Here are the current seedlings. Some of the tomatoes, all of the potatoes, a few of the peppers, the marigolds, and early started lettuce are all planted outside. Today I up-potted the seedlings of dwarf tomato varieties and kept a few extras.
All that's left to start are some squash, pumpkins, and cucumbers. If I'm in the mood for it, I might plant some Swiss chard and a few other veggies directly in the garden now, and of course corn and beans in May and June.
It's nice to see that some of the daffodils are still blooming.
Grafts look OK so far. It's early to see much growth, but the buds are swelling. These are the top tiers for the espaliers.
These are the new chestnut grafts.. So far so good.
It's an unusually warm, even hot Spring. Days into the 80s, but nights into high 30s to low 40s. I decided to plant out the rest of the first group of tomato plants. I am covering them on the coldest nights.
No photos of the potatoes. They were from Fedco in Maine. Varieties Algonquin (Early variety), Envol ("The earliest of the early"), Kennebec (my favorite, a very good baker) mid season, and Russet Burbank (Always good) late season.
This is about the earliest that I have planted tomatoes, and the latest I have planted potatoes.
The Clancy potato seedlings have been doing OK. There were some freezes, and there are a few frosted leaves, but they seem to be growing well. I covered them on those freezing nights for protection.
All of the squares are cut now. I started sewing together the nine patches. It will take a while to complete them, and there is no hurry.
This photo is from when I started cutting them. There are now about 49 piles of each color pair, 12 squares per color.
Here are some of the second hand men's shirts that will go into the spare bed quilt. They are shades of blue and grey. I want to add some brown, tan, khaki type colors. A few more should do it. My current thought is either 5 X 5 squares or 5 X 10 squares. Maybe do the latter and if there are not enough, change to 5 X 5.
Here are the slicing and cherry tomato seedlings now. They are all growing nicely. In order to slow them down a little, I'm not fertilizing, and I move them outside where it's cooler, during the day. They just need to hold on a couple more weeks for better weather.
The varieties include favorite hybrids (Better Boy and Lemon Boy), hybrids I haven't tried before (Braveheart, Early Goliath), Russian heirloom types (Golden King of Siberia, Moscovich, Purple Russian), heirloom Classic Beefsteak, a cherries Braveheart, Sugar Rush, and Unicorn, and a yellow volunteer cherry tomato that came up volunteer from last year, probably descended from Sungold.hybrid.
Now that I have the Water Tube plant enclosures set up, I can plant six of these outside in a few days. That will give the soil inside time to warm up. I measured the soil temp, it's about 46 in am and 50s in afternoon, maybe 10 or more degrees warmer than ambient temperature. I'm thinking, maybe the three Russian varieties and classic Beefsteak, Better Boy and Lemon boy.
These were formerly called "Wall'o'Water" but now called "Season Starter". I bought three more via Amazon and set them up yesterday. They hold about 4 gallons of water.
Here they are this morning. No plants in them yet.
So far these apple seedlings are continuing to look pretty happy. The green leaf seedling has about the same number of leaves as the burgundy leaf seedlings. It's the interstems that are longer, making for a taller plant.
Egyptian Walking Onions are doing very well. We got some nice scallions today. There should be scallions for another month or more, as smaller starts mature. The overwintered Swiss Chard was quite tasty too.
As I was digging the garden bed, I found buried treasure. I know I didn't plant these last year. They somehow snuck in a year of growth between snow peas last year. I must have planted them 2 years ago, or more, and always miss digging them all. I think these must be russets. Inside, they are still snowy white.
I cut some forsythia stems to bring inside. That way I can enjoy them without going into the yard.
I think I might try to start some of these in water. I had started one of the bushes that way, 20 years ago and I might have started the other from a cutting too.
I've tried to match the chambray fat quarters with batik quarters, either as contrasting colors and colors that seem to match. I expect to continue to move them around until time to actually sew them.
First, I starched and ironed all of the fabric. That keeps it shaped nicely for cutting and sewing, not stretched and awkward. I also cut the black (actually a charcoal grey batik on black) into 5 inch squares. I wondered if the black was too much contrast with the colors. I don't think so, and those will be smaller when it's all together.
I started cutting the fat quarters into 5 inch squares too. These are the first few, with the chambray and batik matched in each pile. There are 12 squares of each, so with the black centers there will be 3 large quilting blocks per pile. I've actually cut about 13 piles now. Some don't match as well as these do. I may need to rearrange them for better color match.
I took a couple day break from cutting, to do some gardening. Plus I was changing the razor blade wheel in the fabric cutter, and sliced a piece of my finger. Fortunately, no blood wound up on the fabric. So I wanted a break for that to heal.
On a side note, I want a quilt for Rufus's bed, which is actually my bed but he takes it over. I want something more durable than the usual quilt fabric, and also inexpensive. I bought three somewhat heavy weight 100% cotton, extra large men's shirts at Goodwill, that matched the 50% off labels so they were very cheap. My wild guess is each can be cut into about a yard or yard and a half of fabric, so this is much cheaper than buying something at the fabric store. So far, I have plain grey and blue tones, which I will keep to, maybe with some brown or tan, or off white. We'll see how many I can find. I think I need a total of about ten old shirts for this to work. No hurry, and as the weather warms up and the corona goes away with vaccines, yard and estate sales can be an even more inexpensive source of cotton fabric. I read somewhere that Goodwill throws away a lot of the clothing that is taken there, so I'm thinking this is a good way to recycle with low cost, and the end result will be more durable than if I bought actual quilting fabric which is not as rugged as these.
