April Blooms Day

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Hail on April 6th

Tomato Seeds Planted

I've really had to sit on my hands and delay the tomato seed planting. Every year I start them in mid March and by the time I can plant them out around mid May they are a bit too leggy and I really have to bury them deep. This year I was going to show a bit more self restraint and hold off on seed planting until early April. Today, I had to deliberate over which seeds to plant and I looked back on the last 10 years of garden notes. Funny enough it seemed like each year has been challenging for tomatoes. Granted, I do like to plant mostly heirlooms so maybe that's my issue. I figure why plant a tomato that has no diseases if it means it has no taste. I compromised by planting one F1 hybrid Polfast just in case we have another "challenging" summer for tomatoes.

I really like tomatoes with different colors so I think that turned out to be this year's tomato theme. I planted Golden Queen tomato which is an heirloom with golden orange color. I last planted this 2 years ago and had a bumper crop. They're not the prettiest in shape because they tend to split into twins but the taste is excellent and they have huge fruits. Tigerella was my favorite tomato last year because of it's red and yellow-orange stripped fruits. It was prolific last year and even though they're only about 3 inches around they are great for salads. A fun yellow tomato is Manyel. I like to alternate this one with orange tomatoes in a Caprese salad. Beautiful! I'm going to give Pineapple another chance because the few that I got last year were big beefsteak type tomatoes that were blemish free with orange and yellow stripes. I guess I really prefer the taste of orange tomatoes to the almost too sweet red ones. I am going to try one large red heirloom, Coustralle. It is supposed to have 3 lb fruits with great flavor however last year it succumbed to the late blight first so I never got to see if this variety lives up to its great ratings. I'm hoping for a relatively hot summer with no late blight and maybe I'll get the chance to try this variety which is the latest to ripen at 85 days from transplanting.

The seeds are in and I'll keep you posted on their progress.

Scilla Blooming

I wish this was my woods but this is the scilla blooming at the Fabayan Gardens in Batavia IL. They have obviously colonized for many years. I am going to dig up some of my neighbors scilla(with her permission of course) and try and get my woods to look like this in a few years. I love that it looks like water is flowing between the trees.

My Best Garden Investment

Four years ago I made the best garden investment ever! I installed drip irrigation in my raised beds and all the flower beds. It has been not only a garden life saver but also a huge time saver for me. I had been spending about 6 hours a week hand watering the gardens and it was becoming a real chore. I travel quite a bit as a flight attendant and I couldn't always be home to water the garden or expect my husband or neighbor to do it either when I was out of town. I had been debating installing drip irrigation for a while and being neither handy or good with instructions I didn't think I could do it. It was a real surprise how easy installation was. Believe me that if I can do it anyone can do it! I used several starter kits from DIG Corp Drip Irrigation
and over a weekend my husband and I installed them in four different gardens and all twelve of my raised vegetable beds. We also installed water timers on the main spigots.
Each timer waters a different zone in the garden depending on what I have it set for. For the flower beds I have them automatically set to water 2-3 times a week in the morning. In the raised beds I have the timers running daily for about 20 minutes. I use micro sprinklers in the flower beds and drip soaker hose in the raised beds.
As the plants grow larger and when mulch is added the main hose is not really noticeable and the sprayers are not very obvious. The only problem I have is that there is no longer a local distributor for the DIG products and you'll have to order online. Home Depot does carry them on the West Coast but not in the Midwest. WalMart has it's own line of drip irrigation products and it's adequate but I prefer the sprayers from DIG.

I have become enamored of drip irrigation and I've installed it on all my patio pots as well as the hanging baskets on the front porch. I think once you try it you'll be a convert too. You may even find that you have time to spend relaxing in the garden. Now I just need to buy a bench!

For a quick guide to drip irrigation here's a link: DIG Corp Drip Irrigation Easy Guide

Wordless Wednesday

The Joy of Seeds

I've finally done some of my early seed starting and I'm having some success. I've learned the value of "fresh"aka new seeds. I started these new lettuce seeds inside in the APS growing system and 2 days later they had sprouted. I normally don't start lettuce inside but this year I'm wanting to plant them out in a pattern alternating some of the green and red lettuces in the raised beds. In one of the rows I planted Ruby lettuce seed from a few seasons ago and it has yet to sprout. Under optimum conditions lettuce seed viability could be about 5 years but since I keep mine in a cupboard in the basement and not in a fridge I'm not expecting them to last that long. Besides, when you compare the cost of buying a bag of the fancy lettuce with a few packets of seeds that will provide lettuce in the garden for 3 months it's a bargain to start with new seeds each year. Below is a list of the seeds that I have started so far.

Lettuce started inside on 3/10( all Pinetree Garden Seeds). Sprouted 3/12
New Red Fire
Tom Thumb
May Queen
Jericho
Red Grendbloise
Ruby(not Pinetree Garden Seeds)

Broccoli seeds started 3/10. Sprouted 3/13
Gypsy
Small Miracle
Early Dividend

Cauliflower started 3/10. Sprouted 3/13
Violetta
Graffiti

Eggplant started 3/14.
Lavender Touch-sprouted 3/20
Dusky
Pingtung Long

Pepper started 3/14
Ancho Hot Pepper

Flowers started 3/14
Impatiens Accent Star Mix
Begonia Bronze Leaf Mix
Dahlia Red Skin Mix
Marigold Lemon Star
White Chrysanthemum Paludosum
Hollyhock Black
Hollyhock Queeny Purple
Rehmannia Chinese Foxglove
Aster Perser Mix
Datura Black Currant
Coleus Black Dragon
Streptocarpus Weismoor Formula