Don't Be Afraid of the Dork: Garden Update

Well it's the end of April here in Iowa and the month could be summed up as cold and wet. And by cold, I mean FREEZING. We had low temps under 30 degrees F just a couple days ago. It's made early gardening a bit of a challenge for me. I want to get things going as early as possible and I get all flustered by the weather.

Despite the weather complications things are going pretty well. Early in the month I planted out my onion and kale starts, and some spinach, lettuce, sugar snap pea and lettuce seed. Mid-month I uncovered my garlic and shallots. Everything but the carrots have started to come up at least some of them. The biggest problem I've had is with the squirrels being excited by the newly fluffed dirt - its apparently HI-larious good fun to dig in. As a result I think most of my carrots are doomed, one plot of spinach, one plot of lettuce, a few sugar snaps, and my onions are feeling pretty darn molested. Little fluffy tailed troublemakers. I do love all things wild but its hard when you have such a small garden.

In addition to what's going on outside I just got some fingerling potatoes from a friend which are chitting (is that a word?) in a window. I also have tomatoes, peppers and basil cooking under the lights in the upstairs office. I've had a few monster tomato starts this year, I think because I had to improvise planting containers and planted a few in cherry tomato containers which are a bit bigger then the peat pots I generally use. I just had to repot them because they were ready to plant outside but the outside ain't ready for them. It made me realize, because I am incredibly dense and it hadn't struck me before, that this may be a solution to my pepper problem. What's my pepper problem? Basically I'm not happy with the number of peppers that ripen before the harvest season is over. It finally occurred to me that next year I could try and get my peppers further along during starting. Hmmmm.... All because of rogue planting containers.

Here's some pics: