Spring Blooms

We got a good rain over the last couple of days, and so everything is growing in full force. My grass has gone from brown to green, the trees all have blooms, and the weeds have started to sprout.

The next wave of bulbs is blooming, the ones that bloom after the snow drops but before the daffodils. It must be slightly cooler at my house because I see daffodil flowers in the yards on my drive to work but mine are still coming up from the dirt.

Cutting Down Trees

We have decided that we need to cut down some more of the trees on the timber line because they are leaning at the house and the trees on that hillside like to fall over randomly. We already had one tree come down and nick the corner of our roof a couple of years ago. So I have to say goodbye to two hickories, a walnut, two pines, and two cherry trees. As much as this saddens me it will be nice to not have to worry the next time a wind storm comes through. One of the cherry trees has actually fallen over already, but got caught in the canopy of a slightly bigger tree before it could hit the house. This is what prompted my husband to start calling tree cutting services. I have no problem cutting down trees ourselves anywhere else on our property, but I would rather have professionals do it when it comes to trees that are already looking like they would like to have a go with my roof.

Cleaning Up the Yard

My husband and I worked in the yard this last Saturday cleaning up the flower beds around the house and cutting down the little scrap trees that grow up next to the timber. We even cleaned the house. It was a very productive day. See the before and after photos:



I meant to do a

Pepper Seedlings

Peppers! My pepper seedlings are growing well, I was just thinning them  out when I decided I needed a photo. I leave two seedlings per cell because I like to have extra in case we have an "I forgot to water them for four days" incident and only some of the cells survive. I know, it isn't that hard to water plants but I'm notoriously bad until I can get them into the dirt outside where Mother Nature takes care of the essentials. These are the varieties I'm growing this year:

Spicy Peppers (Mostly for canning salsa):
Habanero
White Bullet
Pequin
Manzano Yellow
Naga Viper
Wimpy (Some type of cherry pepper I got from a coworker)

Spicy Peppers for Drying:
Puya
Chi Chien

More Mild Peppers (Salsa and eating):
Jalapeno Big  Guy
Jalapeno Born to be Mild
Trinidad Perfume Pepper
Anaheim
Ancho Gigantea

No Heat:
King of the North

A lot of the spicier ones I'm only planting one or two plants, but the King of the North bell peppers and jalapenos I grow a lot more.

Seed Starting Setup

This is my setup for growing plants from seed. I just keep it in the storage room so it is out of the way and the plants didn't get a significant amount of light from the window I used to put it in front of anyways. I have heat mats under each tray with a temperature controller to keep the soil at an optimum germination temperature. My lights are on a timer so they come on for about 16 hours every day. 

Right now the peppers and tomatoes are the only things in here, because soon I will be transplanting them to larger pots and I'll need all four shelves for everything to fit. Then I split up the lights so there is only one per shelf, although in the future I want to buy more lights so I have six all together.

Spring Vegetable Seedlings

My spring vegetable seedlings are all doing nicely. Now that the low temperatures are above freezing I can leave my them outside so the peppers and tomatoes have more light. (I need another set of grow lights).
My setup has four shelves and I have four lights, but I realized last year that the seedlings grew much better with two lights hung side by side above them rather than just one.
Besides having the extra space inside, the main reason these are on the deck is to harden them off. It is important to acclimate seedlings to being outside before you go to plant them. For the first day, I set them out in the shade on a warm afternoon. Then the next day I left them out from the morning to the night. After that I let them have more sun, and now they are outside all the time as long as temperatures are above 34 degrees. (Note that that low temperature depends on the plants, these are all cold hardy and would probably be fine even if it frosted).

Weekend Yard Maintenance

It is cold again, and the excitement I was feeling for spring has dwindled as I haven't had time to work the entire work week. However, now that it is Friday I'm getting my plans in place for the weekend. It is supposed to rain on Sunday, so I will play on putting down some Preen Vegetable Garden Weed Preventer around my vegetables and some Preen Garden Weed Preventer around my flowers. I realized this last week the the two different containers in my shed were actually two different products. I'm sure I knew this when I purchased them and just forgot since last summer. It turns out the Preen Vegetable Garden Weed Preventer can be used around edibles, but the Preen Garden Weed Preventer can not. I am just lucky that when I put the Preen around my asparagus I was using the vegetable variety.

I also need to cut down the ornamental grass. I haven't figured out the best way to do this yet, I just use a hand saw, which I'm sure can not be the best tool for the job. If anyone has a really good method of doing this please let me know.

Happy weekend and and happy yard work!