Sunday, March 11, 2012

First seeds started indoors, and the Plant Hospital...


With clear skies yesterday and temps in the 70's today, it was a prime opportunity to get out and do some early spring garden prep, cleanup, and tie up some nagging loose ends from last year's gardening season.

What you see above is the area I lovingly refer to as my "plant hospital."  It's the place where the plants that I had written off as dead go when they suddenly show show signs of life come springtime.  It's also where I pot out tree seeds and volunteers from my rambling bramble collection.  So far I've "rescued" a blueberry, two elderberries, two afghani figs, and a small cadre of Cascade hops that I was pretty sure were all toast.

I had to dig up and re-pot some bramble suckers that had escaped their original pots and plantings in various places.  I've long lost the tags (some of these plants were from little root bits that remained in the soil after a flat of 4" pots had been moved), but they're all various cultivated strains of Raspberry, blackberry, and Tayberry.  They'll be fine in the pots, but I need to find a place where I can get some of them properly established without worrying about their wandering and spreading habits.

I also potted up a fair number of the paw-paw seeds that have been chilling in the fridge since last year's Ohio Paw Paw festival in the hopes to get some of them growing.  Paw paw seeds are supposed to be notoriously tricky, so this may be a long-shot... we'll see what happens.

























Leah and I also got our first batches of indoor-started seeds going.  We seeded some cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and leeks.

I actually got a little sunburn on my translucent white arms today!  After thinking about being outside so much these past few dreary months, it feels amazing to actually be out there.

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