I'm so behind!

I still haven't planted all my spring veggies. And my poor tomatoes need potting up so bad. We were out of town a few days and I haven't quit caught up yet.

Before we left I planted potatoes - Yukon Gold and Norland Red. One half of a 4 X 8 bed of each. I decided to wait to plant seeds in the garden until we got back.

We got back Saturday and yesterday I got some things planted. Set out plants for Walla Walla onions and burgundy onions.

I planted seeds for:

• carrots - Danvers #126, Rainbow Blend, Purple Haze
  
• radishes - Cherry Belle, Salad Rose, Sparkler, Watermelon
  
• beets - Cylindrical, Tall Top Early Wonder
  
• peas - Little Marvel, Tall Telephone.

Most of these are left over from last year. Some of them I'm using up and don't plan to buy again.

I still need to plant snap peas, scallion seeds and greens. I still have some random stuff in a couple of the beds. There is half a bed of onions and itty bitty parsnips from last year. The parsnips had pretty much got crowded out by the tomato jungle. I keep debating if I should try growing them again or not. . .

Hopefully I will get the rest of the seeds planted today (even though the wind is blowing). I also want to work on planting veggie and flower seeds in my moon garden. But, the first thing I really need to do today is pot up my tomato seedlings.

And once I get all that done, there are plants to move, flower seeds to plant, roses to baby. . . Oh, and a greenhouse to finish. :)

Spring!

Monday I planted most of the rest of seeds that I need to start inside - tomato, peppers and tomatillos. The only thing I didn't start were the alpine strawberries. From what I read, they need to be chilled first. I put them in the freezer and will plant them in a couple of weeks. The first bunch of tomatoes that I started in February are starting to get their first set of true leaves and should be ready to pot up soon.

The weather has been much nicer the last couple of days - after a few days of some hideous wind. I've been able to get outside and start to get things done. I got all the roses pruned! YAY! I planted some onion bulbs and have another package to go. More expensive that planting seeds, but I'm hoping for quick scallions. I also planted a couple of packaged daylilies that jumped into my cart at Walmart. Plants and seeds sure do seem to jump into my cart a lot this time a year. Hehehehe. . .

One thing I want to try to do is incorporate some veggies into the flower beds. This is a section of my "Moon Garden". In the foreground is a young peach tree (Ok, so the flowers are pink not white, I didn't know where to put it at the time.) I planted white onion bulbs in front of it.

In the area behind the tree in the photo, I also worked on moving some plants. The three shurbby things should help to hide the foundation. *Goes outside to remove tag from plant.* And, I made some room in that area to plant seeds. I'm thinking "Silverado" Chard, "Dwarf Blue Curled" Kale, "White Icicle" radishes(let some of them flower), carrots (to eventually flower), cilantro (to eventually flower), lettuce and some random flowers.

This bed is at the other side of the back of the house. It is sort of a herb garden, but it isn't really working that well. I'm going to move some of the stuff out of here, amend it like crazy. I'll leave the boxwoods, the rose in the right corner, the lilac in the middle of the bed (hard to see in the picture), a couple more roses and some lavender (the living ones).

I have some "Tri-Star" strawberries I plan to move to this bed. In their current bed, they get trampled a lot by the Garden Dog. I also plan to plant some veggies and annual flower in there as well.

The last picture is of my "Shuksan" strawberry path. I need to keep a closer eye on these babies at the end of summer. They sent runners everywhere! What a mess. I cleaned them up, moved the creeping thyme that was between the stones and threw down some compost. Hopefully I get a nice batch of berries this year. Mmmmm, strawberry pie.



I need to get my potatoes and the last package of onion bulbs planted in the next day or so. Then, I need to go find some plants for "Walla Walla" onions. And I have more plants to move, seeds to plant, and a greenhouse still to finish.

Jim, had some things he needed to get done, so we haven't worked on the greenhouse (and the high winds didn't help). Next weekend we should be able to work on it and get it finished.

So much gardening to do all of a sudden! It must be spring!

*Note, I started this post on Monday so it's dated Monday. I actually posted it today, Friday 3/20/09.

Seeds Are Sprouting

On Feb. 24 I started tomatoes, parsley and celery. They are all sprouting!

The parsley and celery are in the larger containers in the middle of the picture and are a little hard to see. They took forever but have started showing green the last couple of days.

I still need to start peppers, tomatillos and the alpine strawberries I just bought mere moments ago. Oh, and Green Zebra tomatoes as well. I'll buy plants for bulb onions. For everything else, I will plant the seeds out side (I think) .

And speaking of buying more seeds... I just can't seem to help myself. In the past few days I bought:

• Purple Tomatillos (like the green ones I had aren't good enough.)
  
• Green Zebra tomatoes (Been looking for "Aunt Ruby's Green German", but I'll give these a try.)
• Alpine strawberries (Been looking for these for a while.)
  
• Swiss Chard - Neon Lights (How many kinds of chard does a gardener need?)
• Blue Flax (What I meant to buy when I bought Forget-me-nots.)
• Radish - Salad Rose (Because every garden needs a hundred kind of radishes. Okay, 5 kinds.)
• Onion - Evergreen bunching (Because I keep forgetting I already have seeds for these - this makes 4 packages.)
• Watermelon - Moon & Stars (Never mind, that I don't have room for these. And, If I actually get a crop how am I going to get a 40 lb watermelon into my fridge?)

I also bought some onion bulbs to use as scallions. I'll plant them in the flower beds . I bought my seed potatoes - Yukon Gold and Red Norland.

All I need now is for us to quit having record cold temperatures and I can start gardening!

Rosie's Afternoon Walk

We walk Rosie the Garden Dog twice a day. Failure to get her enough exercise makes for a naughty Garden Dog. And her humans need the walk as well.

I didn't think we would make it for the second walk, because the weather turned nasty and started hailing. But, it did clear, the hail melted and the sun came back out. And for once I remembered to take the camera with me on our walk.

Looking across the farm fields towards Rattlesnake mountain. There were some impressive clouds yesterday!


Dark sky looking towards the Pasco water towers.



Vacant land, new houses and I think the mountain in the distance is Jump off Joe.



A little while after we got back from our walk, it hailed again. This time the hail was the size of marbles and looked like Styrofoam.


Unfortunately, the weather for the next couple of days is going to be cold. According to yahoo it's supposed to get down to 18 degrees tonight. Ugh. But, by the end of the week it looks like it should be warmer. I hope so, I have lots of garden things to do - prune roses, plant fruit trees, and start planting veggie and flower seeds outside.

Not to mention we would like to finish the greenhouse. All we need are a couple of days of nice weather.

Flowers! It must be spring!

Crocus are beginning to bloom in my yard! Woo-hoo! Spring! Well, almost. The weather is still a bit iffy. We've been getting a fair amount of rain the last few days.



We had a little sunshine today - here is the Rosie the Garden Dog enjoying it.