Sunny Sunday

by Chuck April 8, 2012

Today was beautiful -- sunny and warm and just right for getting started on spring planting. I headed out to the greenhouse to take advantage of the weather and get some plants started so that they're ready to to be May flowers.

First I spent a little time cleaning up the greenhouse -- moving the over-wintering plants on to one bench, watering them, picking up dead and fallen leaves, generally tidying up the place. I didn't spend as much time out there this winter as I did last winter, so it's not quite as neat as it was last spring. I keep telling myself to go out there more often, but I haven't made it out much. That should change now that I have some new plants started.

This year I bought a big bag of potting soil to use to start plants, instead of using my usual mixture of compost and dirt. The stuff that I mix up tends to have big lumps in it that get in the way of planting teeny-tiny seeds. I also picked up two cell packs from the new greenhouse and hydroponics store in Monroe. These cell packs are made out of plastic probably twice as thick as the plastic in the ones that I bought last year at Charlie's. I think that these are made more to reuse than the ones from Charlie's.

I filled four flats with the potting soil and then planted up some flowers. I'm trying to plant all of the miscellaneous annuals that we'll need for the farm this year. I planted a flat of petunias and a flat of snapdragons, although I'm not 100 percent sure what we'll do with 72 snapdragon plants. Planting the itty-bitty petunia and snapdragon seeds was a challenge, but I used a folded piece of cardstock for a planting funnel and didn't worry if more than one seed made it into each cell. I can thin the plants later when they've got a good start.

Next I'll plant some allysum and some lobelia so that we have filler plants for the gardens. I picked up a package of white and a package of purple allysum, and I planted some blue and some multi-colored lobelia. 

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Farm

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