I love this time of year, when the seeds are first starting in the greenhouse and every morning I get to look and see if any more have sprouted up. It is like a little surprise. Sometimes a big surprise when something has not only sprouted but is standing quite tall right away. I then get to open all the greenhouses and refill the water in some of the trays and mist the other plants that don’t like a lot of water.

So far the plants are doing well, though I definitely did lose some of the broccoli and cauliflower in the first planting. The second planting of broccoli has all come up and are looking great! I just won’t have as many staggered plants as I had hoped, which is ok. I will just have to process some of it for the winter right away and only keep out what we will eat for the few weeks. The nice thing is that they continue to produce smaller heads all summer, so we will not be running out of broccoli at any point.

The cauliflower is a disappointment again this year. I have only 2 plants coming up, and they are not growing nearly as fast as the broccoli. I actually re-planted an entire 12 tray to see if I could get some more to come up. I may end up having to buy a few plants at this rate.

I may have also lost a few onions, but we will see. They are continuing to come up and I remember them being quite staggered last year as well. Some popped up right away, while others took their sweet time. I may end up supplementing with some bulbs, as I would like a large harvest this year. Last year, we went through our onions so fast, that I hardly had any to store, and what I did have, we ate by the end of the fall.

I planted the rosemary earlier than a lot of the other herbs. They have started to come up, though not all have popped. I’m beginning to wonder if I should have planted some of the other herbs a little earlier, but I am also getting excited about the growing season, and we still have a month and a half, at least, before the plants go outside. Plenty of time for growing hardy. So far only a few sage have come up, but I will be patient and I am sure more will start popping this week. Last year they took a while to get going as well.

I forgot when I did my last post about cabbage! I wrote the post and was re-organizing all the seed packets when I realized I hadn’t planted my cabbage. The struggles when planting so many different types of plants. Anyway, I did go out and planted 8 red and 8 green cabbage. I will likely give a few away since I have only ever grown 4 red cabbage, and that is usually more than enough for us to enjoy and preserve for the winter. Those little seedlings are doing great. Some popped up right away, while others are just starting to poke through. I think all but 1 of each have come up now.

The tomatoes are mostly looking happy and growing like weeds. Though our sweetie pie cherry tomatoes only just made an appearance. Looking back at last years spreadsheet, they did take a little longer than the Big Beef and the Romas. I may end up moving all the tomatoes into one of the greenhouses, so that I can put a small fan in there on the lowest setting for parts of the day. I don’t want them to get as leggy as some of them did last year. Figure I will start the breeze on them early to force them to grow strong while they grow tall.

The peppers haven’t shown their heads yet, with the exception of one cayenne pepper and one california bell who just poked through this morning. We are really starting to see a lot of sunshine, which is making those greenhouses steamy, just how they like them. They are always slower to start than most of our other plants, so we will just keep watching them.

The ground cherries also haven’t come up yet, and I have no idea how long they may take. It noted that they are quite easy to grow and are very weed-like in their growth, so I imagine that once they do pop up, they will grow quickly. As it is similar to a Tomatillo, I looked back to see how long it for our tomatillos to come up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t into my full nerd gardening the year we had them, so I don’t have records of how long it took them to come up. I also can’t remember if I just bought tomatillo plants from a nursery. Anyways, it says ground cherries are on the easier side to grow, so I will just be patient and see how it goes.

Since the weather is getting nicer, the yard has started drying out and we are just about at the point that we can get in there and finish filling those last 2 partial walls with rock. This will officially be the last year that we do rock walls! I am looking forward to getting those finished, and then capping all the walls with a wood top and some post covers. The finished look will start coming together.

We will have a few stackstone walls to build as well, but those are so much less work than the gabion walls are. We will be able to do those in a weekend fairly easily. Outside of that, we are just going to start working on levelling the back portion of the yard. We will frame in where we want the gazebo to go and are going to fill it with crushed gravel this year. I don’t think we will actually create the cement pad but we want an area to at least put some chairs so that we can start enjoying the garden. Plus, it reduces the area we will have to weed!

Since we will be working on the levelling of the yard, we are hoping that we can cover sections to ensure weeds don’t grow while we work. As soon as I am able, I will get some micro-clover down in certain sections so that we get a nice carpet of it going. That will also help stop the weeds and provide a “grass-like” area for us to enjoy.

I think there are a few last indoor projects we will get done before the yard work really starts picking up. There are a few closets that need some shelving units, so I will make sure to get that all done and then everything inside will be organized.