Wednesday, April 27, 2011

MORE April Showers Bring OMG WILL IT NEVER END?!?!?!


As I'm writing this, there is severe weather around the state.  It has been raining approximately every. single. day. for the past thousand years it seems.  Talk of building an ark is frequent conversation.  Very frustrating when someone wants to get some major edible landscaping projects done on the yard!  As such, I haven't gotten nearly as much done this week as I would like, but nonetheless, here is my weekly photo roundup, so you can see what all is growing on the Trailer Park Homestead!

The bed in the upper left corner contains peas, onions, and cabbage, all up and doing well.  The one on the right, my St. Patty's Day bed, has onions and spinach up.  I replanted the carrots last week, so hopefully that will be in next week's pictures but they aren't up yet.  The spinach is intermixed with the onions in places, washed there by the overabundance of rain.  I think I'll leave them there and just go with it!
The far planter has spinach, the middle and the closest have leaf lettuce (in different stages of development for longer harvest). The middle trench has nothing yet but will have some blue jade corn (which only gets about 3 ft tall) to conceal the buckets, which will have tomatoes.  The closest bucket contains the root and stem of a cold set tomato plant that my toddler tore apart the other day.  I'm hoping it grows back!  The trench heading out to the right of the picture will contain a strip of blue jade corn, with sunflowers to the east of it (closer to the house), and cucumbers and melons interwoven among, and possibly up, them, thereby creating a natural fence/border of our lot.

On my stairway garden area, the peas are finally all sprouting and one of three strawberry pots is showing signs of life.  I may have killed the other two with improper (ie sticking them in the garage) overwintering.  Only time will tell, I guess.
Raspberry bushes that I haven't managed to kill by improper overwintering (ignoring in their tiny pots).  Looks like a lot of the dirt has been washed away from all that fricking rain and I probably should add some more, since there are roots exposed and that can't be good!
More pots of peas.  We heart our snap peas 'round here!  They're like candy on the vine!  These are placed on the backside of my front planter, since the spots in the box are reserved for tomatoes and other things (I don't remember right now!), but by being placed here, I'll be able to use the strings that the tomatoes will later occupy while the tomatoes are still inside.
My indoor garden area under the shop light hanging from the kitchen cabinet.  Back left to right:  3 varieties of tomato, green peppers, and ground cherries.  In the eggshells, we have zucchini, pumpkin, cantaloupe, and cucumbers...far more than I had originally figured on!
Is it me, or do these little zucchini plants look like baby dinosaurs hatching?
This is the other half of the cold set tomato plant.  My dad suggested putting it in water to see if it would grow new roots.  So far, it isn't looking very hopeful.  In fact, it looks a little droopy and dead.  I'll leave it a while longer to see what happens.
If anyone is keeping score, here are the plants I currently have growing on the Trailer Park Homestead:

outside
cold-set tomato? (pending new sprouts from the stem)
onions
spinach
lettuce
carrots (planted but not yet visible)
cabbage
broccoli
snap peas
strawberries
raspberry bush
blackberry bush
blueberry bush
chives

inside
Ace 55 tomatoes
Brandywine tomatoes
Beefsteak tomatoes
green peppers
ground cherries
zucchini
blue Hubbard squash
stars and moon watermelon
cantaloupe
cucumbers

Looks like I'm done starting seeds in the house for the season.  Next batch of things I'm due to plant are all outside after the last frost in a few weeks!

5 comments:

  1. Sounds like you are in the same boat as me. NO pun intended. But after receiving 5 inches of rain over the weekend with more to come the ground is just too wet to plant the plants I bought this weekend.

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  2. I have no idea what the actual rainfall totals have been here and I'm not sure I WANT to know! I did catch them saying on the news that we are likely looking at another 1-1 1/2 inches tomorrow, so that should be....something. There were more peeks of the sun on the 7-day forecast, so there's hope on the horizon! I'll just keep keeping an eye on what's going on outside, making sure nothing ends up in standing water and keep playing with my indoor plants until I decide we've had our last frost. Oh, and I probably should dig out the rest of the yard sometime this next couple weeks so I have places to plant all the stuff I still need to get in the ground!

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  3. I was able to get outside for a bit yesterday,while taking a break from moving the concrete blocks while it wasn't raining,I looked around,checking on the newly planted trees,they seem to be doing ok,the raspberries,blackberries and currants all have new leaves,and the red raspberries are throwing up shoots that I will need to replant in the row.

    I do wish this rain would go away for a week or two so I can get some more work done here.

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  4. Absolutely LOVE your eggshell seed starters. You've inspired me. I'm going to try that. First we need to eat some eggs.

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  5. Making a couple quiches would use up a few pretty quickly!

    http://adventuresofathriftymama.blogspot.com/2011/04/quiche-lorraine.html

    http://adventuresofathriftymama.blogspot.com/2011/03/meatless-monday-greek-spinach-feta.html

    Generally, I reuse my egg cartons to get more free eggs from someone I know with chickens, but these were getting too beat up for that, so I gave them a new job!

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