Planting Catch-Up

I am by nature a list-maker. I make lists for shopping, daily to-do lists, yearly to-do lists, lists of seeds, lists of chores, lists of gardening tasks - you get the picture.

And one thing I do every year to ensure that I succession plant, is to make a list of what I want to plant when in the veggie garden. I've made elaborate ones based on "planting by the moon", and simple plant-something-once-a-month timetables. Invariably, I fall behind. Sometimes it's weather related, sometimes a vacation is scheduled right at the time I want to get something in the ground. Mostly it's because I'm better at planning than execution.

Over the last two days, I managed to get caught up. Yesterday I planted my tomatoes and basil in small pots for starting indoors, and potted up the cabbages. Today I added broccoli and sweet peppers to the pots germinating on top of the fridge. Outside, I sowed some lettuce and radish since the soil temperature is 45 degrees. I also transplanted my lettuce sown in January, and also a number of volunteer lettuces. Frankly, the volunteers looked in better shape, if a little bit smaller than the lettuce that got to live its early days in my garage.

I'm now off the hook for a couple of weeks as far as planting seeds goes. I'll just be dealing with the huge numbers of tomatoes, broccoli, basil and peppers once they emerge.

The weather looks to be warm and relatively dry the next couple of weeks, so I'll need to get going on the strawberry and herb beds. The purple flowering plums are in full bloom already, and the pears won't be far behind.