Lee is here working on the barn this morning, so I’ll be helping him as needed and gardening the rest of the time. I weeded the peas and radishes and got ready to plant more radishes. Then I cleaned up the cucumber bed and planted the cukes – 4 summer dance and 3 Japanese cukes, both from Countryside.Then from seed, True Lemon cucumbers, and Crystal Apple Cucumbers, both from Terroir. I then weeded the half of the bed where the Zucchini will go and made two hills and planted the 3 Zucchini plants in the first one and will later plant seeds in the second for a later crop.

Despite the predictions for a “mostly sunny” day, it turned cloudy and cold and there were some sprinkles. I decided to do a little outside work anyway, and rototilled the bed next to the firepit and then the heirloom tomato patch. You would think that I would have learned by now that rototillers and chain-link fences don’t mix, but I didn’t and got the tiller entangled with the fence and it took me about a half-hour to get them unraveled.

Today is Natalie’s and my 51st Wedding Anniversary, she’s working so I’ll celebrate it by shopping for garden plants! (We went out for a nice Mexican dinner last night.)

Quick calculation here. We were in our own house on our first anniversary, so it is likely that this is my 50th year of vegetable gardening. Does that make me a Master Gardener? No, it probably just makes me old.

I spent most of the afternoon getting the rest of my gardening needs. I went to Jewel first and got thirty more geraniums. I almost cleaned them out. I got about six white ones and the rest red.

I dropped those off and grabbed an apple and went to Costco for gas and then on to Home Depot. They had no Shishito peppers and no other plants of interest. I got three bags of mushroom compost and a bag of topsoil. I also got a couple of cans of wasp spray and garden fertilizer.

I came home and emptied out the car and was off to Goebberts. I got thyme and some fennel. The peppers were really picked over. I bought three large Lady Bell sweet peppers and six small ones. Also some Melrose and some Gypsy peppers. There was no Zucchini or hot peppers.

I did better at Countryside. They didn’t have the really large Champion Tomatoes, but had everything else in the 4 inch pots, although I had to dig for some of them. Here’s what I got:

2 – Champion

1 – Lemon Boy

2 – Mortgage Lifter

1 – Mr. Stripey

2 – Cherokee Carbon

1 – Black from Tula

1 – Oxheart

2 – Celebrity

1 – Arkansas Traveler

1 – German Johnson

I bought three large Poblano peppers and three-packs of hot Hungarian, sweet Hungarian, and three three-packs of jalapenos. I also got three large Aristocrat Zucchini plants and 4 Summer dance cukes and two of the long Japanese variety.

We finally had a somewhat decent week to get the gardening going. The weather went instantly from rain and temperature in the 50s to Sun and temperatures hovering around 90. I’ve been trying to get out early and then do another round of gardening after dinner. Even after five days of hot weather and no rain, the ground is still very wet.

I got most of the herbs in, I’ll need to buy thyme as my plants didn’t survive the winter. New this year is Prostrate Rosemary from Countryside, it grows as a creeping groundcover. Also new is an upright tarragon, called Four Seasons. It has yellow flowers and smells and looks like Mexican tarragon, except that it is upright. I also found a Bergamot mint which is called Lemon Mint. It smells like Bergamot and has a creeping habit, unlike lemon balm.

The container garden is mostly done.

I made a run to Goebbert’s and bought my large patio tomato plant and jalapeno plants for the container garden.. I also got a 10-inch pot of basil, curly parsley, and pineapple mint. I unloaded that load and headed off to Countryside.They have moved the vegetables to the back greenhouses, so it’s a little more difficult with the big carts on the loose gravel. I bought two large Early Girl II tomatoes for the garden and three varieties of cherry tomatoes for the containers.

They didn’t have  the large plants in the varieties I wanted so I settled on about 18″ plants. I got a couple Serrano pepper plants also. I bought some Bergamot mint, okra, and Spanish tarragon as well. It is like the Mexican tarragon I got last year but is upright instead of creeping.

Went to Jewel and filled up with geraniums and petunias. I got the front porch planted and the back deck.

I found nice, reasonably priced baskets at Home Depot. I bought two for the front, two for the back, and two smaller ones to go on the hooks in the yard.

I went to Countryside after that and got two large cherry tomato plants, rosemary, and prostrate rosemary, a new creeping variety. I also got bunching onions and curly parsley.

I went to Goebbert’s on Tuesday after my filming at St. Anne. There were only a couple of tables of spring vegetables, but mostly what I needed. They didn’t have Red Romaine yet, nor spinach, but I bought a flat containing regular Romaine, leaf lettuce, broccoli, and beets.

The weather was still iffy, but I got everything planted today after I finished my session with Lee. It’s still quite wet. I’m glad I tilled and got the soil amendments into the garden last fall. The timing is almost identical to last year. I need to get some arugla and pak choi seeds in next week after the soil dries out some more.

Spring is slow in coming this year. I hope this is winter’s last hurrah. Predictions are for a warming trend with temperatures near 80° and sunny for next weekend. Despite the cold wet weather, the peas are at about 1-1/2 inches and the radishes are slowly popping up. The mint is coming back to life, I picked and used my first batch of chives and the lawn is full of striped squill.

I am hoping to get greens in by the end of the week. Thursday looks nice. I’ll make sure I have lettuce and spinach plants before then. Time to get more specific in my planning.

Looking back at last year’s posts the first planting was on April 22, so I’m about at the same place as last year. I am a month ahead with the radishes and peas.

Woke up to a dusting of snow this morning. At least we have some sun today. It’s been cold and rainy for the past couple of weeks. It’s way too wet to plant or even walk through the garden. The temperatures will be in the 50s next week, but other than Sunday, there is rain in the forecast every day. No gardening for a while.

Thank God I got the peas and radishes in when I did. It’s probably been too cold for them to germinate, though. The warmer temps this week might get them going.

No hope of further planting as it’s been raining regularly since I planted the peas. At least the chives are up.