I missed you too!

Sorry for the lapse in posts. I got the flu, and with the holidays I was pretty much useless.

Temp: 61*
Feels Like: 61*
Humidity: 93%
Wind: 0

At this point, almost all the tomato seeds have sprouted, and are approx. 2 inches tall. Celery is following suit, however is only a few millimeters tall, maybe around a centimeter on average. I see one bell pepper seed about to stick its little head through the ground, possibly tomorrow. But at this point, no pepper sprouts. Also, no change in the Jasmine either. Those were planted later, though, so I am not worried. With the tomatoes and celery, it looks like the seeds have almost a 100% germination rate. I put 3 tomato seeds in each pod, and all of them seem to be growing. I did thin a few out to the strongest seedling, though, so there isn't competition for nutrients.

On Christmas, I was cooking and discovered our garlic was sprouting, so I planted the remainder of the cloves (four of them). They are already 6-7 inches tall, and so today I planted 4 more from another bulb. The root development looks good. If this works, against strong garden advice, I may plant our entire garlic crop from store-bought organic garlic this year.

I have gone over the garden map and added the areas where flowers will be planted. Except for the flowers that will be used to attract/repel/confuse bugs which will be combined in a distribution spreader and scattered throughout the back yard. The combination I have decided to be in this mixture are as follows: marigolds, nasturtiums, calendula, borage, nicotania, geranium, chives, tansy, yarrow. Possibly to be added to this mix: chrysanthemum, coreopsis, annd oregano.

I just plotted out circular areas on top of the garden plan I uploaded earlier and designated them for specific flowers. I plan to essentially string up an improvised lattice along the entire fence in the back yard to allow climbing flowers to cover it as completely as possible.

On another topic, I got a calendar from my mom for Christmas and am using it to plot out day by day tasks in the garden. I filled it as well as I could at this point. I will need to observe when items in the garden mature to be able to have any idea about harvest dates. So those are not included. I also cannot predict troubleshooting issues that will need to be done.

However, during my downtime from being sick I managed to create a couple spreadsheets that will be used to track how much we are harvesting and to keep notes on garden walkthroughs. If anyone wants to use them let me know and I will be happy to send them.

I have decided to plant whatever we currently have the seeds for on schedule. Any that we are missing by April I will buy started from the garden center. That is the best way that I can figure out to do it. I will do my best to get seeds to use next year over the course of this season. Aside from that, I am out of news for now....