It's spring somewhere!

[bridgetmkennitt]

How is everyone's garden doing? Or, if you haven't started planting yet, what do you plan on growing in your garden?

Comments

[cyprinella]

My started seeds are doing marvelously under lamps (tomatoes, tomatillos, couple of different squashes and cukes, celery, parsley and basil). Hoping to harden them off next week or so. My first attempt at lettuces outside never came up though. Not sure if they got frozen at the wrong time or what. Planted more today ahead of a storm system so hopefully they'll be good and settled in with a nice soak. I replaced a dead ornamental something with a cutleaf elderberry and also put in a black lace elderberry so that should look cool in a couple of years. Added edging to my native wildflower beds and I think they look really nice. So things doing pretty well on the homefront.

I'm working with a shepherd friend of mine to turn her unused land into veg beds by doing some lasagna bed building of ruminant poop, cardboard, and soil. I don't think that we're going to get as much done as I had hoped this year, but it should still be a lot more than just my tiny townhouse space.

[bridgetmkennitt]

That all sounds amazing! I'm pretty sure I have black hands and not just black thumbs, so just keeping a plant is a challenge for me. You are doing all the things. Go you!

That is super exciting. More room to plant vegetables is great times.

[cyprinella]

It takes practice! And sometimes finding the right plants. I couldn't keep basil alive for years until I finally found a variety that worked for me. And last year, all of my indoor seedlings failed. No idea what I did wrong! But total failure. Thank god for supermarkets!

[dantesspirit]

We bought a house this time last year, so no garden then. But moving from a townhouse to a house with actual *land* was the best thing ever. We spent the winter building the garden beds and deciding what was going where this year.

Now if the weather would just decide to be spring.

[cyprinella]

Yeah, I get really jealous of all of my friend's space. I keep eyeballing places but land in the DC suburbs is $$$$ unless you're so far out as to make the commute untenable. I wish my neighborhood would be less stodgy and let us garden in the shared spaces that kids don't play in, dogs can't run on bc oh no off leash dogs, and we just pay people to mow. But that's a whole other rant.

[dantesspirit]

Yeah, we looked in our old area (Roanoke County) and what we wanted was so stupid expensive, that it was ridiculous. But just a county over, it was a lot cheaper (taxes are cheaper too, lol), so now we have 1.73 acres to play with}:P

[oceantheorem]

I'm a year behind you! We just bought a house and are moving in within the next few weeks. Did you not plant anything your first year, just plan? Do you have any advice for yourself a year ago?

[dantesspirit]

Mostly we planned, because we missed all the early spring blooms (we actually kmoved at the end of April/beginning of May), so had to wait to see what we missed.

We did plant volunteer tomatoes, the iris rhzomes we brought with us and sunflowers.}:P Later in the fall, we planted quite a few trees. Those I think we should have waited until spring for (it was a local tree steward group's fall native plant sale, so got 11 trees for less than 100.00), as a few obviously didn't make it and others are iffy, thanks to the odd winter.

Best advice is to wait a full cycle of the seasons so you know what's where and can plan accordingly.