April Fools

 So, it is the 17th of April.  

The daffodils were open for Easter, but some of the blossoms are starting to fade away already. The crocuses and hyacinths have come and gone.  Today I noticed that most of my tulips are blooming.  

The forsythia in my neighborhood have been blooming for a week.  Today my order for 10 forsythia bushes arrived from Jung Seeds.  This is a busy week.  I don't know when I will plant them.  Last week when the temperature was in the 70's would have been better. 

I noticed that the redbud trees are blooming today.   

The dandelions are also blooming.  My husband spritzed some of them in my flowerbed with Roundup. He also spritzed the thistles in my vegetable garden, which are getting thicker every year.  I've been hand-pulling them, but I think that just makes them multiply.  There is a reason that God cursed Adam with pulling thistles when he ejected Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.  My husband is eyeing the violets in the lawn, but I think they are beautiful and begged him not to spray them. 

The crabapple tree outside our bedroom window has started to bud out, but most of the blossoms haven't opened yet.  

And, today it is snowing. We had the air conditioning on two days ago and today Ed's got the fireplace going.  

 

Planting more seeds

 Today the temps are in the fifties and the sun is shining.   Yesterday the wind was blowing in 50 mph gusts and it was cloudy most of the day, with intermittent showers.   

There is standing water in my garden, so I won't be putting in any seeds today, but I did plant a tray of tomatoes.

My husband likes the Big Boy tomatoes

  He always tells me that I only need two plants, I just need to take better care of them.  I planted eight 4-packs, doubling up on seeds in some of the pots.

I like Early girl.  I get a surge of dopamine when I see the tomatoes starting to bear fruit.   I only planted one four 4-packs of Early Girl.  When I opened the seed package, I saw right away that it was treated seed because it was shocking pink.

Some of the seeds I planted a few weeks ago are up.   The kohlrabi. 

The alfresco salad mix

The Burpee Mesclun.  It looks pretty weak.

And finally, a tray that was unmarked.  Looks like a tomato or a pepper plant.  There was a marker labeled "pepper" on the floor so I'm going with that.

The marigolds from saved seed look like the seeds rotted.  I don't think all of my heating mats are heating properly.

I also planted an entire flat of Roma tomatoes today, 72 in all.  

Look how many seeds are left in the packet!   

I'm also planting these peppers today.

0hio Master Gardener Program

 I signed up for the Ohio Master Gardener program again this year.  

If you've followed me for a while, you might remember that I did this about 15 years ago in Crawford County because the classes were not available in Richland County.  

That was before I learned that my job was at risk because the Mansfield GM plant was closing.  I transferred to GM Headquarters in 2009.   That was a bad time for the country, economically.  What's good for General Motors is good for the country, and what's bad for GM? Well, there was a government takeover of GM's bankruptcy proceedings. 

I survived.  I became the subject matter expert for a software project, and then eventually transitioned to being the business analyst before I retired.  But I was living in Michigan, and in Michigan, everything I learned about gardening in Ohio was null and void because the soil in Michigan is different. 

So, when I learned that Richland County was offering a Master Gardener class this year, I signed up.  It is not offered every year and if the next one is ten years down the road, I may no longer be physically able to participate. 

I loved the botany class. Photo Credit to Steve McKee who founded the Gorman Nature Center, and who came to lecture us on Botany. 

Our current assignment is to prepare a presentation on gardening problems.  My small team decided to do Japanese knotweed.  I found out that I was confusing Japanese smartweed with Japanese knotweed.  Both plants are in the buckwheat family, but they are not the same.  

I have a weed problem in my garden with Japanese smartweed.  Japanese knotweed is an invasive species that grows along road cuts and stream banks, and has moved into the Cuyahoga River Valley.  The same family includes Vietnamese Cilantro, which looks remarkedly similar to my garden's smartweed, and buckwheat. The knotweed is a very invasive plant, it has underground rhizomes that have been proven to sprout from a root one meter underground.  

 

And, 2023 begins.

 I planted some seed trays yesterday.

I am going to experiment with making a photo of the seed packs in my garden log. 

Mesclun mx from Burpee

Last year's seed

Microgreens (Kohlrabi) from Ferry-Morse

Salad alfresco mix from Garden TrendsI am not sure where this seed came from.  It might have been from Harris Seeds? 

I planted two packets of this arugula from Burgess Seeds.  I received this at a master-gardener's training session from the lecturer, who said that the owner of Burgess Seeds is a friend of his.  I see that it is also from 2022. 

Eggplant from Territorial.  It is also seed from last year.  I have never had any luck at all with eggplant.  This variety is supposed to be ready in 80 days.  We'll see. 

More seed received at the Master Gardener's training session.  I planted about 5 six-packs of this heirloom tomato.  The seed packet does not indicate the number of days.  I usually try to mix up 60, 70, and 80 day varieties so I have tomatoes all summer. 

I start my seed in flats under lights in my husband's garage.  When he is in the garage, it has heat and light, and when he is not, only the plant stand lights are on.  I do have heat under the flats that is on all the time during the season.  

Today I will be planting seeds I saved from an ancho supermarket pepper and tomatoes that I particularly liked.  I am aware that you can never be sure about saved seeds, especially if you did not plant the plants yourself.  Have they hybridized? I am willing to take a chance.