Wednesday, February 26, 2014

0 For 18

Okay, I wasn't expecting to open a farm, but really?  None of the pepper seeds sprouted.  And I had a post half-written in my mind about pickled peppers.  I'm going to assume my problem was that it was too warm in the window and I ended up with dirt-covered roasted pepper seeds.  Let's pretend they were trying to save my stomach by not growing, and it was truly a self-sacrifice on the seeds' part.

This is not going to stop me from trying to grow pumpkins.  I'm stuck at home while construction crews fix my bathroom.  The shower pan cracked and slowly destroyed the floor over several years.  HUGE thing to fix, much more than your basic remodel, and it smells terrible.  Thank goodness I have another bathroom to use in the meantime.

This is the planter with two hills
Where was I?  While I'm stuck at home, I have plenty of time for gardening, cooking, writing, sewing, playing cryptograms, and any other in-house pastime I've been ignoring.  I cleared one pumpkin bed each day that I got bored, then bought vegetable soil and planted all the hills in one hour.  Yes, it's earlier than I planned to do it, but I got really bored and it's plenty warm enough at night.  I'm a bit concerned about the length of daylight in one of the locations.  You can see the shadow in the photo already creeping down, and that was 11am.  Hoping that's no longer an issue by the time they have their third leaves.  At the very least, the two anemic bushes in that planter will rebound from the fresh soil and extra watering, so it won't be a total waste.  Without the pepper patch, I'm doing one more hill of pumpkin than originally planned, and that's the only one with full, all-day sun.  They all have protective twine fences for now, so the gardener knows what I'm trying to do.  We're supposed to get the heaviest rainfall in two years on the first day they might start to come up, and all the work may wash away.  I'm so in love with the idea of growing my own Halloween decorations that I'll probably buy another pack of seeds if these fail.

As for the smaller space I was going to use for the overflow peppers, I bought a kale seedling.  I've been eating more of it lately, and it's taking forever for the lettuces to grow.  The kale will look like a small bush when it's full-sized, a good match for the front yard.  That doesn't mean I'll never try to start seeds indoors again, but I've missed that growing window for this year.

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