Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Tomatoes 'n peppers

I finally managed to plant some tomato and pepper seeds. This year I'm growing New Ace peppers and 3 varieties of tomato -- Sungold cherry, Gardener's Delight cherry, and Rose de Berne. I may add a paste tomato, either San Marzano Lampadina from Pine Tree Seeds or I''ll try the Orange Banana Paste tomato from Fedco. I think I have some old San Marzanos somewhere.... maybe we'll try a science experiment and see what their germination success is after improper storage.

This past weekend, in addition to collecting nearly 300 cubic feet of straw, we also fertilized the perennial beds in the front of the house with Fertrell Feed-n-Grow organic fertilizer, fluffing up the mulch and mulching the new perennial bed in front with straw. It looks good and I’m glad to have that done. I pruned the butterfly bush and the Russian sage last week, I suspect as soon as we get some rain they’ll kick into gear.

Tonight, before dinner, Dan and I strolled out back and turned another four feet of the vegetable garden with the broadfork. I checked the soil temperature, it was 46F and the perfect amount of moisture to work. It’s odd to have it so dry at this time of year, but after the floods of last April, I’m happy. I am hoping we can finish turning it this week so that this weekend we can fertilize it and plant the peas! We need to get some manure but have yet to find any in Uncle Henry’s. We’ll keep looking, there is bound to be some somewhere.

On the Northern California Garden Blog Angela posted inspiring photos of her real-life garden, as did Amy Stewart on her blog Dirt. It was great, I love seeing real-life garden photos, dog-related holes and all. I can relate to dog damage. Our dog Fisher thinks he's a de-thatching machine. And he's omnivorous. It took a while, but we finally discovered that the "bug" eating the ornamental kale was a golden retriever. Sigh. Anyway, that inspired me, and I'll take lots of photos this weekend.

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