More IG gardenspo convinced me to purchase a garden fork, e.g. spade fork…which differs from the 3-tined cultivator which is usually handy in tilled soil. I have to say I’m impressed with the spade fork, which is tackling the clay soil I’m digging up to redo the stone bed borders.
A few new garden tools
Got melons and berries in the ground this week, but there are plenty more plants waiting in the wings. Like the Giga Silver Scabiosa I picked up from North Haven Gardens last week.
It’s amazing what stay-in-place means for my gardening hobby. I actually get to garden!
Of course, strange days also brings strange weather. I can’t recall the last time I saw April temps dip down into the 30s, but here we are mid-April with overnight temps reminiscent of winter.
It’s a much welcome change from the 100 degree plus Aprils I’ve seen in years past.
But back to the topic of seedlings. I started some seed on 3/31 and here we are about 2 weeks later. Thanks to IG gardenspo, I had to have me some Fish Pepper seeds, which led me to Baker Creek Heirloom Seed, where I bought more than I planned. I never imagined myself growing tomatillos, but I read somewhere that it (along with radishes) would make great pest-attractors and ward pests from companion crops. So into the basket went Purple Tomatillos and Japanese Wasabi Radishes, along with Thai Long Green (Green Elephant Tusk) Eggplant, Jigsaw Pepper, Lemon Bee Balm, Korean Hyssop, and Sirius Blue Sage. Baker Creek also dropped a couple of free seed packets, which I’m still debating on planting.
Wasabi radish seedlingsFree Seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds
I was also able to source Strawberry Fields gomphrena…which I’m happy to report, have germinated as well. In fact, all of the seed I sourced from Baker Creek have germinated successfully under grow lights, compared to some older seed that either struggled or haven’t come up at all. The radish germinated in as little as 3 days, which provided near-instant gratification.
Seedling flat
I direct sowed the Baker Creek lemon bee balm into the garden bed, along with some Outside Pride Mexican Sunflower seeds (sourced from Amazon in 2017) earlier in the month. Nothing has come up as of yet, but I made sure to mark the spot with a pot of wild bee balm purchased from Painted Flower Farm on 4/7.
Anywho, with this cold snap, I’d better go water the plants! More field notes coming soon!
I realize that new content has been relatively non-existent on this blog due to life and technical considerations. Life has been busy, occasionally fulfilling and oft times challenging, so much so that I’ve been neglecting the written word. On the other hand, my virtual life is somewhat active, whether that be in-game or in-Insta.
On the technical side of things, I’ve been deeply dissatisfied with my web host performance, so I’ve been tweaking things under the hood. I’ve moved away from Google Cloud for my web host VM since it just wasn’t priced competitively against AWS. I am sticking to Lightsail and their S3 storage service, and WordPress.com. Plus I’m dabbling in other services. Linode is my current favorite with their budget friendly yet robust Nanode plan. With a datacenter hosted out of Dallas, TX, I get speedy connections to my VM.
Winter indoors means nesting opportunities and more compute time. I hope to plan/execute home improvement projects and catch up on hobbies such as comic book collection, starting seeds and propagating new plants (big maybe this year), and cleaning up my online databases serving as backend to my social media content.
Year 2020 is just around the corner, and this is also a good time to reflect on new year resolutions. What lies ahead is a future full of opportunities and possibilities, but my foremost need is to keep oneself present and mindful to meet them. Learn, change, evolve.
Lose weight, get fit, eat healthy, expand knowledge. Spend more time with furdad and furkids. Get outdoors more often. Maybe smile more. Participate or volunteer outside my social circle. (That last one is scariest of all.)
Plants are leafing out in our backyard. The west foundation bed is looking alive! Dwarf vitex, crape myrtle, loropetalum and sambuca nigra are showing off some early spring growth.
