Getting Ready to Run

My experiments at work are starting to produce data again, after a long, long dry spell. That is good, but it means long hours at work while I stare out at sunny days wishing I could be elbow-deep in dirt and baby plants rather than at work, all clean. I started these peas a week ago. Sunny days lead to remarkably fast growth for these guys! I have to try to get them conditioned and out soon. I'm starting more sugar snaps tonight, and the 4 or 5 varieties of tomatoes I'm putting in this year. The chard, spinach, radishes, carrots, and beets can go out whenever I get time. The buttercups are about to bloom, so I'm waiting for the last snowstorm/severe cold snap to pass, as it always comes when they are blooming. We'll see.

Dig! Dig! Dig!

I finished clearing the front bed Saturday. It is ready for fertilizer and liming ASAP. Since we are having a real winter this year (lows in the 20s forecast again next week, after a warm weekend), the baby plants will stay indoors for a bit longer. The broccoli and bok choi have moved to the porch, and the peas are going in tubes tonight on a radiator cover for faster germination, then to the windows, then the porch, then hardening, then outside. I also cleared some of the back beds of the rake-able leaves, hoping the cold night-time temps will foil my nemeses, the slugs. A broccoli plant that survived the winter is heading now. Wow! Maybe we'll get something out of those plants after all!

Digging Up Roots With Snow on the Ground

Next week-end starts the beginning of the cool-weather planting season here in Memphis, if the weather cooperates, as next week-end will be one month before the average last frost date. This is my last week-end before the indoor and outdoor planting begins in earnest, with the sunporch turning into a greenhouse and the flats starting to appear outdoors on sunny days for cold-hardening. So I'm digging, and the longer cool snap than usual we had last week means that there is STILL snow in the shade on the bushes and the ground. Wow. Soon I'll be planting outdoors, and losing the winter flab! Woohoo! Ow.

Snow!

This is a photo from last week. I have lettuce plants from last fall that have survived some pretty severe temperature extremes, and being frozen solid, with no protection. Amazing. Today I woke up to a total surprise: snow on the ground! It was a wet, snow-ballable snow, too. Work is closed, so I get the day at home. Woohoo! Play and shovel time this morning, followed by Internet time and oatmeal bars and things I did not finish over the week-end. Shovel dirt in a garden bed one day, shovel snow the next! I love Tennessee.