Good morning, and Happy Spring (almost). Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Denver saw it's first really warm day this week; on Wednesday, we tied the official record for March 16 at 74° at the airport; here in town the high was 81°.
It would have been a beautiful day for working outside, if it hadn't been for the wind — wind speeds topping 35 mph do not make for happy gardening.
A weather blip moved in Thursday night, giving us a little snow along with temperatures cooling into the 50s. We'll have a bit of a warm up over the weekend, and when spring arrives on Sunday we'll likely be back into the 70s — hopefully without wind so I can finish raking up the detritus from the front beds.
The spring bulbs are coming on fast so I need to clear the ground to display them to the best advantage.
Thanks to blue jersey mom for playing hostess last week; it was very nice not being on duty. Up for April 9, the 2nd Saturday of the month, is Ed in Montana.
And for next week, please have your lists together of plants and/or seeds you have that you can share with other garden bloggers. I'll be digging out the giant bags of pink spider dahlia tubers to see how many made it through the winter — gawd knows I have enough of those to share. Damned thing sends out huge tubers; maybe I should experiment with eating them.
I'm feeling especially virtuous this morning. It was so dull at the office last week, the time was dragging so slow, I actually caught up on some of the filing I've been putting off for the last four months. I didn't get it all done, but I made a dent.
I'm also feeling virtuous because I finally — only two weeks late! — got seeds started. Every year it's the same story, except worse: I set my target for a week before I really think I should have it done. Because it's early, I procrastinate. Next thing I know, it's three weeks later and nothing's planted.
But now I have two kinds of tomatoes, three types of peppers, eggplant, kohlrabi, cauliflower and some flowers sprouting away. Now, my procrastination put me so behind that I'm just abandoning a couple of other flower varieties that will take too long, but still, at least I'm two weeks ahead of how behind I was last year.
The only other glitch was I couldn't find the pack of graffiti cauliflower seed I was sure I had ordered. I did have two packs of kossack kohlrabi seed, so figured I had goofed and ordered two packs of kohlrabi, but no graffiti cauliflower.
Uhm, nope — I had forgotten that the graffiti was on back order; on Thursday a package arrived from Territorial with my chocolate cosmos tubers. So today I'll be planting more cauliflower seed and potting the cosmos tubers.
Also accomplished was unpacking and planting — the day after they arrived! — the 30 begonia and 6 gloriosa lily tubers which arrived last week. I need to get down to the basement and dig out the begonia tubers which I packed away last fall and see how many made it through the winter — along with the gladiola and tuberose bulbs from last year. While I'm at it I'll clear out the space under the metal halide light and get it ready for the next stage of growth for the warm weather crops.
Since the weather is forecast to be good I'm also planning to finish the raking up in the front yard, and start prepping the veggie patch for planting.
Yes, it's a good time of year — I love spring.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your garden?