What Are You Planting Today, This Week, This Month?

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Today, planted Butterfly weed and Brunswick cabbage in milk jugs.

 

[the1honeycomb]

Planting Potatoes in bags in the basement!! Yukon Golds!! yum!!

 

[Teka]

With the a warm weather, I am having great winter garden -- daikon, collards, kales, chard, Chinese cabbage, Brussels sprouts, turnips, parsnips, celery, and so on....

It will probably snap cold as soon as I say this, but I moved some lettuce plants out to the garden from the greenhouse.... It was 60 degrees yesterday!

I am gambling on an early spring, and started coles and lettuce again in the greenhouse, for my spring crops. Time will tell, but I imagine we'll have an early spring that will quickly go to HOT, so I want brocs and Br. Sprouts early.

 

[so lucky]

We're getting pretty cold weather now, so it may be coming your way! It's so tempting to put spring stuff out early, really early. Last spring I could have put my beans and tomatoes out a month earlier than I did; would not have gotten frosted. And I should have, because they would have done much more than they did with the drought. So this spring, if I put cabbage and broc out in february, I wonder if I am just daring winter to dump it on me? Anyway, I hope you have good luck with your early garden.

 

[desertwillow]

Tonight here in the high desert of CA we are going to have temps down in the single digits so everyone east of us can expect more cold weather. It is supposed to warm up after tonight but only to the freezing mark. If I plant things early I put a frost blanket over everything, usually just in my raised beds. Our last average frost date is March 15th but I've known us to have frost as late as May 1st. I have to plant early to beat the high temps of summer. I pruned roses yesterday and they were already putting out leaf buds. I also have daffodil bulbs poking through.

 

[897tgigvib]

DesertWillow, you'll be having beautiful Daffodils!

 

[desertwillow]

I planted a few different varieties last fall so I'm looking forward to seeing them bloom. I can't do much in Jan. except prune and clean up. It's time to clean up my iris bed. I have a hundred or so bearded iris, all colors mostly the tall bearded and medium bearded. They and roses do well along with the usual desert plants. I've bought gladiola bulbs but can't plant yet and a friend gave me some dutch iris to try. I have a small patch of them already. Spider Lilies do well here also. My onions and garlic are doing fine and I plan on planting some cabbage when it's time. I had some lovely head cabbage last year.

 

[digitS']

We all have such diverse climates, don't we? Teka & So Lucky are dealing with an unusually warm winter so, I'd guess, that they really have to stay on their toes.

I would be delighted to have Dutch iris and bought a whole bunch of bulbs once. They bloomed but only for that 1st season - never to return in the spring :/. I blamed our zone 5 winter and too many months of arid weather. Here is DesertWillow growing them and talking about her onions & getting cabbage out soon!

Maybe DesertWillow doesn't have too much terrible cold but I know she has reported very cold winter weather there. Obviously, she has arid months. Even sowing bulbing onions for over-wintering was risky for me. Usually, they'd just bolt to seed with warm weather. I blamed the winters.

Now here also, we have Gardening with Rabbits who is obviously using winter-sowing and she is right in my neighborhood! Winter-sowing is sowing seed in containers that are somewhat protected (like gallon milk bottles) but left right outdoors. I've felt that we just don't have enuf winter and spring sunshine here for it to make any difference from a spring-sowing right in the open garden . . . I'm ready for that to be proven wrong and am really looking forward to her reports of success. I hope it works!

Steve

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

We all have such diverse climates, don't we? Teka & So Lucky are dealing with an unusually warm winter so, I'd guess, that they really have to stay on their toes.

I would be delighted to have Dutch iris and bought a whole bunch of bulbs once. They bloomed but only for that 1st season - never to return in the spring :/. I blamed our zone 5 winter and too many months of arid weather. Here is DesertWillow growing them and talking about her onions & getting cabbage out soon!

Maybe DesertWillow doesn't have too much terrible cold but I know she has reported very cold winter weather there. Obviously, she has arid months. Even sowing bulbing onions for over-wintering was risky for me. Usually, they'd just bolt to seed with warm weather. I blamed the winters.

Now here also, we have Gardening with Rabbits who is obviously using winter-sowing and she is right in my neighborhood! Winter-sowing is sowing seed in containers that are somewhat protected (like gallon milk bottles) but left right outdoors. I've felt that we just don't have enuf winter and spring sunshine here for it to make any difference from a spring-sowing right in the open garden . . . I'm ready for that to be proven wrong and am really looking forward to her reports of success. I hope it works!

Steve

I am starting to think the same as you about the sunshine and would be better off just planting in the garden. Last year the ground was not ready and I did not get a good start other than potatoes. This year the garden should be ready to plant in as soon as it is warm enough and I will be able to get the lettuce and greens out on time. I planted asparagus last year on time. I got the beans in on time. I started squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and things like that inside. I had the prettiest cucumbers and tomatoes. I was putting them outside in the sun and moving to the shade, bringing them back and then after I thought they were hardened off and did not worry as much and I was ONLY going to be gone an hour to the store, I came home and they were WHITE. It had got a lot hotter than I had expected. I kept them and ended up buying some tomato plants. I kept the others and a couple of leaves were growing. When I got the store bought ones planted I had room in the rows, so I planted my tomato "STICKS" and put them in the back so nobody could see them. My squash plants did not get in the sun that day and looked really nice, so I planted my nice plants. The tomato sticks got leaves and looked sad and the store bought plants grew. The rabbits (which were not mine at the time) crawled under their fence, crossed the alley, ate some of my squash plants and went home. I went out and put squash seeds in the ground because I thought they were going to eat all mine, but the rabbits got locked up and could not get out and all the plants they ate lived and all the ones I planted from seed grew. YOU COULD NOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE between the ones the rabbits did not eat on, the ones they ate on, which was just the stem left and a few leaves, or the ones planted from seed. I had A LOT of squash. The tomato sticks kept growing. My husband put supports up for the store bought ones and we kind of just ignored the stick ones. The store ones started having tomatoes turning red and we were happy and ignored the stick ones, which were half buried under big squash plants. Then, we noticed the stick tomato plants had FALLEN OVER from being so heavy with tomatoes. They did not turn red as fast as the store plants and I had to pick them green before they were ready, but the did turn red in the house. I did not get my cabbage and broccoli planted early enough and the rabbits ate a lot of those plants too. This fall I had a few purple sprouting broccoli that I had started and tried to keep alive until fall to plant. They lived and were growing and I was planning on picking broccoli this spring, but the new people who moved in have a couple of rabbits and one night the wind blew the door open of the garage where they stay and nobody knew they were out. They came over to the garden and found the nice broccoli plants and ate them to the ground. I think I have 2 plants left.

 

[ninnymary]

I just planted 5 (15gal.) containers with yukon and red potatoes. Last year I planted 5 in one container, this year I decided to put just 4 seed potatoes instead. I'm hoping since they will be less crowded that they will produce more?

Mary