Well, Farmer’s Almanac fails all of us at some point. This spring has been oddly “emotional” (as if I’m talking about a teenager 😀 ) One week, the warm front encourages the grass to sprout and the roses to begin budding. The next week, we get the warning for freezing temps and I scramble to find every blanket and trash bag I can to save what has already been planted and thriving.
I lost the green beans and the brandywines. The picture above are my beautiful green beans before the frost. But, it makes me glad that I started from seed more than I had planted. As I write this, I have more tomatoes being hardened off outside in their pots and plugged more beans in straight into the ground. In just 4 days, the tomatoes have grown inches and the beans are pushing dirt. 🙂 I am planting the tomatoes and everything else in the ground this weekend. Much later than what I was expecting, but that is what makes logging in a gardening journal so valuable.
Next year I need to:
- Start the carrots and green beans from seed in the ground. These make them grow stronger and takes out the “middle man” of starting them inside. They do well enough.
- Start more tomatoes than anticipated. One way or another, there needs to be a margin for possible “freezes” or dying.
- Start from seed inside earlier. Cabbages, lettuces, carrots, kale, even onions. All cold loving veg. I was a month behind.
- Plan my onions in a clusters. I learned this from “Gardenary”. As they sprout and grow, you can easily pull them apart to plant.
- Get another grow light. This really was such a good investment. Building a strong root system for plants started indoors.
- Grow more marigolds. Out of the 6 seeds I planted in March, only 1 germinated. I threw some seeds in the beds last night!
Home with Hope 