Seedling Update - Good News and Bad News

Two weeks ago my seedling tray looked like this:

Seedlings on March 15, 2012

Here are some shots from this morning - going from left to right in the tray - showing four columns at a time.  The full planting layout is here.

First and Second Columns: Tomatoes; Third Column: Peppers;
Fourth Column: Peppers, Basil

Fifth Column: Basil, Rosemary and Sage; Sixth Column: Sage,
Broccoli; Seventh Column: Arugula, Parsley; Eighth Column: Chives

Ninth and Tenth Columns: Chives;
Eleventh Column: Lavender;  Twelfth Column: Parsley

As you can see, the tomatoes and basil are coming up pretty well.  But several of the other pods look completely empty.  Are they dead or just slower germinators?  I have no idea.

Also, the Arugula is either falling over (as you can see from the close up below), or the leaves have become all white and singed looking.

An even closer close up of the poor Arugula:

I'm considering doing a second phase of new seedlings, but haven't gotten around to figuring out what to plant or how to plant it.  I don't think I would use the large jiffy container again, since I don't think it works well for a variety of plants that grow at different rates.  But if I don't use that, I have to get (or find) smaller individual containers and fill them with seed starting mixture.  Will have to give that some more thought.

Garden Classes Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, we go to the Home Gardeners workshop at Rutgers.  I'm very excited.  I'm signed up for the Rain Barrel workshop in the morning.  In the afternoon, I am attending Creating Curb Appeal and Healthy Garden Soil.

Will report back!

Tackling the Front

For the past few weekends I've been spending a lot of time in the backyard, mostly just trying to clean things up.  This has resulted in numerous bags and tree limbs sitting in front of my house awaiting pick-up:

Yesterday, I spent a few more hours prepping the side veggie plot - adding some compost and manure and raking it all in - getting it all ready for these babies when they're big enough:

Today, I decided to tackle the front yard, which has been sadly neglected.

I think of the front yard as being divided into three areas, all of which came with the plants shown in the photos when we bought the house in July  2011.

The Front Lawn (with Ugly Tree):

The Front Left plot:

 The Front Right plot:

Today, I spent several hours raking and bagging old dead leaves from the front lawn and both plots.  Since the Front Left plot gets a lot of light, I decided to throw caution to the wind and plant some veggie seeds directly in the plot, around the existing plants.  I dug around in the soil, threw in some amendments, watered and planted some seeds: two types of lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, and carrots.  Who knows if anything will actually grow, but I figured it was worth a try.

Here is how it looked afterwards:

Location of Lettuce and Swiss Chard

Location of Carrots and Spinach

It's amazing how you can spend hours and hours working in the garden and afterwards you're like - hmmm, it doesn't look all that different from when I started.

First Sprout!

The MOTH sent this photo to me at work today.  Our first seedling!

Looks like it is the Arugula.  The wider shot below seems to suggest the Broccoli is starting to come up as well (column 6, row 3):

Started My Seedlings

Yesterday, I finally started some of the seeds I bought last week.  I used the Jiffy 72-cell starter pack. Here is the layout of the seeds I planted.  I had to soak the flat parsley seeds overnight, so I added those today.  I ended up soaking too many to fit in the last remaining cells of the starter pack, so I improvised and planted the extra parsley seeds in some tiny plastic cups.  (We have a bunch of these that the MOTH uses to collect urine samples from Ghost and take to the vet.  This enables us to test Ghost regularly without the disruption of a vet visit.  He is 17 years old and has CRF, along with various other ailments so we like to keep him as comfy as possible in his old age).  Anyway, so I punched holes in the bottom of four plastic cups, stuck in some moist peat that I bought to amend the soil in the veggie plot, and plopped in the extra seeds.  I then put the four cups into an old Chinese food container that I use for storing leftovers and covered it with a plastic cover that I bought to cover plates in the microwave, but which I've never actually used.

Here is a photo of all the seeds, taken today:

72-cell starter pack on the right; circle of Parsley on the left

I have ordered a grow light and heat mats from Amazon, which should arrive in the few days.  I probably should have waited for the heat mat to arrive before starting the seeds, but I am keeping them in a warm place for now.  After much discussion with the MOTH, we decided to set up the seed starting station in the walk-in closet, since that is the one room the cats are not allowed into.  It is plenty large, so we dragged up an old coffee table from the MOTH's bachelor days (Oh yes, particle board covered with  marbleized laminate and fake brass legs - hands off, ladies, he is all mine).  It may be UCTU (the ugliest coffee table in the universe), but I think it is the perfect size for my seed starting project.  Once the grow lights and heat mats get here and the seeds have started to sprout, I will move them up to the closet.  Pics to come!

Daffodil Update

You may recall that I discovered these babies in my backyard last week. They were a bit droopy:

This is how they look today - much better:

 

Hello sunshine!

My Embarrassing Backyard

I live in a lovely new house, but my backyard is a disaster.  When we bought it last July, it had a blanket of green lawn, which promptly died after we moved in due, in part, to the shade caused by several large trees.  Not only that, as I've mentioned before, I never raked up the leaves from last fall.

Leaf-covered corner of my backyard

Plus there are several large "trees" that may have started their lives in my neighbor's backyard, but appear to have broken through the border and possibly even have propagated in my yard.  They have long branches that worm their way around the other trees in my yard and are covered in green leaves.  I'm starting to wonder if they are really just enormous weeds and not actually trees at all.  They are kind of ugly.

Green monstrosity

I finally started the process of raking the yard last week, using the leaves to start my new compost bin.  Today I spent several hours raking the rest of the rest of the leaves, but with my compost bin completely full,

Geoffrey, the Geobin - completely full

I left the leaves sitting in random piles around the yard.

No, those are not dead bodies buried all over my yard

I'm too tired to deal with them, so I will probably just bag them tomorrow.  The MOTH has promised to help, but now he's not "feeling well" so I may be on my own again.  Poor Pookums.

I also started to "prune" some of the trees/weeds/stuff at the back border of the yard, because it has grown so dense, it's basically just a mess back there.  I don't know if I should be "pruning" these plants or if they're thinking - "Hey, Idiot! What the heck are you doing? You're not supposed to be chopping my branches off!  Will you please go read a blog entry on pruning!"

After cutting back some of the mess

After today's foray, I'm even more convinced I should hire a landscape designer to help me with a cohesive plan for the front and back yards.  Even though my yard is pretty small, it is just too overwhelming to handle this by myself, particularly when half the time, I can't tell the difference between a plant and a weed.

Here are some more shots of the hideous backyard.  Don't you love the randomness of the neighbors' ugly fences juxtaposed against each other:

Geoffrey's view of the backyard

Another angle - I know, horrible.

Fortunately, I came back inside to this snuggle-fest:

Emma and Ghost

Sorry, didn't mean to disturb you - as you were

 So, that makes everything okay.