Spring Time, Lettuce Sprouts

Spring is here and our yard is showing it. Little violets dot the grass, and the grass itself is vibrant.

The lettuce and mesclun are up in the garden! They literally popped up overnight, and in the middle of a thunderstorm at that. There is also one little chard sprout. No peas, and it leaves me wondering if the birds or squirrels dug them up. Or maybe they needed soaking before planting to get them started.

I am contending with all manner of weeds already, mostly dandelion and onion grass. Perhaps I need to mulch better between the rows.

The electrical pole only four feet from the garden was replaced yesterday. Thankfully the workmen minded my garden plot and left it untouched. They also dug up and left a bunch of concrete slabs which I will use as little stepping stones.

Meanwhile on the windowsill: basil and tomato plants are growing their first sets of true leaves while the peppers started sprouting. Broccoli is up but leggy and I'm nervous the sprouts will tip over before they really get anywhere.

Out In The Garden

My sister was just in town and so I had her help me out in the garden.

We raked up leaves from the yard and brought them back to the plot. She tilled up some little onions taking up residence in the soil while I raked the plot even and added compost with manure. Then we mixed in the leaves.

I bought about half as much fencing as I thought I'd need and had to improvise by using the chain link fence as two sides of the garden enclosure. We don't have too many critters in our neighborhood but I want to discourage the neighbor's dogs from digging around in the plot. With the fence up we planted chard, peas, leaf lettuce, and mesclun. I dug the furrows according to the package, firmed the soil after laying down the seeds, and gave them a little water.

I've been reading a bit about succession planting and companion planting and have the whole thing laid out so I can put in tomatoes where the peas are now, follow the radishes with peppers, etc. in hopes that we can have threeish crops during the growing season: spring, summer, late summer. Maybe I'll be brave and try lettuce in the fall, too. It would all be a feat considering how small the garden is.

Will go out today to check the condition of the garden and maybe (!) I'll have some pictures to post next time.

Moldy Peat: The Seedling Pirate

Peat pots don't seem to hold in moisture very well. At least not on my windowsill. After struggling to keep them anything but bone dry for days I put the peat pots in saucers of water to soak up moisture over night.

Two days later I found mold spots on the outside of each peat pot.

Yet the next day there they were, tiny sprouts from both the yellow pear and matina tomato seeds. With the plastic off they seem to have maintained some kind of balance between staying watered and not being moldy.

The mesclun mix is doing okay, though some of the sprouts have fallen over. Perhaps they are too leggy from being too far from the window? Isn't that what happens when they have to reach too far for the sunlight?

After the peat pot incident I decided to console myself with a $5 Burpee greenhouse. It comes with 36 pots, has a nice sized cover, is self watering, and included soil pellets, a chart, and greenhouse sized markers. So there are two kinds of tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli in there right now.

Windowsill Germination

I bought basil seeds at the local nursery some weeks ago, just to see if my kitchen window sill is under the right conditions for sprouting seeds. The first batch of basil seeds, planted in a peat pot and covered with plastic wrap, never came up. The second round got knocked off the sill by an unnamed assailant. The third batch, in a self watering planter made of two yogurt cups, sprouted a few days ago. I took off the plastic because it seemed like the right thing to do. There are three little sprouts now making their way up to the sunlight.


Inspired by this progress I started tomato and pepper seeds. They are in peat pots, covered in plastic, and sitting in saucers on the sill. I am careful to keep the draft off them at night and have been turning on the kitchen light when it is cloudy out. Hopefully I can coax some seeds to grow so I can avoid the expense of buying plants later this spring.

A Taco Bell container is now housing some lettuce seeds. I am nervous about not being able to tell lettuce from weeds out in the garden, so I'll familiarize myself with the looks of the mesclun mix this way! Later this week, if the ground dries a bit, peas will go into the ground. Maybe some radishes too.