Thunderstorms & the 6th Seeding

The surprising addition of thunderstorms Sunday evening and throughout much of the night postponed any outdoor work yet again.  After that, strong, strong winds have rattled the windows and set the tree branches to clicking together like a beginning drum class, off rhythm and excessively loud.  The snow has washed away and now it is easy to see the deep ruts that the deluge cut through the lawn in places.  The landscape is never-ending beige and brown, with an aluminum-colored sky overhead.  However, despite the bleakness outdoors, the forecast is for temperatures in the 40’sF for the next ten days, and decent night-time numbers as well.  I’m thinking/hoping/praying that the soil will dry enough that I can get some outdoor seeding done this week, and also move baby plants to the greenhouse.  Actually, I’m definitely counting on getting that first round of plants moved and the next batches transplanted and refilling the basement space whether the weather cooperates or not, but not on a windyday as the flats would blow right off my wagon!  Regardless,  it was time to do the March 10th seeding (which as you recall is now a melding of 5th into 6th.)  Weird that there is more green in my basement than outdoors!

This round now contains the dwarf marigolds for the potager’s path edgings, lots of cabbage varieties (although smaller amounts of each since we tend to eat more lettuce and spinach and other greens in spring than cabbage), aspa-broc, more onions and cippolini, lettuces in 4-packs, sweet alyssum in 4-packs to be tucked into the strawberry beds to improve pollination, the cold-tolerant (Polbig & Defiant), cherry, and grape tomatoes, the red cherry sweet peppers, a few of each type of broccoli and cauliflower.  If you’d like to know the variety names, you can click on the 2019 seed list page above.

The transplanting is on hold due to lack of space, so there’s hundreds of babies needing their own pots which must be done this week.  The 4th seeding has had some good, some less than stellar germination which may turn out to be a blessing.  Of course, most of that was the Plant World Seed order of mostly perennials that are much slower to germinate than broccoli or lettuces, etc.  One batch of onions has had terrible germination, but it was 2 yr. old seed so it was iffy at best.  There’s still plenty of time to seed more, especially those designated for storage.

One particularly ugly day, I went after seed potatoes to lift my spirits, only to discover they didn’t have them in yet, so I was forced to drown my sorrows in pie.  And, we’re still waiting on that first crocus to set things in motion….frantic motion it will be.  There’s lots of catching-up ahead!

Advertisement