Seeding, cutting back and general yard work

The pile of wood chips on the driveway is getting smaller each day.  I no longer do marathon hauling sessions, but rather like to chip away at jobs in smaller pieces.  The hardest areas have been done where I had to carry the chips in large buckets to fill the pathways of my garden (the wheel barrow does not fit through the gate).

Seedlings have been popping up like crazy, so I am spending a couple hours at a time pricking out little vegetables and flowers into larger cell packs.  As a result, more and more established plants have been added to the outdoor shelves and only moved into the garage to get them out of the cold.

Nature played a cruel trick on Wisconsin this year.  Last year we were two weeks ahead of spring's normal start.  Our friends in the northwest part of the state were dealing with up to 18" of new snow with the front that brought us cold rain.  Opening fishing season called for ice augers on some lakes as there was still 24" of ice on some of them.  Like they say, if you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes!

I divided up my hanging basket of Mandevilla vine today.  I was just going to move it up a pot size when I noticed it had four individual stems from one pot.  It will be interesting to see how it handles the stress of dividing.  My jasmine has flowers on it already.  It amazes me that it can sit in the basement all winter and still put out a nice flush of early blooms.  Artificial light does not hinder this one.  I had done a drastic cut back on it last fall to make it easy to keep for the winter.  This also did not seems to set it back much either.

I think the tomatoes are ready for cell packs now.  I may have tried too many this year, but the seed catalogs were too tempting with the descriptions.  Only one tomatillo is going in this year though.  Four was too many.

There was some good bargains at the hardware store this morning for potting soil.  This is what made all the transplanting possible.  Mother's Day is next weekend so the stores are really gearing up for spring even if it doesn't always feel like it is here.  I also got 10-10-10 fertilizer for the asparagus bed.  Everything I read said to put 10-10-10 in the trench.  It was a pretty good day all-in-all.