Some new sprouts

Here are some new pictures for you.  I was excited this morning to find all kinds of new sprouts.

In our kitchen we have a long planter sitting on a window sill.  Last week I planted lettuce and basil in it and here are the first sprouts.  I think they are lettuce but I'm not sure.  I don't remember which end I put lettuce and which I put basil.  Anyways, look closely towards the bottom of this picture.

I also planted lettuce in a pot in the sunroom.  Here is a picture of those sprouts:

On to seeds I've started for the garden.  Last weekend I planted a second batch of brussel sprouts that have advanced as much as the first batch I planted two weeks earlier.  The bottom row are plants started last weekend.  The rest were started three weeks ago.

Here are the broccoli plants.  The larger ones were started three weeks ago and the new sprouts (which are a little hard to see in the photo) were started one week ago.

Here are the brand new sprouts (new this morning) of daises (first picture) and various kinds of tomatoes (second picture).

daisies - look in the top two right ones and the middle left one

Oregon Spring tomato (first row left), Cherry tomato (second row), Roma tomato (third row left)

Now to mention a few potted plants I have.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided to bring my orange tree and avocado tree inside to see if the warmth helped them grow better in the winter.  The orange tree has started new growth and is developing buds.  I'm excited for it to flower this year (it flowered the first year but not last year for some reason).  We'll see how Paul feels about the very fragrant flowers that may overpower the house and all the flowers that will eventually be shed and make a mess on the floor.  Nevertheless, I'm excited.

And last but not least, with the space where the Christmas tree empty I decided to bring in my mini rose bush.  This is a plant that has survived rabbits chewing it to nothing and aphids attack it.  It never ceases to amaze me.  Since we brought it in a week or two ago, the plant has really filled out and is beautiful.  We may even see flowers before winter ends.

Before I end this post I thought I would share my excitement for the Chicago Flower and Garden Show which is coming up quickly.  This will be my first year and it is said to be a great show for garden enthusiasts.  That all being said, one or two of my photos will be on display there.  This was the first photo competition I entered and it is beyond exciting that my photos will be on display.  I plan to bring the camera and will post pictures.

First Sprouts

So here are a few pictures of my first sprouts:

Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Today I planted my next batch of seeds: more brussels sprouts and broccoli, tomatoes, jalapeño peppers, cayenne peppers, yellow peppers, egg plant, coleus, daisies, and delphinium.  We'll see if the heating pad helps them sprout faster.  I think it will be the greatest benefit to my tomatoes that always seem to get a slow start.

Anyway, here's one last picture for you:

First sprouts

This morning when I went to water my plants, I found my first sprouts from my broccoli seeds.  Then this evening when I went to hook up a heat mat I had bought, I saw that the brussels sprout seeds had starting sprouting as well.  It's all pretty exciting!

The Schedule

The Goals:
April 15 (or thereabouts) - plant cold weather plants at Dad's house with cover and plant collard greens, spinach, lettuce (with domes as necssary) in pots at my house
May 1 (or thereabouts) - plant rest of plants at Dad's house with cover
May 15 (or after last frost) - plant everything else at my house

Since, I plan to at least try to grow everything possible from seed in my sunroom, I then needed to schedule when to start seeds.  I always plant more seeds than I expect to need.  I also usually plant seeds for a particular plant at at least 2 different times so that depending on conditions, I will be sure to have plants developed well enough to plant at any time the weather allows, plus it allows things to mature at different rates.

So last weekend I began by getting my sunroom ready, replanting a few things in pots in my sunroom (to enjoy before the outdoor growing season), and starting my first seeds.

Here is a picture of my sunroom.  On the table you will see a flat where I began seeds for broccoli, brussel sprouts, and delphinium.

 I added the wire shelving unit last year which greatly increased the amount of space I have to grow seedlings.  Here is a picture of that.  Obviously as the season progresses, plants will overtake the supplies currently on the shelves.  On the bottom shelf you will see two pots where I started lettuce and collard greens (the latter food for our lizard and turtles).

As you can see, I have a number of spices growing (parsley, spearmint, chamomile, and hopefully basil in the near future).

Here are two more pictures.  The first is of my thyme, sage, and rosemary plants that have been really thriving.  The second is of a pot of lettuce that was started in the fall.

