Sunday, May 17, 2009

April showers bring...

...Yeah, right. Some flowers, yes, but more work than anything else. May is one of the busiest months for gardening. So much to put in, so much to take out. And a few flowers, too, but in addition to nursing a cold, I've been tackling my to-do list, which has included:
1. Pulling thousands of maple seedlings out of many square feet of garden space in my mostly shady yard--they will grow anywhere.
2. Mowing at the Minton Stable Garden for a few hours. I had signed up to do this last weekend to not only take care of some of my work requirement, but because a friend had also volunteered and there is too much grass for one person to tackle.
3. Taking my broccoli seedlings inside and outside each day for the past week to harden them off.
4. Digging up some of my black-eyed susans, beebalm, and Solomon's seal and bringing them to the Perennial Divide. As you can see in the picture above, BNAN volunteers laid out the donated plants by variety and people who were interested could take one of whatever variety they wanted. I did not find anything that I needed or had the space for, but I purchased a few native perennials from the City Natives nursery.5. Weeding my MSG plot and thinning/harvesting more lettuce and spinach. I like putting bleu cheese and candied walnuts in a salad and making a meal of that.6. Spreading some salt marsh hay on the plot to keep the weeds down. Also, weeding the strawberries and noticing how they are coming along.
7. Planting out some of my broccoli seedlings (my babies!) at the MSG.
8. Keeping my tomato seedlings (still indoors) watered.

And I'm not finished! More weeding, and figuring out when, where, and how to plant the tomatoes. Then it will be time to sow some more seeds: basil, green beans, zinnias, etc. This is the way it is this time of year. When I was working 9+ hours a day in my old job, I couldn't break free until July, and by then it was too late and hot to plant perennials, or to start much of anything from seed. So I am rather fortunate to be able to put in 1-2 hours a day now so I can escape the July heat and reap more benefits later on.

3 comments:

Dan said...

This is one busy month for sure. It seems I have so much happening at once nothing is really getting done. Your greens look very nice and the broccoli babies too.

Black Eyed Susan said...

Sally -- tell me about your growlights. My seedlings are looking SAD on the porch, but the lights I have seem way too hot.

Sally said...

Dan--thanks for the encouragement. We've been having a mini-heat wave here and I've had to step up the watering.

Black-Eyed Susan--Here is a post about getting my growlights:
http://mydirtblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/costs-of-gardening-2009.html
I think that they've helped a lot in that my tomatoes were not getting enough light in
the past. I've been doing a little research into conditions, and heat could be a factor in problems with seedlings.
Now to write a post about tomatoes...