Transplanting Seedlings

Hopefully you planted your seeds into a very loose medium that will make it easy to tease out the new roots on your seedlings. The longer you wait, the more roots and the harder it is to separate everything. I use straight pearlite for its ability to hold water and that it is easy to shake from new roots with minimal damage. Use something to scoop beneath the roots and lift the seedlings out.

Once you have shaken free the medium, you should have a little bit of green and some nice white roots. Try to break as few as possible. It helps to let the medium dry out a little bit before you try to tease them apart from one another.

Fill your pots level to the top. I like to use plant trays from last years purchases. For a purchased plant medium , I like Miracle Grow potting mix. It seems to be the best suited to start new seedlings. Make a hole in the soil with your finger. If the hole fills in before you put in your seedling, you are starting with a medium that is too dry. Gently nudge all of the roots into the hole and fill in. For peppers and tomatoes you can plant deep. Most everything else needs to be planted at the same depth it was originally growing. For the most part if you get roots down and green up, you will do fine.

Label everything! Each pot or six pack will require its own label if you intend to accurately know what you have later! Gently water in with a can. You will need to make sure that everything stays evenly moist but not too wet until a good root system is established. One dry day will kill these tiny plants!

With care, you should have something like this in two to three weeks! Happy Gardening!

Pink Profusion

Most of my fruit trees are currently in full bloom. This crabapple is by far my favorite. It is one of the few original plants we were able to keep. Nothing makes me happier than looking out the back door and seeing this tree in all of its splendor!

These are apple blossoms. I hope this all means I am destined to have a fruit filled summer!
I would feel more comfortable about that prediction if I was finding a few more bees too. How are your fruit trees doing? Have you seen a lot of bees? I hope it has not been too cool for them!

Looking for Inspiration

I spent a little bit of time this weekend at the the Springtime in the Rockies Quilt Show. If you have never been to a quilt show, I highly recommend it even if you are not a quilter. Seeing all those beautiful fabrics in one place is inspirational and nothing says that quilt fabric must be used in quilts! So gather a friend:

And go look for some fun ideas at the next one near you!

Arbor Day

I hope you attended Arbor Day this year-or at least plan to plant a tree! Spring is an excellent time to plant your trees and shrubs. Not with standing that yesterday was the best time to plant that tree so don't delay. You local Master Gardener or county extension office can help you make a selection if you are not sure what to choose. I attended the City of Greeley's festivities. This fine tree was planted in Sunrise park:

I ate my share of cookies and then took my free seedling Austrian Pine home. It will be potted and nursed along with last years blue spruce. I also helped out this year by reading the Giving Tree to several local first graders. They were beyond excited to get their "first grade" trees at the end of the presentation. It was a great experience.
If you do put in a new tree this spring, be sure to make a nice water well at the bottom for deep watering. The forestry staff did a nice job on this one:

I wish you a long life little buckeye tree!

The Look of Summer

So maybe, just maybe, I got a little carried away. Hey, I was having fun! Kids clothes are sooooo easy to sew! Lots of fun fabrics to use and you can accomplish a complete project in an hour or two! Following are some of my personal favs:

Too bad it was such a grey day when I took my photos! I'm sure you get the idea all the same!

Wheel Hoe

My husband and I really wanted a rototiller to help us keep up with the garden weeds. When it came down to the purchase, we realized we couldn't pull the trigger on a gas guzzling machine for several reasons. 1) You rarely need the force of a full blown gas powered machine 2) pollution 3) gas prices are going up 4) we need the exercise! After much research we decided on the Hoss wheel hoe. After about a weeks wait, the box came in the mail.

There are two types of wheel hoe. The high wheel and low wheel. Everything we read indicated the low wheel hoe to be the most efficient at getting work done. They say you can do ten times the weeding in an hour that you can do on your hands and knees. I'm going to venture to say what would previously take four people 2-3 three hours will be done by one in 20 minutes!

It took a little bit of assembly and the handles are going to need several coats of linseed oil but I think this is going to be well worth it! You can buy several different attachments for this garden machine to make your gardening experience worth while. The investment was a bit hefty but since we don't have to add gas, I think it is going to be worth it. We used the cultivator teeth to till in the compost.

We would still be hand digging 1,800 square feet of garden if we had not purchased it! Maybe this year my garden will look more like Martha's....probably not!

Compost

To begin this garden season we decided it would be best to jump start our soil improvements by ordering four cubic yards of compost. We have a sandy loam soil that lets the water run straight through. By continually adding soil improvements, I hope to increase its water holding capacity and provide natural nutrients for the plants. Since I cannot possibly make enough compost to feed my whole garden, I had to purchase. There are a few things you need to know when purchasing compost. First is to figure out the amount you will need. In general, about 4 cubic yards per 1,000 square feet is good for just about any application. You can add more, but this depends on the product. The picture above, is a four cubic yard pile of compost. It took two of us about 2 hours to spread by hand so don't be intimidated. When you purchase compost it can come from varying sources. You will need to ask. You can buy a manure based product or a yard waste based product. The safest way to go is to buy a yard waste product. This product does not run the risk of being hot and burning your plants if you over apply. It should be dark in color, show no signs of its parent product and smell like rich dirt. A well composted manure product can also be very useful. It should not smell like manure if it has been composted completely and will generally cost more than a product that still needs to break down some more. If it smells like manure be cautious! Not to say this isn't a good product, you just need to be more careful in your usage of it. It will need to be tilled or spade in well and not over applied or it will burn your plants.

Spread the compost evenly over the surface of your area. If you need to till it in you can use a spade, rototiller or wheel hoe. Yearly applications of compost along with tilling in leaves goes a long way to improving your soil the natural way. We went with a manure product this year that needed tilled. Let me tell you, it was a bit stinky! I hope the neighbors don't notice!

This is my garden. Tilled and ready to plant! Happy Gardening!