This spring interlude, at the time of the equinox, is brought to you by Mischief, who hopes you got a chance to go out and tiptoe through the daffodils, like he did this past weekend. We had lovely weather, 50s & 60s and even some 70s Thursday through Sunday. All the cats, the two dogs, and I were out as much as possible. As you can see, the daffs up back are popping up.
It's good to see green growing things again, especially since the trees are all still bare and not too much else has budded up. A couple of weeks ago, we still had ground covered with snow. But we've had American robins for a week and a half now, and the dark eyed juncos (AKA snowbirds) have been twittering and flocking together, awaiting ice out up north of us so they can fly into their breeding grounds. Mourning doves are starting to stake out territories in the white pines up back, and I heard a barred owl in the deep woods calling its mate in the afternoon the other day. Life is stirring again.
I have a new toy! On our last trip out, I saw this greenhouse plant stand at one of the big box home improvement places, and knew I would make use of it, though I didn't want to spend the $40. I finally broke down on Thursday, and gave Lee the money, and sent him out to buy it for me while I was trying to get some work done around the house. He set it up for me on Friday, and I immediately moved plants out there that were taking up space under the lights downstairs. This is how it looks from the side...
This is a front shot. The 'door' in the plastic unzips on two sides and rolls up, and it gets secured with velcro strips sewn into the top. There are also velcro strips at the base that hold each of the corners in place on a leg of the tubular frame. It has little casters too, but I wouldn't move it. They only included two mid-shelf bar supports but Frank was able to cut some 1/2" copper tubing to length so we could support the other two. I got all the plants I wanted to get outdoors on that, with room to spare, and have since added to it.
This is how it looks with the top zipped down. I do that late every afternoon once the sun is off that area and the air has started to cool down. That helps trap the heat inside. Our nights right now are still quite cold, often below freezing, so I have been bungy-cording a couple of large tarps over it, making sure they reach the ground so that there is no air seepage that would allow frost in. We peg the tarps down with bricks and whatever else I have at hand. I like this shelf setup because my tall plants are able to stand up inside, and they get more sun than the coldframe does. The plastic around the sides keeps out the wind and rain. Later in the season, when the nights are warmer, the plastic can be removed. I'd really like to get another one, and I have a birthday coming up next month, hint, hint, hint...
Indoors I did some rearranging because I now have more space under the lights. Even after I moved everything out of the growhut that needed to be moved, I still had plenty of shelf space left. Good because I'm going to need that space soon! As you can probably tell, those onions seedlings I started back in February are getting pretty tall. I need to clip them back, which puts their energy into increasing leaf space and stalk size. Up north here we mostly grow long-day onions, which are leafy and stalky until midsummer, and then they start bulbing. Southern onions are short-day plants, which get grown in the months following the fall equinox, and bulb as spring approaches. There are now day-neutral onions that will grow about anywhere, but for us, the best keepers are always the long-day type. Just a little onion-cation for you.
The main season tomatoes inside the growhut are not only all up, but they have grown quite a bit. I will have a lot of transplanting to do. I have the dome off them now because they were already touching the inside of the top. Next to them on the left are some things that haven't come up yet, and some cuttings rooting under their own personal domes.
As the weekend went on, I saw that my sweet peppers are coming up. It is a mixture of bell peppers of various colors as well as thin walled fryers and small, sweet conical shapes. I like variety. In that square container is the celeriac, and it is also up. So things are growing well!
I put the dome back over those sweet peppers, and then had room to start some hot peppers. I have mostly jalapeños and habaneros, with some oddballs thrown in. We make our own salsa and freeze it, and I have a dehydrator so I can either freeze or dry the hot peppers I don't use. I like to dry some to grind them up later for custom spice mixes. I also make a killer hot pepper sauce from fresh peppers and white vinegar (and no salt) that I freeze in tiny containers. A few drops of that and you will be on the floor gasping and honking like a goose. Man is it potent! If anyone tells you you can't grow really hot peppers here in CT, I challenge them to sample mine. Even my habanero plants were loaded last fall, and we had a cold, wet summer. I will admit that not many of them ripened and turned color though. I have the standard orange habanero/scotch bonnets this year along with the Carribean Reds (the hottest) and the chocolate colored ones, which are supposed to be richer tasting. I give away a lot of plants, keeping just the best for my own garden, so not all of them will be grown here, though I will keep at least one plant of each.
Also this weekend, I got those early tomatoes separated at last. Yep, that's them on the top shelf. There are actually two small trays of them. The bigger plants went into old yogurt cups, the small ones back into pudding cups. All will grow and bear well. Those are fairly large plants for March, I am pleased.
Below is a more closeup picture of the early tomatoes. One of the varieties is called Fourth of July and as much as I would love to have some to pick by then, it is not easy to pull that off in this climate. We keep trying though. But this year at least I have some seedlings larger than I have in the past, so there is hope. I have often bought large, individually potted tomato seedlings to be my early tomatoes, but they have never done as well as expected. My main crop always catches up with them within a week or so. So we will see if it is strictly climate or how the seedlings are handled. Other than Fourth of July, I chose Early Girl, Ultimate Opener, and a large Cherry tomato called Sapho as my four tomato season early birds. To name the main crop varieties would take too long, but I could list them if someone is curious.
Mischief is asking that we come back outdoors again for a stretch and see what is up in the natural world...
The old white cedar swingset we put up for the boys when they were young finally collapsed last fall, so one of the projects this weekend was to clean that out of there. It was pretty rotted. I helped Frank with that on Saturday, and we saved the chains and some birdhouses I had on it and the rest went to the town transfer center. I don't like to leave old wood laying around, we have enough fire danger with the state forest full of that stuff behind us. I had a very vigorous wisteria vine and a red honeysuckle crawling on it. I still have to get in there, prune everything back, and stake the vines until I can get a new arbor of some kind in place. Then I can rake out the area.
I wanted to get to that clean-up this past weekend, but got busy potting up some roots and things I bought for the flower gardens. The peonies, lily-of-the-valley, and the Dutch Iris bulbs (Miss Saigon) I got my mother for her birthday are now all in pots on the greenhouse shelf. They will be easy to set into the garden later, and potting them up buys me some time. So it was a good thing to do.
These little spring bulbs are called snowflakes (leucojum) and they were growing wild on the property when we moved in here back in 1982. I moved them from along the house to up back on the shady east side, and they have spread quite a bit. They bloom very early, and I find them cheerful. They look like fairy chimes don't they? You can almost hear them tinkling.
A close-up shows their form. each petal has a little green dot at the base. I think they are the sweetest little things! I love bulbs that are carefree and naturalize readily.
In the pictures below are daylilies breaking through, mostly the orange ones you find growing wild (AKA ditch lilies). They were also growing wild on the property and I transplanted them here in a wide semicircle. They aren't anything special, but they bloom happily with no care a good part of the summer, and the bright green strappy foliage looks nice. One of Nature's gifts to me, so how could I refuse? If something does well, doesn't overwhelm the area it is in, and actually looks halfway decent, I am not going to turn up my nose at it.
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