? Last year a double dip to 28F wiped out all the pears during peak bloom, hope no repeat of that. If the long range forecast looks ok I will start planting carrots, beets. peas, lettuces, broccoli, and cabbages next week.

Rain is predicted for tomorrow so I went ahead and planted the peas, carrots, beets, and lettuce seeds today. I like to plant just before a rain. Cooler temps prevail here in the 30's/50's range but these seeds won't pop up for at least a week when it should be warmer. Still concerned about the 3 blooming pear trees, it was real windy today and too cool for pollinators to come out. The forecast is still iffi for next Tues, Weds, & Thurs mornings low temps, it's gonna be a close call for the pears.

It was a beautiful day here yesterday and I finally got to spend some time in the garden ☺️ planted two trays of "green stuff" quite tight, mostly to harvest before tomatoes and beans go in the beds. The overwintered greens and spinach are walking up as well. In the greenhouse it looks like 6 out of 16 pepper plants are so alive after winter in the garage and the chitted potatoes are ready to plant.

Suddenly it seems like spring!😊

Oh man, I'm envious of all those plants too.

Here in Michigan there is still snow on the ground, measured in feet and not inches. Saturday will be a high of 24 and a low of 16. Last frost here is usually the end of May or the first week in June, so I plant peppers and eggplant about the first week in April, tomatoes a couple of weeks after that. I have some little hoophouses outside over raised beds, I harden off cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts in there, then plant lettuces and other greens which are cold tolerant. Potatoes and onions go directy into the ground about mid-May.

Meanwhile, I just look at pictures of all your seedlings and bide my time....

Annie

I planted 8 broccoli, 4 cauliflower, 1 cabbage, and 12 butterhead pots today...the beginning of my gardening season.

The temp hit a sunny 65F here today and the pear trees were humming with pollinators, another warm one again tomorrow so we should get a good fruit set as long as there are no freeze surprises ahead. It looks like the plums set fruit ok, real tiny hints of fruit, will know for sure by next week. I bought my cabbage and broccoli transplants yesterday and like a dummy put them on the ground where my lone hen saw a buffet., arrrg, but did save most of them. Hope to plant them next week after another brief cold snap hits this Sun/Mon. They need a little time to re-coop from the hen pecking.

These days I have to put an old egg basket upside down over or sprinkle red pepper on my early transplants due to resident rabbit.

It will be a nail biter tonite as the temp may dip down to 24F. So far the plum and pear trees have dodged a killer freeze with lows of 29-30F but if the temp remains the the 20's for several hours then who knows? It will be breezy overnite too so that could make a difference. Otherwise not a lot going on here, still picking spinach every 3 days and freezing half. I did finish tuning up the lawn mowers so will be ready for that first cut later in the week when temps bounce back up into the 70's. Plan to plant the cabbage and broc transplants on Tues.

vgkg - Good luck with the plum and pear trees.

On day eight since seeding my peppers and as of 6:00 am this morning there were 24 of 42 sprouted. They are still on a heat mat but I'll probably turn that off in another day or 2.

My broccoli starts are putting out their first true leaves and will be potted up in a week or so.

I bought 4 bunches of Dixondale onions last week locally but it's been too wet to work the soil and plant them. Hoping to get that done this weekend. Red Candy, Superstar, Patterson, and Red Zeppelin.

I won't start the tomatoes until around April 5-10...I want to keep them around 6-8" at plant out time mid May.

I have onions coming this week...among them some Blush variety. I start tomatoes and peppers about March 29....got onions today...want to plant them tomorrow.

I sowed up a 36 cell tray with 9 different varieties of tomatoes and 1 row of Lipstick peppers which seem do the best here.

Looking to get out and plant some lettuce and perhaps some radishes in the garden.

Edit couple hours later to add:

I did get out to the garden. I got a 9' row of Lizard F1 spinach, two 9' rows of Black Seeded Simpson lettuce and a 9' row of Landis Winter lettuce sowed. The Landis Winter seeds I saved from last years plants. I had picked a bunch of seed heads and just put them in a large freezer bag. So today I crushed the bags and pulled out the large stemmy pieces and what was left looked like mainly dust with small stem pieces. Remembering how small lettuce seeds are I just spread anything left in the bag along the row.

I still have a small patch of Landis Winter lettuce which I planted last August. It made it thru the winter and is still green. I haven't picked any since early in January but I wanted to point out that if you grew this lettuce and saved enough seeds that it might make a nice plot of green manure which you could also eat till it gets bitter and use it as a ground cover till spring.

Well the fruit trees may have dodged the freeze bullet. It did dip down to 26F this morning but by 10am the trres seemed to be ok (no droopy brownish looking buds/leaves...yet). Here's the 11am pic...actually 2 pear trees one behind the other....one more dip down to 29F tonite...

