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

[Hattie the Hen]

Hi there!

We are having our hottest day of the year so far and I have just come in because it was too hot -- so I decided to have a late lunch-break & a cup of tea. I will go out again in a while.

I have been potting up my artichoke plants into large pots. I don't want to plant them in the ground yet as I need to prepare some more earth well away from my cardoons. They are the same family Huge wonderful plants I love the focus & drama they give my garden along with an inula (yes, I know you regard that as a weed but I love it's large leaves & I'm funny that way ).

I have potted up a whole load of peppers & I'm onto the smaller tomatoes now. Eggplants to go after that.......it's never ending!

The sweetcorn plants I put in the other day seem to be doing fine -- I was a bit worried about them as I know they really don't like being transplanted but they are producing new leaves..... so !!!

I'm having to water quite a bit as it is so hot & dry (my soil is very free-draining). A lot of my plants are very young so they need more water; I will gradually wean them off it & mulch them more as they grow taller.

"Julia" & the chicks are doing very well & they are already getting little proper feathers at the ends of their wings. They are very, very lively & have just discovered today what fun it is to jump up on Mum's back & hurl themselves off -- she is very disconcerted by this, especially when all five do it!

Happy Gardening :tools

:rose Hattie :rose

 

[jamespm_98]

Planted some heirloom tomatoes I started from seed last night. The varieties were 2 marglobe, 2 oxheart, 1 brandywine and 1 mortgage lifter. I hope to plant more bush beans this weekend.

 

[tomatokate]

I planted spinach. Oh, and I moved my tomatoes and radishes from their pots to the soil.:rainbow-sun

 

[Hattie the Hen]

As I am growing so many tomatoes this year I have been reading up on companion planting. I thought this was very interesting:-

http://www.tomatocasual.com/2008/05/06/boost-your-tomatoes-with-companion-planting-part-1/

I managed to get a lot more stuff potted up & gave the raised veggie beds beds a good watering this evening.

I had a big surprise this afternoon a Blackbird had flown into my kitchen -- my cat was terrified by it.......!! He couldn't wait to get out of the kitchen; the cat I mean.
I caught the bird in a towel & returned him to the garden & the silly cat returned to eat her evening meal.......

Happy Gardening. :tools

:rose Hattie :rose

 

[freshfood]

More like, what am I re-planting!! We had a frost Sunday night and about a third of our tomato plants died. The neighbor across the street runs a farm stand and we help each other out all the time...he had extra tomato seedlings, which he gave us. Unfortunately, they were from extra seeds which he had just broadcast sown in a seed tray - not the kind with the separate cells, the solid plastic kind that goes under the cells to keep the water from leaking out the bottom of the cells... so the roots were all tangled together , took forever to get them separated - but I did it!!! We grow about 70 paste tomato plants every year, so you can do the math - as I said, I had to replace about a third.:tools

The bonus was that he also had half a dozen big boy plants which I put in, too. Yum!

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Hi freshfood!

Sorry to hear about your tomato losses in the frost. We might get one tonight -- so the weather forecast says. I think we will miss it but it will still be a cold night. So I have decided NOT to put out the melon & squash plants that I had planned to & I will cover everything in fleece, mulch etc. etc. The squash & courgettes which are already planted out have been in for over a week so they will survive covered, I think.....??

Yesterday we had our hottest day so far this year but this morning is cooler but still very warm & sunny. I find it easier to do heavy work today so it's a relief. I intend to do some more earth shifting today -- to make hills for my squash etc. because I'm not planting them in my raised beds.

Happy Gardening everyone. :tools :tools :tools


:rose Hattie :rose

 

[Hattie the Hen]

I'm not sure i'm going to be planting anything today!

It's been pouring with rain since yesterday -- heavily! The forecast says it might stop in some areas by mid afternoon; I hope I shall be lucky as I have so much to do out there!

Yesterday I managed to direct sow spinach,turnips, kohl rabi, celtuce in my newest raised bed. At least the rain will get them off to a good start.

I want to sow wallflowers & pansies for planting out later in the year.

I've got a whole bunch of herb seeds that I want to get in --2nd sowings of dill, cilantro etc. my 6 varieties of basil are doing so well. I was amazed at how quickly they came up last month.

My couple of lemon-grass sticks (sitting in water) have now developed a good set of roots so I want to pot these up. The centres are sending up new leaves as well. I've also got some ginger which is ready to plant (in the greenhouse of course).

I need to sort through my box of seed packets to make sure I haven't missed anything vital to "THE GREAT FOOD PLAN" for this year.

My squash & courgette plants are doing really well on their hills mulch with piles of grass cuttings. They have really taken off in the last week. I do have sheets of clear plastic in front of them & they are planted in front of a solid fence in a very sunny spot. Now I just need the SUN......!! :coolsun PLEASE

Have a great weekend & Happy Gardening. :tools


:rose Hattie :rose

 

[karanleaf]

It rained here from 4am till about 1pm so not much planting out side today
But as I was weeding out part of my old herb bed turned Rhubarb area I found 3 Pineapple mint starts I had thought I was going to have to buy more. Amazing stuff mint, through all the weeding out, digging and removing over the past 5 years,,,, and it still came back I gentling lifted the 3 starts I saw and re potted them in pots in the green house. Yesterday I finally got my 3 Sweet Potato starts planted :tools I also re potted the Stevia I bought Friday night , so now I have 9 separate plants of Stevia So even with the rain I was able to feel good about the day :coolsun

:happy_flower Karan

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Hi karenleaf

Glad to hear your pineapple mint popped up. I have to take mine indoors in the winter. Do you mulch your rhubarb patch where you found it lurking ?

I have spent most of the weekend frustrated because I couldn't get out in the garden. I was going crazy because I had so much to do.

AT LAST our torrential rain stopped late yesterday afternoon so I was able to sow 3 kinds of carrots. I'm doing a little experiment to see which ones to best here in my raised beds. I use to grow them direct in the ground in my last garden but only had average results. I'm interested to see if they fair better in the raised bed in the soil that I have picked though for any weed roots & stones.I've also sown my salsify, parsnip, turnip, kohl rabi in the same bed. I thought a ROOTS BED would be a good idea. I also added more fresh chicken poo compost, straw & soil to the bed I'm going to grow my melons in. I have isolated the fresh poo plus straw & grass cuttings in a pit a couple of feet down with a sheet of plastic on top. It's there only to provide heat. On top I put lovely mature compost & soil about 15" inches deep & I shall plant my melon seedlings in to this (they are in the little greenhouse at the moment). I shall keep a cover over this bed unless we get a very hot summer. This is my big experiment for this season!

HAD MY FIRST BROAD BEANS YESTERDAY !!!!! As Bruchetta with garlic & chives! DELICIOUS

Happy Gardening. :rainbow-sun


:rose Hattie :rose

 

[FarmerDenise]

I finally got around to planting all our odds and ends. The main planting is nearly finished. We did 2 rows of popping corn yesterday. Today I transpanted some sunflowers, since the ones in the rows are too crowded anyway. I planted several in front of the chicken yard. That is also where I planted the other odd plants. It should look quite interesting this summer. Let's see, there are the sunflowers, alfalfa, yellow summer squash, nasturtium, a flower I got from my parents house and don't know the name, 1 stalk of red indian corn (the only one that came up), a tomato plant. I think that's it. The lemon basil I planted in the garden where it is more likely to get watered more regularly.

It is interesting to see what others are planting depending on their climate and opportunity. One of our neighbors squash plant is huge already, but she planted hers more than a month ago. We couldn't plant ours in the ground until the tractor guy got around to plowing our field the last weekend in May!!