Ending and Beginning

Today I transplanted eight pepper plants and the largest 4 tomatoes  into larger containers. DS6 helped me a bit, which was great. Half the reason we’re doing all this stuff is to show the boys how.

Fertilized everything with Miracle-Gro except the herbs.

Here’s a pic of all the seedlings remaining upstairs. On the right side you can see some of the tomatoes I just put into cut-off 42-oz oatmeal boxes. On the left you can see some in those newspaper pots, and in the foreground are the peppers in cardboard yogurt containers.

I moved the two largest tomatoes down to the greenhouse. We’re going to have to remember they’re down there, to open the door on warm days, close it in the evening, and open the door to the basement on cold nights. We’ve got a low of 25°F forecast in a couple of days, which probably isn’t cold enough to freeze inside the greenhouse, but I’ll open the door to the basement just to be on the safe side.

Yesterday I got out in the garden and officially opened this year’s campaign against the quack grass. I just walked around and hoed up any weeds (with my new Rogue Hoe) that were showing their faces, mostly dandelions and grass. I think if we’re diligent this year and fight hard, we’ll have the corner turned on the quack grass. It’s awful stuff. We will never mulch with hay again.

We will also never put down any plastic or landscape cloth in the garden again. The quack grass grows right through it and once it does that it’s very difficult to either kill the grass or pull up the plastic.

I paced off the perimeter of the garden a few days ago and came up with 220′. I told CR that I would need about 25 fence posts, and he said he’d drop them off. He has some that are too short for regular fencing that should be perfect for my 28″ fencing.

Last night we had a storm just miss us to the South — there was a strong wind from the Northeast but we only got about 2″ of snow. Today was quite nice, up in the 40s and mostly sunny by the afternoon, and most of the snow melted. These daffodils merely scoffed.

If you can observe the sunlight and shadows around today, you’ll see what’s going to be shaded on about 9/15 — the approximate date of the first frost around here. If something or a patch of ground gets a lot of sun today, it will most likely get a lot of sun for the entire growing season. If something gets less than full sun today, and whatever you plant there needs full sun as most annual vegetables do, it’s growth will be restricted, especially towards the end of the growing season. The warming of the hemisphere lags the return of the sun, so there’s always going to be much more sun available at the beginning of the growing season than at the end of the growing season.