April is finally here and the past couple of weeks have been a mix of seed sowing, organizing garden junk/tools and cursing any snow that shows up. While my outside garden chore list has grown by the day, I’m very excited for warm weather and bringing the garden back to life. Until then, here’s what’s growing!
My first sow from mid-February has started to bless our upstairs closet with colorful chard, some little lettuces and a few bok choy stragglers I wanted to use up. There’s almost enough to make a single salad with but once the weather stays warmer than freezing, we’ll be drowning in broad leafy greens.
The two trays above were sowed with even more rainbow chard as well as some luffa! I was so excited to get the luffa started as my goal for this year is to plant a few around a teepee and watch them take over. All but one germinated and they’re about ready for a bigger pot. In the other tray, a miscellaneous assortment of hot peppers, two broccoli varieties, rosemary and tomatoes. A few of these pepper seeds are a bit old and from my time in Rhode Island, so I’m not expecting great germination rates, but the next tray has some new seeds from Fedco.
For my third round of sowing, more lettuce and kale for the home garden as well as a couple of different hot and sweet peppers and another Amish Paste tomato. Since sowing last week, most of the kale and lettuces have sprouted and need to be thinned, but the tomato and peppers need a bit more time.
Finishing this week of sowing was potatoes! Namely, ones that were sprouted in the pantry that didn’t look very dinner ready. I don’t know how well they’re going to do as I usually plant them in the garden directly, but I’m hoping it gives me a head start on tuber production, since I imagine potatoes and squashes will be the main contributors to my 100lbs of food challenge.
Next up in the coming weeks will be squashes and gourds, cucumbers and melons and by then it should be warm enough to start direct sowing in the garden~