Spring is for Planting

 I’ve taken all the plants I brought in last winter out and have planted
my tomato and pepper seedlings that I started from seeds indoors out in
their permanent containers. I did much of that two weeks before our
frost date which was risky but I had the time and my tomato seedlings
were getting too leggy. It took all weekend to amend the soil in my
containers from last year with new compost and with new fertilizer. I
didn’t harden off my plants properly and a few of them got sunburned
when we had a heatwave soon after they went out. This past week we dipped
down into the 40s Fahrenheit but I hope that’s the end of that. So far though, everything is looking great.

I went a little crazy this year with the variety and number of eggplant, tomato and pepper plants that I have.  You would think I was feeding an army. I really wanted to save my pepper plants from last year to get good yield this year but I failed miserably keeping them alive indoors. So part of the reason for the multiple pepper plants is to increase my yield. I know I’m going to get into trouble with the multiple tomato plants, but I hope to give much of them away when I become inundated which I will if I’m anywhere as successful as I was last year.

I moved my greens into a new raised garden and they were slow to start. Now they’ve taken off and I’m the one who’s slow to harvest. I must eat these.

I doubled the height of last year’s raised garden and decided to put vegetables in here because the location gets good sun. So I have extra tomato and pepper plants here and a trellis for the tomato plants that I plan to prune heavily.

I bought a new hibiscus plant because last year’s died indoors. It’s worth it. The bee balm (and my mints) came back after been left outdoors. The strawberries didn’t fare so well. I think they got soggy rotten roots from the melting snow, rather than death frost-bite.

I already have fruits! Yay! Now that all my plants are settled in their new homes the plan is to feed them every two weeks with an Epsom salts and Neptune’s Harvest Fish & Seaweed Emulsion solution and side dress them monthly with compost or earthworm castings and likely an organic granular fertilizer such as Tomato-Tone.