Been working all this week getting all the tomatoes potted up into individual pint pots from the various packs so they have plenty of room (and fertilizer) to grow before being transplanted out. I also moved all but twelve into the cold frames, mostly because there wasn't any room for them inside anymore and the peppers and eggplants are more heat-sensitive. I have...a lot of tomato starts.
The east cold frame with Tidy Cats litter bucket planters of spinach plus some of the tomato seedlings, a bunch of packs of germinating flower varieties, and the single pot of French tarragon that I was able to resurrect.
The west cold frame with much of the same, including the seed snails of parsnips, beets, and leeks. Got the parsnips transplanted into the sidewalk raised bed yesterday and plan to do the leeks sometime this week. The beets will wait for a good set of true leaves first (this is the reseeded snail after the first transplanted seedlings died in a hard freeze). I do have direct-seeded beet seedlings emerging now so I'll use the transplants to fill in any gaps.
I am so glad that I found that second 4 foot shoplight during alleyway scavenging early last fall. I had to be creative while hanging it (the reason why it was junked), but I think it's made a big difference in the quality of my seedlings this year. Everything is growing fast, but more importantly growing strong.
Some things are growing a little TOO fast. The Black Beauty eggplants are now 6" tall and it's nowhere near warm enough outside for them. The "issue" was the seeds germinated immediately—I had factored in a 3 week lag. The Antigua eggplants took nearly that full 3 weeks to germinate and so are only 2" tall right now. It's a great problem to have though given last year's issues with eggplant seedlings and pests that resulted in total crop failure.
The two earthboxes of peppermint were unearthed from their heavy covering of straw and moved to the bank of other earthboxes in the back. The squirrels started digging in the boxes so I had to put a rack over them until they fill out.
Three rescued spent mums made it through the winter (plus the established one from previous years). I moved this one yesterday from its temporary location in the rear raised beds to join the other two in the front in-ground bed as part of the erosion-prevention brigade.
Potted up the first of sweet potato slips from the sprouting potatoes in my bathroom (warm, sunny). Four orange and four Japanese. There are a whole bunch of those lime green decorative slips ready in a glass jar of water too—I think I'll plant several of those per pot to use in containers later. As I have no space in the cold frames until the tomatoes start moving out, right now these are put in the shed at night and on an outdoor table during the day.
The tulip bulbs I planted from the spent bulb planter last spring finally started to bloom only to be blasted apart by a windstorm before I got a good pic. But it looks like they're pink as you can see from this petal! I had predicted either pink or red. I was hoping for red, but can't sneeze at free. Which these were. So that's yellow dwarf daffodils, dark purple hyacinths, and pink tulips—not bad.
And it looks like the hard prune reset I did on the chartreuse barberry this fall worked! It will take a while to get as big and filled out as it had been but at least I don't have to try to dig it up and replace it.
Unfortunately it looks like I may need to try that process with one of the four azaleas in the walkup hedge. The rest look like this now and are covered in bumblebees, but the one closest to the house has a lot of dead wood and no blooms. So hard prune a'comin'. Luckily even if it dies, its neighbor will happily fill in the space so no worries.
