Summer is closer than you may think!

Well, I pretty much have my seed orders all ready to go. I should actually already have them in by now, but I am always behind. I have been spending so much time lately looking through catalogs, searching vegetable varieties online, and adding more and more things to my list of seeds to order. Probably way more time than I should, but oh well. Anyhow I have started planning when everything needs to get started inside and outside. In doing this I suddenly realized how close summer really is. The first things that are going to need be planted are going to be the leeks, which I will probably be starting as soon as 2 weeks from now. The tomatoes and peppers are going to get started in just over a month and a half from now. Then in just over 2 months we will be starting our cool weather crops outside. Can you believe that? Just about 2 1/2 months till we can start planting outside!

I can not believe that everything is going to be getting started in just 2 or 3 weeks. Once I start planting the first seeds then every week after that I will be starting seeds, then before I know it transplanting seedlings begins, then things start moving outside into the hoop house and finally things start getting planted outside. And it will all be beginning very, very soon.

I am so excited for this year. I can hardly wait to try some of the new exciting vegges I plan to grow. There are so many different unusual things we will be trying this year. I am working on a list of what we will be growing this year and hopefully will be posting it soon.

I still plan to experiment with seed starting mixes and potting soil mixes but I think it will be best if I wait until I begin starting my regular seeds for this year. Before I begin my seed starting I am not really consistent with turning on my plant lights and it stays kind of cold in the basement also. Unless I have good growing conditions I do not know how successful the experimenting will be. Anyhow, tonight I am going to work on getting my soil mixing recipes together that I plan to try. Then I will get everything together and ready to go so when I start planting seeds I can start my experimenting also.

Off to do more planning.

Cold, cold, cold. Why is it so cold?

Tonight we have a freeze warning!! One week before Memorial Day weekend. Not frost but freeze warning. We are suppose to be planting all our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, beans, and flowers, next weekend! How can it be this cold this late!! That is the thing about the weather it can be so unpredictable and you never know what is going to happen. Oh well, as long as it gets warmer fast, stays warmer, and our fruit trees do not get ruined, it should all be ok.

As a precaution I decided to cover my beets. If they were a little bit bigger I would not worry about them, but since most are still so small I figured it would be best to just play it safe. How horrible it would be to loose all my beets. I would have liked to have covered some other stuff but it should be ok, most of what I have planted already can tolerate a frost without a problem.

I think that tonight before I go to bed I am going to turn on the heater in my hoophouse. My clothes drier vents into my hoophouse, since my hoophouse is right next to our house off of our basement. So I have my drier on now to heat up the hoophouse. Last I checked the temperature was 60 degrees in the hoophouse and close to 40 degrees outside, not bad. They would probably be fine without any heat, but I can sleep better tonight if I know my plants are nice and warm and happy. I tend to spoil them.

Well, anyhow all I really wanted to do was vent. I am just itching to get those plants into the ground, but planting time will be here before I know it.

Transplanting and nice weather to come!

Today, thanks to the help of my mom, we were able to get a lot of transplanting done. There are still things that need transplanting but we were able to catch up on a lot that needed to be done. So while we transplanted we watched episodes of "The Legend of the Seeker" (my new favorite show, I am hooked) on the computer. It can get boring transplanting for hours. Trust me it is a lot less painful if you have something to watch.

Anyhow here is what we were able to transplant today: The rest of the peppers (Fish Peppers, Sweet Red Peppers, Flavorburst Peppers, and Islander Peppers), Stevia (I did not get too many of these to germinate, not sure why, was kind of disappointed, oh well there is always next year), Mexican Sunflower Tithonia Fiesta Del Sol (miniature variety, good for pots), and Strawberry plants (these did not germinate well also, not sure why).

I still have not transplanted those poor tomato plants from my last post. But trust me they are next! I just do not like to transplant tomatoes, so I have been putting it off. There are also some flowers that will need transplanting such as dahlias, asters and strawflowers. There are some others but I can not think of what exactly they are off the top of my head.

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Ok, now lets talk about the wonderful weather that is on its way starting tomorrow. I am so glad that the weather is going to be nice for awhile. There is a lot of planting that I have to do outside, so I am so glad that I should be able to get planting done this weekend. Here is what the weather is suppose to be like this week:
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Thursday- Almost 60 degrees- Sunny
Friday and Saturday- High 70's- Sunny
Sunday- High 70's- Partly cloudy
Monday- 70's- chance of rain
Tuesday and Wednesday- High 60's- chance of rain
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Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sound almost perfect to me. I should be able to get a lot of work done one those days.

Monday, rain, but warm, that is ok with me as long as I can get a bunch of work done the days before, and as long as it is warm and I do not have to worry about seeds rotting, I will be happy.

Tuesday and wednesday, rain, but still not terribly cold, sounds ok to me. Besides the forecast might change by then, or I should probably say will change by then. They do not know that far ahead.


So if I can make it through tonight which will be pretty cold (30's) I should be ok. I am looking forward to the nice weather.

Hopefully this weekend I will be able to plant beets, pak choi, some kinds of lettuce, diakon radishes, kohlrabi, head lettuce, and possibly some carrots. We will see how things go. Oh, and I almost forgot I will have to transplant some onions and leeks. I am going to have to look at all my seeds to make sure I am not forgetting anything, because it sure seems like there was a lot more that I had to plant.

But for now it is time to go to sleep and rest up for all the work ahead.