Tomato jungle to be, and greenhouse madness

Today I planted tomatoes in the ground in the hothouse we built out of used windows, and I am sure it is going to be a tomato jungle in no time.  I wanted to get at least one of each type of tomato I had started as seeds, and I left a couple of seedlings that started on their own in the hothouse.  I dug holes with a hand trowel, watered the hole with Maxsea, transplanted the plant, then put a cage around it.  Here are two pictures of the result.

You can see one plant which I allowed to overwinter (middle left) which has already set a few tomatoes.





I also worked on transplanting some of the seedlings in the greenhouse.  I'm way behind in the transplant department, but here are two pictures of the plants in the greenhouse today. Click to enlarge.

Blueberry bed, mystery plant unfolding, greenhouse starts

   Illijana is fixing up the blueberry bed these days.  We are using redwood sawdust that we are retrieving from a cabinet shop after laying down a bit of compost underneath.  Here is a pic of the portion done thus far.  You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

                                                     



Here is a photo of a mystery plant unfolding.  Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what it is?

Finally, the greenhouse is continuing its incredibly useful seed starting function.  Here are pics of plants almost ready to plant out, and the next round of seedlings (primarily tomatoes.)

Compost, seedlings, planting seeds, planting labels

This morning was a good astrological time to plant above ground crops so I planted four varieties of broccoli, two types of cauliflower, lettuce, and collard greens.  I planted the seeds in small 6 packs filled with Foxfarm Happy Frog potting soil.  I use a dibble to drill holes for the seeds, put in the seeds, usually two per cell, and water.  One of the key items during planting is the creation of a label for the 6 packs.  I use recycled venetian blinds which I cut to the appropriate length, and label with the information I want, which is type of seed, variety, seed company, year of the seed, and how many cells I planted and how many seeds per cell.  On one end of the label I write in the seeding date, and the moon phase.  All this info is written in pencil so the label is reusable at a later time.  Here is a picture of the labels from today. (Click to enlarge).

planting labels

tomato seedlings

While in the greenhouse today I noted that the first tomato seedlings I planted from seed last week were up.  Here is a pic of the first seedlings.






The second part of the garden day was spent with our compost.  We spread compost which was completed some weeks ago on one of the garden beds, and then built another compost pile in the tumbler using grass clippings from the lawn being mowed today.  To those clippings we add sawdust (redwood in this case) from a local cabinet maker, spent coffee grounds given away free at Starbucks, and finally a very small amount of a combination of blood meal, bone meal, cottonseed meal, chicken manure pellets, greensand, and dolomite lime.  Here is a picture of the ingredients.

compost tumbler

The tumbler being filled is pictured here.
All in all a very satisfying garden day!

The earliest of the early

Living up to the implication of its name (fast out of the gate), Derby Day cabbage sprouted today in the 6 packs they were planted in.  Here is a photo of the earliest sprout.

Another of the earliest of the early is asparagus.  Today was the day of the appearance of the earliest spear of asparagus.  Here is what it looked like.