Green and growing

Just a quick update on my seedlings (at least those that are still inside) - they are starting to pick up speed and growing pretty well. I have quite a few sweet bell peppers, tomatoes and some herbs going. Here are my Red Bell peppers - I really didn't expect all of the seeds to take so will have to plant more of them in containers on the patio.

More peppers - mix of hot and long skinny types here. Mostly just to see what they'll produce and if I want to use this type later on.

This is sweet basil that just woke up last week and has first two true leafs formed. Hopefully it will do well once transplanted when it's warm outside.

Tomatoes are doing pretty well - some are a little struggling but since they won't be transplanted for another 5-6 weeks I don't think it's a problem. They'll have plenty of time to get stronger. I have about 20 tomato plants overall so far and just started seeds for cherry tomatoes. I will also be looking at the farmer market for some of the not-so-typical that I'd like to try but don't want to buy whole lot of seeds yet. I'll buy 1-2 plants first to see if I like them.

More tomatoes but not sure on what happened to one of them that caused it to grow so fast and so strong. It's way ahead of schedule so I will have to transplant it in about 2 weeks and put it in the large container for now since it's too cold to put it outside. It's a "brandywine" by the way.

Well other items are yet to arrive like my squashes and cucumbers that I'll be planting in about 2 weeks for now - they don't like cold weather. But for now we still have snow on the ground and more of it promised for tomorrow. Spring this year is definitely not in a hurry.

Snow again??

Just as I thought we finally got into spring weather Mother Nature reminds us all again that she is indeed in charge of the events and we can't hurry her along. Last Friday temperature went up to 67 degrees and I made a mistake thinking that spring is here and it's good time to plant my seedlings. Not all of them of course but all cool-season ones like Spinach and Broccoli and Swiss Chard were transplanted in to the ground beds. What a mistake that turned out to be. Sunday night we had hard frost and then ice storm early in the morning following by the snow storm that brought couple of inches of snow. Of course that completely destroyed all my transplants. They can survive a dip in the temperature below 30 but not the ice storm. Weeks of growing and caring for them is wasted. Now I have to start from scratch again.

At least I still have some of my seedlings for tomatoes and peppers but they will remain in the house until mid-May. Oh well. Back to start my pots again and lesson learned for the future - don't be in such a hurry and let nature take its own time.