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.

Still waiting for spring. . .

We (mostly hubby) are still plugging away at the greenhouse. The weather has not been helpful. Cloudy, windy, rainy. Although, right now it looks like we may have sunshine today.

I started some of my seeds this week - tomatoes, parsley and celery. I still need to start peppers. Anything else will get direct sewn or bought as nursery plants. I just don't have enough room right now.

And speaking of seeds, I just keep buying more:

• Acorn Squash - Table King
• Bok Choy
• Marigold - Snowdrift
• Alyssum - Royal Carpet
• Love-in-a-Mist - Persian Jewels
• Linaria - Dwarf Fairy Bouquet
• Marigold - Starfire Signet Mix
• Forget-me-not

And the last one was a mistake - I thought I picked up blue flax. Well, I guess I have to go seed shopping again. :)

Is it Spring yet?

I'm starting to feel like Bart Simpson - Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Come on spring!

The sun keeps teasing me. Yesterday was sunny, today is gloomy and overcast. We get freezing fog off and on. I took this picture a couple of weeks ago of one of my Rugosa roses:



This last week I did manage to prune my fruit trees. I know, they are itty bitty still so it wasn't much of a project. I've done a little spring clean up, weather permitting. And we have worked on the greenhouse.



We put the frame together in the garage. We will carry it out back when we have the wood base ready. It's setting on some temporary wood bits so Jim could take some measurements. We bought the wood and he cut it yesterday and now it's too cold to work on it. Sigh.

The next step is to cut wood for the benches and then seal all the wood. Once we have nice weather again. (Strange, before moving here I never thought of "nice weather" being anything above 40 degrees)

Waiting for Spring

Mostly what I'm doing right now is waiting for spring. I have the veggie garden planted. I need to prune the fruit trees, but the weather hasn't been cooperating. Yesterday was fairly nice, but I had jury duty all day.

wait - whats that glare on my monitor? It can't be! THE SUN IS OUT!

We have a greenhouse kit we bought a year ago from Harbor Freight. It's the 6' x 8' model. There is quite a bit of info about these greenhouses (HFGH) at Garden Web in the greenhouse forums. We've been checking all that info out on how to put it together. Here is what we've done so far (and it's only been a year).

We put down the floor for the greenhouse:



I opened the box and made sure all the parts were there:



We need to buy wood for the base. The problem is we need to stain/seal the wood and it is too cold to do that. We may be able to warm the garage up enough, but we will see. Or we may wait for it to be warmer outside.

Come on spring!