I will plant the cabbage & broccoli transplants tomorrow afternoon since the long range says no more below freezing temps here for at least 10 days and hopefully beyond. Tues will be perfect timing for the transplants to go in the ground, Weds, Thurs, Fri, and Sat will be mostly cloudy and that shade gives them time to acclimate without being under intense sunshine all day.

Another cold one over nite, dipped to 28F again. Here's the 3 rows of autumn planted spinach below, doing very well, better than the fruit trees no doubt. That should be it for below freezing temps, at least for a long stretch and hopefully no more <32F this season. Will get all cabbages and broc transplants in the ground this afternoon, week ahead looks great to get the garden in gear. Will be prepping the rows for future snaps and squash too...

Glad your trees pulled through vgkg. It's always nervous this time of year when all it can take is one night too long of cold to really mess things up. Everyone sounds busy :)

Things are looking mostly good around here. The fruit trees and maples are starting to bud up. The water is flowing across the land in goodly amounts right now, best I've seen in a few years. Lost the pair of gold raspberries and one of the grapes I planted in last year. That's ok, had a quirk to pick up a couple gold raspberries and a couple grape plants that were on display at the feed shop a week ago. All the other grapes, raspberries, lilacs and currant I put in last year are waking up. I potted up the raspberries, grapes, and some asparagus crowns to get them going for the few weeks till it's better timing to plant them in.

Out in the ground beds alliums are looking good. Beet greens are showing- I need to get those cleaned up soon before critters find them. I want a seed crop this year if I can. Other overwintered greens are looking good. Opened up the active cap and it stunk! Whew there are bronze fennel seedlings like weeds in there. I need to weed those out. But the celery overwintered great and some are starting to put on new growth.

Kitchen garden caps are doing best. The tray of seedlings forgotten out there days ago are thriving. Today was the first day of a few trays going out to start hardening off in the caps, early greens and hearty flowers. I need to harvest bittercress before it gets too much bigger and gets truly bitter.

Week 8 seeds got started over the weekend. Greens, herbs, flowers. Tomatoes for processing and a new kind of tomatillo I haven't tried before. Hot peppers are happy baby plants. Sweet peppers popped up weak, it's older seed. I think I might just start something else since I got the time on those.

I have seeds started under lights and on heat mats. A few tomato varieties jumped the gun and already had to be culled and potted up. Basil and onion seedlings are also up, and a few peppers are rearing their first leaves. I need to decide whether to start spinach in containers, or to do it all in garden beds. Maybe plant greens this weekend.

Martha

I got my onions planted yesterday. Both varieties came out about perfectly to the end of the row. Also I planted Sugar Daddy sugar snap peas. The ground worked up splendidly. I have glads to plant soon. I make 3 plantings. I have potatoes green sprouting.

Well the Spring Garden is now officially 100% planted, yippie!, nyuk. Peas, lettuces, carrots, beets, cabbages, and broccoli, plus the fall spinach. Now it's just a matter of fending off the critters and completing the plan for the summer garden. As the spring veggies fade away the summer veggies will fill in the gaps, esp by the sweet potatoes and watermelons.
Today I noticed a lot of deer poop in the yard so I fortified the ele fencing with higher strings all around. Now that my veggie gardening has been cut almost in half (orders from Dr VgQn :-) I'll need to take good care of this garden, no more back up garden, ha. Sometimes a gardeneraholic needs a good/nice slap to sober up ;-)

I sowed 2 more varieties of lettuce yesterday. A 9 foot row each of Rouge D'Hiver and Marveille Des Quatre Saisons both with Red Tinged leaves. Today I grafted a Harrison, Dabinett, and Canadian Strawberry apple scions to rootstocks in the ground. The first two are cider apples which didn't make it thru their 2nd winter.

Okie HU

Finally got some scallions in the ground. And 3 varieties of radishes. One of them was free Japanese Wasabi from Baker Creek. Also sowed some Black Seeded Simpson lettuce in the big garden which might be far enough away from my main lettuce patch to get some true to variety seed.

That's a huge load of Spuds HU! So far here the spring gardening season is doing Great. The Beets, lettuces, and peas have popped up, the carrots are slow as is expected. The broccoli and cabbage transplants are looking very good, especially since the cloudy cool weather has helped them avoid transplant shock. Yesterday I bought 2 fairly mature tomato plants ( Brandywine & Cherokee Purple) and these will be my appointed "early birds". Once they have acclimated to the outdoors I will plant them in the ground within a heated box (like last year) and get a ripe tomato in early June. Still picking spinach every other day now (6 servings/picking).

Update on the fruit trees : The earliest plum tree to bloom seems to have lost all of its fruit, but the later plum tree looks like it may have lost only 50%? The 3 pear trees may have dodged the freeze bullet, they seem ok for the most part as their blooms drop, will know by next week. The figs and apple trees are starting to wake up, while the persimmon tree is still asleep. The Blueberries are at bud swell and should bloom this week.

