Put a few white onion sets in with garlic to fill gaps

In the gaps in the garlic bed, I put a few of the white onion sets bought from Ritchie's.  ~3 or 4 in total.

Carrots started via corn starch gel method and burlap

Here's what I did:

- Soaked the seeds in water for a few hours.

- Made the gel by adding ~2 Tbsp corn starch to 2 cups cold water; simmering/whisking until it gels.

- Let the gel cool for several hours.

- Put the cool gel into a baggie; stirred in the carrot seeds.

- After loosening the soil, used a finger to draw troughs.

- Squeezed the carrot seed gel into the troughs. -- Pretty sure there are some longish stretches of no seeds in the gel --- consider using less gel with more carrot seeds.

- Pinched the soil over top.

- Mist-watered.

- Covered with double-layer of burlap.

- Watered the burlap.

Garlic doing well! Most popped up! Covered with a sheet today

Keeping the garlic covered with a tulle-like sheet all season.

All peppers now starting hardening -- and one has a real Hungarian Sweet pepper on it! -- and pruning notes

To free up space under the lights, all peppers are now downstairs and in various stages of being hardened.  Will take things gradually for sure, and they won't actually be planted for QUITE a while yet.

One of the Hungarian Sweet plants has a pepper on it!  I let it be.

As for pruning, I've been pruning pretty much all peppers (sweet and hot) by necessity due to limited vertical space under the lights.  Most plants look pretty darn good, and some look downright amazing!  I'm not deliberately removing any flowers unless by virtue of pruning.

Uppotted the tomatoes that were started 3.5 weeks ago (April 6th) -- grew well in hexagon multi-tray

I'll use the hexagon multi-tray again (the one I cut in half).  Although the broccolis were tough to get out of it, the tomatoes came out really nicely.  The timing was good for uppoting them at 3.5 weeks post-start, as the roots were nicely developed and not yet rootbound.

Aha -- found the round 2 Belstar broccolis!

They're tucked into the big multi-tray, as a row in between the zinnias and tomatoes!  Woo hoo!  Will transplant them tomorrow and get them hardening off outside within a day or two after.

12-hour-soaked peas now in vermiculite

So yes, soaked the peas for just 12 hours instead of 24 hours.  They look good and swollen and are starting to split (in a good way).

For the vermiculite container, used a larger indoor container  whose holes on the bottom aren't too big and alternated layers of vermiculite and peas.

GA: Weeding almost finished!

The GA plot I had last year on a temporary basis is unavailable to me this year as its normal gardener is returning.  So, I have a new plot this year.

The bad news -- it's full of weeds* from seemingly having been abandoned last year.  *I don't like the word "weed" but for simplicity will use it.

The great news -- it's mine!!!  And I can keep it again in future if I want to!  Wahoo!!!!!

I desperately wanted to get a head start on removing the weeds, especially before the tiller comes along and plants all those thousands of seeds that have been sitting ever so conveniently on the surface.  So, I got going earlier this week.  Fortunately, the vast majority of the weed coverage was some type of grass whose seed heads were really conveniently lying on top and were easily removed without shattering seeds all over everywhere.  And the roots of those grasses came out super easily by hand.  So, an evening and a half took care of removing all of this.

Then today I started the next step:  Digging out the other types of grass or vegetation.  This consisted of the following, which I finished for about 1/3rd to almost half of the plot -- will do the rest of the plot soon:

- Easily pulled little tufts of green grass with short roots.

- Harder to pull type of grass with long runners underground (mostly just along some of the western edge).

- Woody twigs sticking up throughout that look like tree seeds from last year.

- Miscellaneous other little green things.

As part of this, I found the following:

- A nest of small ants along the south edge.

- Several cutworm-looking / other grubby things -- two near the west/middle edge; others can't remember where.

I also moved over a bunch of the leftover straw from last year's garden and spread it out in the south part of the plot.

