Good morning; care for a snowcone? Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Sigh... another weekend done in by lousy weather. First half of the week was beautiful — on Wednesday it got to 75°, and I spent the day digging the pink stuff from the new planter boxes. Over half-way done... and then the weather changed.
Thursday was cold, cloudy and drippy. By Friday afternoon the slush had turned to snow in a classic Colorado upslope storm, with a counter-clockwise spin mixing northern cold air with moisture from the Gulf. Because the temperature hovered around 32° there's only a few inches of snow, but over 2" of moisture so far. Temperatures are forecast to zoom back into the 70s by Tuesday.
The string of wet, weekend storms makes me extremely grateful that I got the veggie patch tilled, and the peas planted, before we went on vacation in late March. Had I waited until our return well, I'd still be waiting.
The weather is greatly hampering my attempt to ready the new planter boxes for planting. It is unfortunate as a large shipment of plants is scheduled to arrive from High Country Gardens next week; we're going with all xerics out there so we won't need to water any of it after the first year or two. Damn it — I'm even trying to be organized about exactly where I'm going to plant the stuff — I made a table in Excel listing the heights, widths and bloom times; thus, I can sort by what is tallest and what blooms when.
But we are less than a month from Denver's average last frost date, so there is puttering I can do inside — it's timely to start the warm weather crops inside. I've had so much success in sprouting the peas on damp paper towels, last year I started doing that with the corn, squash and cucumbers. I have to go to the grocery store, though, to get some slightly larger paper cups for the squash and cucumbers — their root systems develop fast, and it doesn't do to let them get pot bound before they're planted.
The tomatoes and eggplant have been potted for over a month, but they are struggling. The week we were gone my neighbors faithfully over-watered them and they grew hardly at all. It was better than having had them die from lack of water, but the plants are very small. Although they aren't too large for the fluorescent starter lights, they'll need to go downstairs to the metal halide lights to make room for the other veggie plants.
It's also time to sort through the dahlia tubers I dug last fall and see what made it through the winter. Last year instead of potting up the dahlias — a process that has frequently led to rotted tubers — I put them in a warm, dark cupboard for about a month and let them sprout. It worked well as I had a jump-start on their growing, and could identify the tubers with live eyes.
I'm also — as the weather permits — hardening off the plants I had at the office. The morning glories which were started waaayyyy back in February are going gangbusters — they even got enough light in the conference room to bloom. And, even better, I definitely will have blossoms on the Ecuador pink brugmansia this year — I already had one blossom before I moved it home. It' really ragged looking thanks to the spider mite infestation — but with it on the front porch it's much easier to keep it well dosed with insecticidal soap and it's starting to recover. The only other problem is that Caligula found the huge, pendulous blossom to be a wonderful pootie toy and shredded it. I can only hope that he loses his fascination with the plant — or that I can figure out how to use a scat mat to keep him from the flowers.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?