I just planted most of my cucumbers in flats/soil blocks yesterday and today. I try to schedule them for 3-4 weeks prior to planting out. I can put them in the greenhouse before that of course. I have tomatoes blooming under lights but no peppers blooming yet. I tried a Black Brandywine tomato for the first time this year. It is supposed to be a long-season tomato that wouldn't do well here, but it is the most vigorous tomato I have ever grown so far. We'll see if the vigor continues. I just managed to get the tractor over to the big greenhouse for the first time today. The snow was still over the knees in many places but I dug through with the front bucket. I suggested trying it yesterday to my wife and she laughed at me and told me I was nuts...then she tried walking the trails she had walked only a few days ago and sunk through the snow yesterday. She decided to agree with me and we dug a pathway to the greenhouse. We only had to cut away three downed trees, but there are several more down on the fence that we couldn't get to easily yet. I filled the irrigation barrel with heavy snow, as the water won't run over there for several weeks yet. It was 83 F. there so the snow will melt nicely.
I tilled my neighbor's garden yesterday. The worse part is getting the belly mower off and back on my tractor. I sure wish I had bought a 3 pt finish mower rather than this pain in the butt. I've started looking in Craigslist. I'd love to get my garden set up, but I had to tear out the electric fence because vines twisted around it so much there was no way to get them off. Now it's overgrown and there are lots of brambles to dig out...and I have the motivation of a sloth on quaaludes.
You should set up a small raised bed or just some tomato plants, etc. in planters on your back deck. Not much work at all and still fun to play with. I had forgotten how much I love to garden.
I get the plants. I quit doing seeds since we have a top notch nursery and I can pick through a lot of plants until I find one that looks good to me. This is my first time trying this hybrid so we shall see.
I heeled in a shrub that I bought in a box at Fleet Wednesday. I knew it was a tree rose of Sharon like one I have, by the leaves (or should I say leaf) on it. Anyway, went out to water it just now and it was GONE! Not just bitten off but totally not there. I kept my receipt and the plants are guaranteed for one year...
I used to always buy plants, too. In fact, this is the first time I have ever started seedlings under a grow light, but now I'm a convert. It's so much cheaper to grow them myself and it takes no time at all, plus it's fun to watch them sprout and grow. I ordered the seeds from Amazon so I'll be planting the tomatoes a little late but hopefully they'll do well.
I do almost everything from seed. I find it keeps the disease problems and seeds don't carry insects. I haven't had good luck with seeds form Amazon, so I don't buy form there. I hope you have better luck, @Beth Gallagher. I think you have said before you grew seeds from Amazon. We introduced slugs to our property from plants purchased at Walmart and have been fighting them ever since. A gardening site my wife is on just posted that the local Walmart has received orders from corporate to pack up their seeds and ship them back to corporate. I don't know if the recall is due to seed quality or another step down the road to starving us to death.
All the seeds I have purchased this year have come from Amazon. There are literally hundreds of sellers on the Amazon marketplace; most of them are small businesses so likely the same as the seed catalog providers. Since seeds are relatively inexpensive I don't hesitate to try them out.
I always did seeds when I had my greenhouse. It is certainly cheaper with seeds as the cost of plants doubled here. The cost of natural gas forced one nursery out of business and the other just raised their prices. I once loved gardening, but like many things I over did it and now it isn't all that much fun. I am enjoying having a few tomatoes, jalapenos, and cilantro in my 3' tall pots. I can manage them with out even bending down. Another feature of these pots is they taper up and are smooth so slugs cannot crawl up. Slugs are the number one enemy of tomatoes here. Fast growing tomatoes that produce large fruit also have trouble because they split and sunburn easy. This 3 foot high pot "farming" should really work out since they won't require so much watering. Our water cost has doubled in the last two years and I can't have a shallow well here because of the hardpan. I had a sand point well at my old location.
Do you have municipal water @Faye Fox ? Are you allowed to catch rainwater? We are fortunate here with an abundance of water. We have a spring-fed lake in our back yard, our water table is only about 10 feet down, and the artesian water that is bottled at a small plant nearby is between 75 and 128 feet down should we desire to tap it.
We ordered form a named seed source Amazon and had no better luck than with the seeds we got from Kazakhstan and China when we ordered from Amazon. The ones from China took forever to get here and were accompanied by "free tomato seeds" of an unnamed variety and a request to give them a 5-star review on Amazon. Neither the seeds we purchased nor the free seeds germinated.
I bought 'Frasier' pine seeds from china with a request I leave a good review. The seemed to be pine seeds but they did not germinate so not sure they were Frasiers.
For several years now, I have ordered a lot of my seeds and also plant starts from eBay sellers. You can set the location to US only, which is what i do, and then search for amount and price offerings. Many of these people are retired vets, or just “preppers” who live a rural lifestyle and get part of their income from selling plants and seeds on ebay. In fact, I am going to get some sourdough starter, and the one I picked out is “mom’s sourdough starter”, and they wrote about their elderly mom who has made sourdough with this starter for many years, and how she sells the starter to help with her SS pension. Now, we never can tell what is really true or just a story to sell something; but I am buying this one and hoping that i am helping some little old lady (not unlike myself) to have a little better life. Maybe I will start selling sourdough starter on ebay one of these days….. who knows ?
I decided to try one of the raised beds that is REALLY raised... with legs. There are several brands on Amazon so I searched for "made in USA" to narrow my choices. I bought this one, which is a military veteran-owned company and has excellent reviews... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B094MKWGKP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 DIMENSIONS: 48” (L) by 24” (W) x 33” (H) and holds 5 cubic feet of soil total. The growing depth is 9". After I placed the order, I was reading more of the customer Q&A and found that the planter is actually manufactured in China, so now I'm kind of annoyed. I want to support a vet but I also wanted American made.