A very garden weekend

I think we have finally turned the corner with the weather in Milwaukee.  We had snow flurries in the air on Friday night, which we pretended didn't exist as we were driving home in it.  Saturday morning dawned beautifully and the day was sunny and warmer.  It was an especially beautiful morning as I had been looking forward to a woody plants grafting class.  I won't go into great detail about the whole process as it has so many fine points.  I enjoyed the instructor, Michael Yanny very much.  I have heard him speak at other events, so I knew that it would be a quality class.  It also came very highly praised by other friends who did it last spring.  We got individualized instruction with just four people in each session.  He checked our technique and work to guide us through.  Time will tell how successfully we joined two plants together.  I will be purchasing The Grafter's Handbook by R.J. Garner.  We all went home with six pots that we grafted ourselves.  I was partial to the antique apple varieties we had to choose from.  I also did a lilac, amur cork tree, and witch hazel.

 Plants have started popping after a spring rain (Wednesday/Thursday) and a bit of following sun.  I can see the rhubarb poking through.  The dwarf iris are now blooming along side the snow drops.  I covered over a few things in the vegetable garden with straw in November.  I pulled that off on Saturday afternoon and can see some Swiss chard, kale, radicchio, and I think the late planted baby cabbage plants made it as well.  

 

     

It was the official first day of line-dried clothes day today.  I have been putting out sheets and light weight t-shirts most of the winter, but today was an all out, fill up the lines wash day.  Everything dried on the lines without laying them around on chair backs, so that is what makes it the official first day.  I watched birds coming and going the past couple days which we haven't seen since last fall.  Turkey vultures circled the neighborhood while I stood watch over the grill. It was just such a fine day to be outdoors.

I didn't spend as much time outside as I would have liked today.  Between loads of laundry, I was busy making more cutting of coleus, geraniums, and ibosa vine.  I cleaned out some of the old stock plants to make way for more seeding.  The coleus from the last cutting was well rooted and was put into cell packs for spring planting.  I saved a few stock plants in larger pots, back up for failed cuttings and possible starters in the garden.  I seeded my Tidal Wave Petunias and Purple Tower Petunias as they have 8-10 week start time.  I also put in some Red Acre cabbage and Bonsai Pak Choi for early planting out later.  I already have the Brisk Green Pak Choi and the Baby cabbage ready to go.  I set the plants out with my onion seedlings for a few hours today for hardening off.  There is only two weeks until Easter which is my goal for planting them all.  Welcome back, Spring!

Spring is gearing up in the basement greenhouse.

It was time to get busy with my plants in the basement again.  Some of the stock plants were up to the lights and ready for cutting.  Others were pot bound and needed a bigger home for their roots. Others were ready for a good cleaning again.  A few of them needed some insect control (white flies on the Lantana again).  The bench was ready for a good shuffling around and cleaning out of all the trays.  Everything was swept up and taken out to the compost pile if it was no long attached to a plant.
The Canna rhizomes were hadn't been cleaned and potted yet and it is getting a little late in the winter if I want good sized plants to put in the garden in June.  I also put my favorite yellow begonia tuber in a pot for the umpteenth time.  I never have successfully gained more than one plant from year to year, but it is such a sunny spot in the shade.  Promises to myself to buy more each year go unfulfilled. 

I divided plants again as I had last year so my Mandevilla vine is up to four.  I have not propagated it by cuttings, just divided the original pot each year as the four cutting became bigger and stronger plants each season.  It was fun to pull them apart and see what is going on in the pot.  The roots reminded me of dividing asparagus ferns when I worked in the greenhouse with their swollen, watery root nodules.  I also divided my Pennisetum grass into four.  All the dividing and new seeding means it was time to set up more areas for plants.  Some of them are in a sunny south facing window on the second floor.  I have never set up a table here before, but it was handy and easy to set up.  The small room is cramped for space now, but it is so pleasant to sit and look at all those plants and think about spring.

I also had to add the power cord to my kitchen window light and add the boot trays for catching the water from the cuttings and seedlings.  I have my second round of coleus rooting in jars and have moved my seedlings under the light as well.  I left the micro-greens in the basement since their was still room for them yet.  It is a nice problem to have when the space is getting tight.  For me it means that spring is just around the corner.  My next round of seeding is the first weekend of April for some of the early crops and longer season varieties.  It was good to sit down and get it all in order so I can see at a glance what is coming up.  Knowing that seeding is close meant looking at my supply of clean plastic trays and inserts.  I was low on some and had to run a bucket of hot bleach water to sterilize pots today, so some inserts also went into the soaking bucket for 10 minutes of sanitation time.

With the wedding last fall I did not clean up pots with my fall clean up last year as I did in  2012.  As a result, I have a shelf full of dirty pots, trays, and liners in my garage that I will have to deal with soon.  It is nice to not have to think about cleaning pots every time I want to do some upgrading or pricking out of seedlings.  My store shelves are empty and will have to be replenished.  Unfortunately, my garden gnomes have not been much help in this area.  I found a warm spot on the south side of the house and got busy cleaning a small batch to get me started.  The snow has melted here, but you can see in the background that there is plenty of white on the yards yet.  I am still looking at getting that cold frame put together so I can use this nice, warm patch of ground for an early crop of lettuce.  Maybe next weekend.

Seeding, pricking, and more seeding

Things are getting hot and heavy in my little basement greenhouse.  I had an excellent weekend of outdoor gardening so the indoor seeding waited for another couple days.  I hope I don't regret putting it off with plants too small to transplant later.  I was able to prick out my peppers, Celosia, and Heliotrope.  I had to make decisions about only keeping what I need instead of saving every plant.  Sometimes it is hard to toss some things on the compost pile, but I make myself feel better that I saved the best of them for planting.  My last batch of coleus is also almost fully rooted.  The first batch is ready to be nipped back to promote side shoots.  This makes a better plant over having a single stem heading up.  Try it, you'll like it!  Tomatoes are almost ready to be upgraded, too.

I have also had to make some decisions about what stays in and what goes out.  The violas are small but hardy.  A few of the seeds I am sowing now also like it cooler so outside they go.  I have a rolling rack that can move in and out of the garage for night time protection.  I think the petunias are next as they are also a hardy plant once they get hardened off.  The geraniums, jasmine and potted mandevilla vines are already on their way to complete outdoor happiness.

The garden beds are filling up with early crops as well.  I put in seeds for carrots, beets, chard, kale, radicchio, and pak choy.  I also put in my baby cabbages (an actual variety, not a size descriptor), romaine lettuce, onions, and radicchio plants.  All have been given a row cover to help them acclimate to the conditions.  With temps around 80 today, they are also going to be ready for water.  Time to break out the hoses until the rain barrels get their first fill.  I did not turn them until this weekend as we still had nights in the 30's when we were getting all that rain.

I dug in my asparagus roots on Sunday with compost from last year.  I used some of the soil from the trench to pot up my honey berries and kiwi vines as they came bare root.  The areas that they are to be planted in are in prep stage.  The plants were starting to leaf out, so holding them in pots is better for the health of the plants.  The chicken-in-the-woods mushroom plugs are also going into the same area.  These can wait in the frig for longer.