Next weekend (or the weekend after), I hope to plant the following:

brussels sprouts
broccoli
tomatoes
hot peppers
eggplant
coleus
daisies
delphinium

My Plan

An important part of gardening, especially for those of us growing as much as we can from seed, is planning. So every year about this time, I make my plan, go through my seed packets, order new seeds, and develop a schedule.  So here is this year's plan.  This year I ordered seeds online for the first time from Jung.

At my Dad's house
Raised Bed #1:  cucumbers (mostly for my Dad as I plan to grow my own cucumbers at my house as well)
Raised Bed #2:  6 tomato plants with basil and a section of pole beans
Raised Bed #3:  broccoli, brussel sprouts, hot peppers, eggplant, and raddishes

At my house:
Pots:
4-6 topsy turvey pots:  1 sweet pepper, 1-2 hot pepper, 2-3 tomatoes (roma and oregon spring)
Vegetables in pots on the ground: hot peppers, collard greens, lettuce, spinach, potatos, basil
Pots on top of trellis arch so vine plants can hang down:  cucumbers, zucchini, acorn squash
Flowers in pots on the ground:  marigolds, impatiens, chamomile, convolvulus
Window Box on garage:  impatiens

Front yard by evergreen:
Already planted:  mums, various spring bulbs
To be planted:  coleus, bunny tails, convent garden, forest fire, collard greens, and spinach

Back yard:
Raised Bed #1:  spring bulbs (already planted), daisies, lillies
Raised Bed #2:  lavendar, coreopsis, columbine, delphinium
Along back of house (may wait a year depending on budget/time):  hellabore, turtlehead?, gooseneck loostrife?
Back by old maple:  hostas (already planted), ferns

A little background information

Since a change in job to one less focused on advocacy, I have not found things to blog about in my professional blog and so have been itching to blog about something.  So when my sister-in-law, Brenda, mentioned blogging about my garden (so she could track what I am doing), it seemed like the perfect thing to do.  Thank you, Brenda, for the great idea.

A little about my background so people understand I am not an expert gardener or anything near that.  I am fairly new to serious gardening.  It all started many years ago when a former colleague gave me a scheflerra plant.  Up until that point I had always killed any living plant.  That plant has not only survive but is now thriving.  That same year, a parent of a student, gave me and that same colleague a mini rose bush.  Hers has since died.  Mine has survived rabbits eating it down to nothing twice, aphids, and many other obstacles and now looks beautiful.

Since then each year, I had at least a pot or two of tomatoes and other plants on the patio of the various apartments and condos where we lived.  In 2010 we purchased our first house with a yard.  That yard was planted with many perennial gardens and I couldn't wait to have my first real garden.  Ever since then I have tried new things each year.  This will be my 4th year with a "real" garden.  My yard has significant challenges because of the amount of trees.  Most plants that require full sun don't get enough sun to do very well.  Except for in the raised beds, the soil is hard as a rock and full of clay.  Additionally, less than a foot down you find more rocks than soil.  So everything I've done has been an attempt to either compensate for these challenges or in some cases ignore these challenges in hopes that the plant will thrive anyway.

Last year I had the option of starting a garden at my work (at the time I worked at a shelter for victims of domestic violence) which did surprisingly well with our limited resources.  It was also a huge stress reliever as anytime the stress of the job got to be too much, I could escape to the garden to do some weeding.  Never would I have imagined how much stress could be relieved through weeding!

This year I'm going to be working with my dad in his yard which gets much more sun.  He has been talking about putting in raised beds for years and moving his garden to a better location and I was looking for more success growing tomatoes which need so much sun so he jumped at the opportunity for help moving his gardening and setting up raised beds.  He also designed it to the beds to be covered which will give us an early start.

Another change this year is we recently had 25 trees removed from our yard (which was maybe 1/3 of the trees in our yard).  One was a huge very dead silver maple we feared would one day fall on the garage so we knew it needed to be removed.  We also knew we had some other dead ones.  When we had a tree guy come out he explained to us that Dutch Elm's disease had hit many of our elms and so they had to go.  I was sad to see the trees go as the woodpeckers love them but will welcome the additional sun for my garden.

So I'm really looking forward to a new planting season and have already started preparing.  Now if only we can hope for more rain this year.  The drought was a huge struggle last year with my rain barrels empty more often than full.