Karl's Garden Blog

It was a busy Sunday for me. Sorry that I’m just sitting down to post pictures now; my laptop has a problem with it and that’s what I use to boil pictures from my digital camera down to something that people can download on the web.

The first thing is that I actually planted some stuff in the raised bed! Onions and the early-season cauliflower will do just fine with a few overnight hours close to freezing… or at least, I hope they do, because it got down to freezing last night. On the other hand, it’s going to be 80 by mid week with lows in the 60’s at night. Perfect weather for growing things. Since I don’t want to miss it, I’ve shoved these plants outdoors to make room for more seedlings.

Onions and Cauliflower. I'm trying different planting patterns with the onions to see how they grow.

The next thing I did was move a bunch of seeds from the seed trays to my makeshift hippie pots so that I have more space in the seed trays for things that need to be seed. Thanks to a comment from Kathy G, I’ve started putting the entire seed trays outside in a place that gets partial sun. Talk about a gigantic face-smacking-palm experience! I should’ve realized … of course this house is new, so of course it has coatings on the windows that reduce the frequencies of light that come in. Duh.

Seedlings recovering from a traumatic repotting.

That means the great sprout-off was unnecessary… or rather, it was necessary for a completely different reason. I’ll post an update to that in a day or two.

The last thing (but definitely not the least!) was that someone from a local web forum gave me a cardboard box full of miscellaneous heirloom Narcissus and Gladiola bulbs! Heirloom bulbs tend to be smaller but a touch hardier than their hybrid or “pure bred” brethren, but theoretically they’re more hardy. I planted them where I had the Sweet 100’s tomatoes last year.

A Bed of Bulbs

Hopefully, they’ll take up residence there and be happy. I would’ve just stored them if they’d still been bulbs, but they were in the ground up until the day before I stuck them BACK in the ground … that means that they’d sprouted and everything. I’ll pinch the tops after they bloom so that they don’t go to seed and build their energy into the bulb, and then overwinter them in a mesh bag in the garage. When I move to my own place next year, I can take them with.

And yes, in the background of that last shot is the Barleria Cristata that bloomed so spectacularly last fall… it’s leafing right back out where it left itself, and hopefully it’ll bloom earlier this year.