Sunday Is Supposed To Be A Day Of Rest? Really?

[sakon76]

Found flashlight. Charged battery. Drilled placement holes. Swapped pedal brackets and knee levers. Took cabinet and other donation things to Goodwill. Returned truck to parents, along with the barrelful of compost and a half flat of seedlings (melons, cukes, tomatoes, calendula, zinnias). Stopped for lunch, did grocery shopping, came home, napped. Got up and found I had a metric ton of class 66 bobbins; parcelled a couple dozen out for my mother, since the brand-new bobbins that said they would fit her machine (a 201) apparently don't. Checked to see which bobbins my own machines need. The treadle and the Babylock use class 15s. The 128 handcrank uses long shuttle bobbins. The others (101, 401, and the 66 that's disassembled on the garage workbench) all take 66s.

No gardening at all this weekend. I am most put out.

Comments

[flybystardancer.livejournal.com]

The no-gardening thing was how I was feeling last week! (I did get some in on Thursday during a break between storms.)

What do you have started?

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Lessee... in the ground at this point, I have onions, garlic, Swiss chard, shelling peas, snow peas, yard-long beans, radio calendula, zinnias (ivory/cherry swizzle, cactus, purity, envy, and candy cane), golden bantam corn, and tomatoes (riesentraube, bloody butcher, ananas noire, mortgage lifter, pink ponderosa, persimmon, aunt ruby's german green, amish paste, san marzano, black krim, Japanese black trifele, and sweet pea currant). Plus the herbs (oregano, thyme, dill, stevia, chives, and garlic chives), walking onions, pepino melons, a bed of strawberries, and jalepeno plants all from last year. And the volunteer borage, deer tongue lettuce, and nasturtiums.

In pots, two blueberry plants, three blackberries, three rhubarbs, some potatoes, horseradish, more strawberries, four gardenias, five fruit trees (orange, tangerine, apricot, peach, pear), a bay tree, two geraniums, a few roses, and four spider plants.

Still in the starter packs, I have a few more tomatoes, ground cherries, some fish and some yellow bell peppers, jalepenos, country gentleman corn, Boston pickling cucumbers, yellow crookneck squash, tromboncino squash, sugar baby watermelon, chanterais melon, vanilla ice melon, Minnesota midget melon, one Brussels sprout, and four rosemaries I'm trying to root. Plus maybe a few others; not sure I'm remembering all of them off the top of my head.

People who accuse me of thinking small don't know me. :)

[flybystardancer.livejournal.com]

Daaaaang... I always feel like I'm doing a lot, until I start talking to other gardeners. LOL

Lessee... Out in the main area I have shelling peas, lettuces, carrots, radishes, arugula, one little zucchini has seed leaves starting to poke up... Back yard plater boxes have a sage and oregano that survived last year's neglect, and I just put a cilantro seedling out there. In my indoor starting area I have tomatoes (brandywine, marvel stripe, green zebra, Pompeii, superbush), peppers (bell, jalepenos, Anaheim), another cilantro, strawberries, borage, oregano, marjoram, thyme, sage, and basil.

Mom's rose tree is still growing despite being horribly unbalanced due to a botched prune job years ago... There's also the Meyer lemon tree, rosemary, and oregano at the other house.

I tried starting rosemary from seed, but it didn't work, and I have borage seeds directly sown out in the main area that haven't come up yet... I'm planning on doing summer squashes and beans, though those will be direct sown once the beds are ready. Also green onions! How can I forget them? (I haven't been able to grow the large ones, but I'm going to try over winter.

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Last year I was kind of burnt out; this year I'm having more interest in it.

That's a nice list of things you've got going! Gren Zebra's one of my favorite tomatoes; this year, I just didn't have seed for it, and ended up not doing an order....

The easiest way I've found to get a rosemary plant is actually to propagate it. Take a 4-6" cutting of new growth on an extant plant, strip the leaves off the bottom half, wet it and dip it in rooting hormone, and plant. Six of the six I started that way last year grew successfully; unfortunately, the four I kept all got fried by hot-weather Santa Ana winds. :/ So, back to the drawing board.

I'm having trouble getting lavender and violets to start. I've run into a tip that says to freeze lavender seeds for a couple of weeks, then plant immediately. I need to remember to try that....

[flybystardancer.livejournal.com]

I tried doing a rooting from the rosemary at the other house, it ended up not working. Might try again... (I bought one of those gel trays that already has the rooting hormone in it.)

And I bought more seeds and seedlings yesterday while getting stuff to pot up the seedlings I started. I got one each of sweet chocolate peppers, ixtapa peppers, and black krim tomato. I really need to get to Costco for the giant planters, and to Home Depot for steer manure. LOTS of it.

Last year was a bum year for me gardening-wise... I was going back-and-forth between two houses, and then with Mom's health... Lost my blueberries. :( They fried without me watering them. Will have to replace those, and I moved their containers to a spot that's a bit less exposed.

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Darn it, if I was working Fanime this year, I'd lug one or two of my rosemaries up there for you! But alas, this year we're taking off. :/

Ixtapa peppers? Sounds interesting! I only manured one bed this year (the one I'm putting the corn in), but all the others I've been digging in about an inch of compost, some blood meal, and some bone meal. Followed by topping everything off with a couple inches of straw. So far everything seems happy.

I'm hoping that this year we can rebuild the damaged brick bed along the front of the house so I can plant stuff in it. Which will also involve finally painting the stucco along the front of the house before I plant; it's an almost perfect color match for the rest, but the caulk in the cracks shows dark. Of course, since it's along the front, Wonderful Husband doesn't want it to be too obviously food crops. He's ruled out squash and melons. I'm considering making it an acidic bed filled it with rhubarb and blueberries and whatever else goes well in there... that's not too obvious, right? :)

[flybystardancer.livejournal.com]

They sounded interesting at the store! And my beds are practically pure sand, so they really need the work. I usually put some bone meal in the hole with the tomatoes when I plant those. I'm going to try a mixture of sheets of cardboard and shredded newspaper for mulch this year.

Those sound lovely! I'd dig it. Then again, I find foodplants to be beautiful as well... LOL I'd much rather have foodplants everywhere than those that are purely ornamental.

I wish I could take out a few of the bushes/trees in the front yard here and replace them with fruit & avocado trees... Trees are about the only things that CAN go in the front yard here!