We have all the large beds built, and four of them have hardware cloth. Today we will put hardware cloth in the other two beds, and then we will be ready to move that 7.1 cubic yards of dirt into the beds. I will call Lane Forest products on Monday and arrange for the dirt delivery. We are going to spread a huge tarp out on our front lawn and ask them to drop it on the lawn. We don't want it dropped on the street!
The tomatoes are hardened off and ready to plant. Some of them didn't fare so well outdoors, I wasn't as gentle hardening them off as I should have been. Part of the problem is they were too tall to go into the little greenhouse that I was going to build, a kit off Amazon. Next year I will wait to start my tomatoes until April 15th so that they won't grow too large for my seedling starting area before it's time to plant!
Meanwhile, the peppers and eggplants are doing fabulously on the laundry room shelf. I used only three of the six grow lights in the kit to make this more of a holding area unless of a grow indoors greenhouse area. So far so good, I think the plants will not grow up to the top of the lights before it's time to put them out on June 1st. The tomatoes had grown right through the top of the wire shelves so I had to put them out before I was really ready.
The planter gardens are going strong. Potatoes up in the grow bags, peas and spinach in the top long planter, green and purple baby bok choy in the bottom long planter, and my gladiolas coming up in the blue pot.
In the ongoing game of dominos, getting the tomatoes outside meant I could get the eggplants and peppers into the laundry room which meant I could start another round of seeds in the kitchen shelf. I have a dozen different herbs, plus basils, plus some flowers.
The three containers in the back row on the right hand side are the flowers, calendula, cosmos, and French marigolds. You can see they are all coming up! In the back row to the left, the French thyme is up and I have some basil up in the front. You can't quite see it in the picture but also in the front there are one or two bits of marjoram starting to peek up above the soil.
I probably should have gotten herb starts from the local plant stores, since a three or four inch pot is about the cost of a packet of seeds. But sometimes they are more expensive, you're not sure exactly what you're getting, and, well, seed catalog time is a crazy time. So I'm starting all my herbs from scratch. We will see how it goes!
I'm using the 3-in deep four cell containers from epic gardening. They have deep side slits for air pruning of roots, so that you don't end up with roots circling around the container in a big mess. I got them too late for my nightshade starts, but I intend to use them going forward. They're really sturdily made and I look forward to many years of use.
Nice!
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