Hello, and welcome to my blog!
It's been about 3 weeks since my post about starting my tomato plants. You can read that post here.
https://peakd.com/gardening/@amberyooper/starting-my-tomato-seeds
I had been taking the little seedlings out to the greenhouse during the day to give them some sun and then bringing them back in at night. The nights have been to cold to leave them out in the greenhouse, hopefully that will change soon.
Last week we got a spring snow storm, about 8-10 inches worth. It took most of the week to melt away because it was cold outside. The past 2 days have been a bit warmer and I was able to bring the tomato plants back out the greenhouse again for some sun.
As you can see, I have the little pots in large saucers so that they're easier to carry and also easier to water. They're sitting on top of a concrete block half wall. I painted the blocks black so that they'll absorb heat from sunshine. It helps to keep the greenhouse a bit warmer at night, and it's good for the starter plants.
I keep some of my rock collection on the wall also, mostly just so that I can look at them when I'm in the greenhouse. Many of the rocks came from the tailing piles of old copper mines. There's some nice pieces of calcite, and a few other minerals also.
Yesterday, I decided to try to get some marigold plants started for use in between the tomato plants in the garden. It's said that the marigold plants help to keep some of the bad bugs away from the tomato plants, so I plant them.
I decided to try using some fiber pots and seed starter soil to plant the seeds in this time. I decided to plant 20 of the fiber pots and see what kind of luck I have with the seeds. I did the dirty work out in the greenhouse.
After all the seeds were planted in the fiber pots, I brought them in the house and put them in the seed starter tray on the heat mat. Hopefully this will work as well for the marigolds as it did for the tomato seeds. I also started 6 more Roma tomato seeds.
For some reason, I had problems with the tomato plants that I started in the peat pods, especially the Roma plants. I think I may have waited too long to plant the pods into larger containers with dirt that the roots could grow into. That's something that I have to remember for the next batch of tomato plants. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the marigold seeds to sprout withe the extra warmth.
Once we get into May, I'm planning on starting some squash seeds to get a bit of a head start on the planting season here. Normally, we can't put seeds into the ground until the end of May because of possible frost at night.
That's all I have for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!
Do you have any concept of what sort of harvest you'll gain eventually? I assume there'll be no shortage of people happy to take them off your hands though.
Well, the harvest will depend a lot on the weather we get this summer. Last year was a bad year for the heirloom tomatoes that I normally grow, the got full of spots and stem end rot before they got fully ripe, so I got very few of them. The paste type tomato plants in the greenhouse did much better, I got a decent harvest from them.
I can almost all of the tomatoes that I harvest, so I usually don't have many to give away.
I wondered what your comment was about then realised it was in reply to mine from 6 days ago...I've made 400 comments since then.
Hopefully your tomatoes go well this year.
Yeah, I was slow getting back to the comments on the post. I haven't been on hive much at all this last week.
My marigolds usually are up within 5 days, sometimes 3 days. I also found my stored marigold seed (in the fridge) is extremely long lived. It lasted 10 years, and the last starting was just as vigorous and strong as the first.
It took about 2 days for the marigold seeds to come up with the help of the heat mat. :-)
Apparently marigold seeds are pretty tough if they can last that long! I should collect more of the seeds this fall and see what happens next year.
Looking good. We have had tomatoes, okra, butternut squash and cantaloupes taking off like crazy last few weeks.
I'm guessing that your garden season starts sooner than it does up here. :-)
I won't be able to put anything in the ground for a couple more weeks due to frost danger.
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