Why Not Flowers?

So as we cruised the garden center the other day marveling at how expensive annuals are when they only last one year, but still wanting to buy some we thought why not try annuals from seed. Since we already have the whole seed starting set up in place it was just a couple bucks for seed packets. So far the germination rate has been astounding.. we'll see how they do long term.

The Nightshades.. an update.

I'm happy to say that of all the plants we've started so far the tomatoes and peppers seem to be doing the best.. with the basil not far behind. We've produced nursery size tomato plants, which I'm quite excited about. Obviously it's all for show until we see if they bear fruit, but it's a promising start.

Crazy CO weather

So I'm finally back up to date on my blog here and this really did happen last night(May 11). They said it would snow here.. and sure enough, it did. Couple quick pics of our snow covered garden. The good news is that under all those row covers the direct sown seeds were really starting to pop. Lots of onion and lettuce seedlings coming up. The bad news is I just had the thin row covers, not the thermal blanket ones so I'm really hoping everything underneath them survived.

Compost Bin

The first compost bin is finally done. This has been on my to do list for about 6 months. I hemmed and hawed repeatedly on how to build it. How big did I want it, did I want it made of wood or metal, how fancy or not. I finally settled on a fairly classic design, wooden sides to help trap in moisture in the dry air out here in Colorado. I wanted to do wider slats but 1x4 is really the widest cut of rough cut lumber you can find, and I felt finished pine was a bit of an excess for a compost bin.

Another bin will be forthcoming.. we don't have space to do a side by side and still have room to turn it over. So there will be a second bin about 5 feet away, facing this one with room too work between them.

Stupid Seeds

So it's now the last week of April and of all my direct sown seeds pretty much nothing has come up. I have two tiny plants that may or may not be pea seedlings but I'm not entirely sure. It has been a cool April and I'm not sure I have the moisture levels quite right so I'm hoping this is a fixable situation.

No pictures, because they would just be of empty garden beds which I find a little depressing. Plan will be to transplant cold hardy veggies outdoors(onions, green onions, lettuce, chard, and broccoli) the last weekend of April and then replant the seeds as well.

We Go Outdoors

So based on a number of seed timing charts I read I determined(I'm not sure correctly) that the optimum date for planting certain seeds outside was 4-6 weeks before the average last frost. Here in Denver that average last frost date is May 5th, but to play it safe I used an average last date of May 15th or so. So this meant putting out seeds the first week of April

First step is to have a plan. I'm not sure if you can quite see it in the picture, but that piece of paper there lays out everything that is going in the garden and what it's spacing should be. We are planting our garden in the "block" style and the recommendations for spacing came from the CSU Extension.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/mg/gardennotes/713-Block.html



Next of course we needed seeds. The candidates for early spring seeding were radish, arugula, romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, spinach, onions, green onions and peas.


Finally with everything laid out it was a simple matter of making some furrows, dropping the seed in, covering them up, and watering them in.

The not so deadly nightshades

Alright the last of the indoor seeds have been started.. peppers, tomatoes, and basil.

Sadly our 9 year old camera had issues the day I tried to document this so of all the seedlings, which are doing well, I only got pictures of the peppers.