The Sun Finally Returns

After a week of cold, rainy weather, the sun finally made an appearance today. Since it is way to wet to even think of working down in the Big Garden, I decided to concentrate on getting things off of my "to-do" list up at the house. I began by planting the 14 "Bright Lights" cosmos that I had dug up from the overflow kitchen garden a number of weeks ago. All of these plants are volunteers from last year's four plants. It will be fun to see how many of these have orange blooms and how many bloom yellow. Last year I only had on plant that had yellow blooms, so it seems that orange is a more dominate trait.

Here are all of the cosmos planted. I actually have 15 plants this year since another volunteer popped up and I didn't have the heart to pull it out.

Next I retrieved my "Pride of Wisconsin" muskmelon plants from the shop. They have spent most of the last week back under the grow lights, since the weather has been so miserable.

I laid out a section of black plastic and used earth staples to hold it in place. Then I cut out six small holes and set in my young muskmelon plants. I certainly hope the weather will change for good soon. These melon are going to need a lot of hot, sunny days if they have any hope of reaching maturity.

Here is an overview of the overflow Kitchen Garden area. At the far end are 4 "Ukrainian Purple" tomato plants. Then the middle section has my 6 "Pride of Wisconsin" muskmelon. Finally the 15 "Bright Lights"cosmos are planted closest to the patio. It all looks really good. I just wish this had been completed about two weeks ago.

I then turned my attention to planting the new perennials that we purchased last weekend at The Little Red Farm Nursery. I ended up setting in everything except for the two boxwood plants and the two digiplexis plants. I am really loving this yellow "Canary Feathers" corydalis. We have grown the blue version for a few years and really like it. This yellow is equally as stunning and I hope proves as hardy for us as the blue variety has.

Spring is Finally Here

Well it appears that Spring has finally founds its way to the Willamette Valley! Starting with yesterday's sunshine filled day, we have mostly sunny and dry days forecast for the next 15 days. And it looks like we might actually hit 70 degrees mid-next week! Wonders will never cease. I spent today's lovely day outside, slowly knocking a few things off of my to-do list. My big project of the day was laying out the plan for our new rose flowerbed. This past week Mom and I finally narrowed our choices down and picked and ordered the five roses that will grow in this flowerbed. I wrote down each roses' mature width dimension and then outlined the placement of each rose in bone-meal. After that as done I took out the plants that we purchased last Saturday up at Garland's Nursery and we decided on their placement. Then I got busy and did some actual planting!

In front of our future "Birthday Girl " rose, I planted the two  Dianthus "Everlast" red and pink. I also set in the Salvia "Pink Dawn" that I gave Mom for Easter and the Coreopsis "Big Bang Star Cluster". It is exciting to finally have some plants actually planted in this new, full sun flowerbed.

I was really glad that I took the time last Sunday to pot up the lilies that we purchased. Two of the "Casa Blanca" lilies had already pushed up above the soil line. Now we are hoping with crossed fingers that the rabbits don't eat our young lily plants.

I also had a chance today to plant the "Cortland" onions that I bought at the Farmer's Market last Saturday. I set in 16 plants and then watered the onion bed and the garlic bed with a solution of balanced liquid fertilizer. Another thing crossed of my list!

Youth Garden Plant Sale and working in the Kitchen Graden

After getting up early to help set up our last LCDS tuber sale of the year, I drove over to Springfield to the Food For Lane County Youth Garden. I had heard about this garden for years but had never had the chance to visit it before today. It is nestle between busy Gateway Blvd and MLK Blvd in a quite oasis. The event that finally brought me here was their Annual Plant Sale. Apparently, this event has been going on for many years but I just became aware of it a few days ago.

A field on the farm was set up with row after row of green, lush plant starts. Thankfully they provided free boxes with which to transport your purchases. Since I was a rookie here, I had overlooked that important detail. I was also glad that I had arrive 20 minutes before opening. By the time 10 AM arrived, there was a very long line and parking was at a premium.

Right at 10 AM they sounded the whistle and shopping commenced!

They had an amazing amount of both vegetable and flower starts. Everything was very clearly labeled and there was a great selection of varieties with in each plant type.

There were lots and lots of shoppers but it wasn't so crowded that it was difficult or unpleasant. Really the only hard part was remembering the size limitation of my garden so that I couldn't buy one of everything!

I ended up with 4 purchases:

• 2 - 3" pots of Sunflower "Giant Sungold". Each pot had 2 healthy plants to I got 4 for the price of 2!
• 6-pack of Cosmos "Dwarf Bright Lights"
• 6-pack pf Cauliflower "Snow Crown"
• 6-pack of Zinnia "Yellow Flame"

When I got home from the sale and had some lunch, I decided to work in the Kitchen Garden. It had been more than a couple of week since I last spent some time working here and it definitely needed some work. I began by giving the whole garden a good weeding. Then I planted 3 of the Snow Crown" cauliflower that I had purchased that morning. Yes- I actually planted something the same day that I bough it!

I know absolutely nothing about growing cauliflower. I desperately need to read up on its care but for now I just stuck the plants in and gave them a good watering.

I also brought my rusty trellis out of storage and placed it over the many volunteer morning glory plants. Then I started thinning out the plants. I pulled up a whole bucketful and I know that I have still left in too many. But for now these have a bit more room to grow and I can do a second thinning later.

I then brought out my tomato cages and single leaf trellis and set up that part of the garden. Once that trellis was positioned I was able to plant the "Heavenly Blue" morning glory plants that I bought last week. I also transplanted a small "Heavenly Blue" plant that had come back from seed. This is the first year ever that I have had seed sprout the next Spring from the previous year's "Heavenly Blue" plants. They apparently have a much lower rate of germination then the morning glories planted around my other trellis that come up by the hundreds each year.

Once the morning glories were in, I also planted the "Matina" tomato that I bought last week. All in all, it was a productive day. I got the kitchen garden in shape and many of the plants that I have purchased in the last few week are in the ground. In a few more weeks, I will "finish" the kitchen garden for Summer when I put in the Winter Squash, the rest of the tomatoes, and all of the other heat loving vegetable.