Peas (x100 seeds) started (will soak for 12 hours; then into indoor vermiculite until germinated; then directly outside to soil ---- i.e. almost same as last year)

A bit of a late start due to a cold, rainy, cloudy spring so far.  Anyway, today I started soaking the peas (100 of them, just because that sounds like a nice round number, and I plan to buy another t-post to expand the vertical section of the yard).   Then tomorrow I'll put them into indoor vermiculite, multiple layers / treasure hunt -style.  Then once they germinate (NOT once they pop up -- just once they have a root as seen when I'll go digging in the vermiculate), they'll go directly outside into soil.  This is the approach I used last year, which worked well to avoid critters digging up / eating unsprouted seeds. -- Though a difference is this year I'm only soaking for 12 hours rather than 24 hours.

More Belstar broccoli started today

Well I can't seem to find the round 2 Belstar broccolis that I started in April 6th -- so I started more today!  Might be too late, but why not give it a try.

Belstar broccoli doing badly; best 3 are piracicaba; too hot in grow room for Belstar?

Dang, 3 of the Belstar are completely kaput, and most of the rest of the Belstar look bad too.  3 piracicabas are doing great -- TOO great, seeing as there's still a month before GA is open and they're getting too huge.

My theory is the grow room was too hot for the Belstar and then when I started hardening, they got shaded by the bigger broccoli.

Oh well!

First direct sun for hardies (just 15 minutes)

The hardies are now outside in the shade along the fence all day, as long as it's +4 or warmer.  Today they got their first direct sun (aside from whatever sun they may get through the fence).  Kept it short at 15 minutes.

Basil started -- for real this time! (forgot it on April 6th)

Somehow I forgot to actually start the basil on April 6th!  So started it today.  Prospera (same as recent years).   -----> Update on April 17th 2025:  Oh!  I think the April 6th seeds WERE basil after all, not round 2 of broccoli!  So, looks like I'll have these two rounds of basil.

Belstar broccoli round 2 started --> ?!? I can't find them? -- so started another round of Belstar on April 17th

On a whim decided to start a round 2 of broccoli, though only Belstar.  Round 1 broccoli is either huge (only the piracicabas are huge) and I'm not sure how they'll transplant by the time GA is open; the other round 1s are kind of not looking the best.  So, we'll see how round 2 goes.

Started tomatoes (many varieties), ground cherries, and zinnias -- MEANT TO DO BASIL TOO BUT FORGOT UNTIL APRIL 12TH

Zinnia:  The usual mix of short and tall, and the last of the yellow store-bought.

Ground cherries:  The packet bought a few years ago.

Tomatoes:  All the varities I have except for Scotia. So this includes, by memory:  

- Damsel

- Big Tofu Plus

- Mortgage Lifter

- San Marzano (my first time trying these)

- Jasper

- can't remember what else

Cauliflower all kaput

[Wrote this on April 20th bec forgot to document it back when it happened -- not sure when it was, but ~a month ago.]

First, 3 of the cauliflowers went kaput while the fourth remained looking good; then a few weeks later, the fourth cauliflower was kaput too.  

No idea why...

Hardening day 2 -- and now living downstairs full time (hardies only)

Today the hardies went out in full shade for 2.5 hours.

And I decided I'm done with lugging them up/down stairs, under / out from the lights -- so they'll live on the kitchen table when not outside.

Hardening off started today! Shade only, ~+5 to +8

Today I finally started hardening off!  Everything except the peppers and stevia.

So, here's what's getting hardened:

- broccoli

- parsley

- celery

- chard

- kale

- onions

- lettuce

- forget-me-nots

- coreopsis

(I think that's it?)

Today was after work, so it was all shade, and it was cool but above zero, somewhere around +5 to +8.  They were out for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

The next couple of days will be too cold, and a couple of days next week look to be too cold, but other than that these babies are going to get used to outside (gradually, of course).

Bad weather -- delayed in starting to harden off -- no room left under lights!!

Argh, the three main shelves are completely full so I desperately want to start hardening things off so that there will be space next week when the next batch of seed-starting is due.

I'm hopeful that the weather will cooperate this week, to get started.  But first, I want to finish placing the chicken wire, to hopefully be sure that the local rabbit(s) can't come in and have a feast!

Last year's potatoes are sprouting (most of them)

I'll use them to grow some of this year's potatoes.