This thread is keeping me going. Thank you. It is supposed to be 16 degrees tonight. (We have a Rocky Mountain Gardening thread but it moves pretty slowly so I love lurking here!) Last week was pretty nice, so I had all the brassicas and alliums outside during the day and in at night; but the past few days have been silly cold (30s and 40s daytime) so they are stuck inside like kids during rainy-day recess!

Nightshades are on a heat mat and looking good. New project this year (doesn't one always need to try at least one new thing every season?) is sweet potatoes. Gonna see if it's possible in this climate. So I started some and...they are putting out slips!

Got the squash plants transplanted and mulched on Saturday. Hope to have most of the tomato and bok choy plants transplanted today. Will post the transplant pictures later or tomorrow.

All but one variety of tomatoes stuck their elbows up out of the potting soil over night after 6 days. No heat mats or lights.

A little bit of poking around in the kitchen garden. Trays hardening off a week ago are seeing their first full night outside under the caps. A few of them got planted in. I figure if the overwintered ones are good, the new ones might as well go in where the are supposed to go instead of stayng in the trays. Two bins planted with taters. Kinnebecks. The grapes, raspberries, and asparagus I potted up a week ago got moved out to a cap. A lot of stuff got watered with compost water, the bin under the tumbler was full and brown.

A big spending day for the garden. Plant orders. I get to start with the new fruits and nuts this year. A smokehouse apple ordered through a local nursery. I already have a couple apples out back to add this one to. Also picked up German Butterball potatoes to plant two more kitchen bins with. Then it was online ordering. Four pomegranate bushes, two white, two pink. I realize red is more traditional, but pink and white mean less staining. An apricot, ligonberry, jostaberry, flowering currant, serviceberries. A couple shellbark hickories, two each of three kinds of hazelnuts. I think I'm going to need to finish up the plant nursery out back sooner rather than later, lol. I ordered smaller plants, so it's likely I'm going to want to grow them out for a year before planting them out.

I'm kind of proud of myself for ordering this year. Usually I think about it too early in the fall when I'm harvesting stuff and it's too early to order plants... then forget about it till I'm out spring plant shopping and it's too late to order what I want. Completely blew the budget. Hopefully it will be worth it in a year or few :)

I'm lucky if I don't max out my credit cards on plants , seeds ,,other supplies.

Oh my.

Okie HU

I was a really good kid with the seed orders this time around. Way under usual budget there. And it does help that I didn't have to buy any supplies this spring. Just not enough under to make up for all the plants, lol. It was buying 2 of some things. I could have done just one of each and bought another round in a year or two. But I also might forget or just not. And the trees ain't gonna get any bigger or cheaper if I put it off.

I did pretty good on seeds this time around (so far)-haven’t bought any-not so much with the $300 worth of potting mix. I do have about 500 packs (maybe more) of different kinds of seeds as an operating base. lol

Sunburst, White, and Butternut squash

We'll have 2 bright sunny days here at ~60F after several overcast days that helped the transplants avoid shock. Below is a pic from this morning before I picked a load of fall planted spinach (3 rows). I planted 6 cabbages between the 2 spinach rows on the left, previously there was a walking path of pine needles where the cabbages are now planted.

Next to go in will be Bush Beans (snaps) in the prepped row behind the rain gauge, followed by Squash in the prepped dark row to the far right. When the spinach bolts in May it will be removed to allow the future watermelon vines room to spread out, by June the cabbages should be mature enough to harvest, followed by the beans, both of which will also be removed for the WMs to spread out (4 hills off screen on the far left)..

Bracing for high winds here tomorrow, up to 50 mph gusts. Spent the day prepping future tomato plant holes. Almost all of the summer veggie soil'plot prepping is now complete other than the sweet potato and corn plots. Still no freezing temps in the future forecast so that's good. The plums and pears are still in question but there should be enough to survive the past freezes to get harvested, the pears look promising enough for canning next summer.

The sole sweet cherry tree is now in full bloom and the apples are near blooming. Figs are waking up with just a little bit of frost burn showing. It looks like I've lost my loan young peach tree, it's just 3 years old but shows no sign of life nor apparent damage. Some rain is knocking on the door which is good, hope it's an inch as we need some.

vgkg - We've been getting those high winds since yestrday morning. I've never seen such high winds outside of a thunderstorm. There are a lot of small limbs laying on the ground again after I picked them all up a couple weeks ago. We did get a little rain and thunder yesterday morning but the severe storms formed just to the east of me for the most part.

One good thing about the wind is that my soil is finally drying out enough to run my Mantis in the beds I plan to use this year. I need to till the onion beds first and plant the Dixondale starts I bought about 3 weeks ago. My broccoli starts will be ready to plant out in a couple weeks. I will start hardening them off tomorrow after the winds die down a bit.

I started a new thread for April as it's mid afternoon on April fools day, The first thread I ever started here on this site. Can't imagine how I went so long.