Black currant

Last fall I purchased this black currant bush, it is doing really well! We’ll be trying to make our own “crème de cassis.“ Or maybe we’ll just add a few in a fruit salad. For those who have a lot of them you can also make some jelly. Yum ! 

 

              This week, while baby was asleep, I planted some seeds, spinach, zucchini, radicchio and basil by reusing the planters I get with the starts from the nursery.

Zucchini have been such a disaster the last few years.  As soon as we get some delicious zucchinis a bunch of bugs start to devour the plant… We tried everything  with no success. So I will plant them in a large pot and see what happens. 

Here are my lily of the valley, it’s a special plant for me, not only because it’s a purple variety, it’s also a plant I took from my grandfather’s garden in France and brought here in my suitcase ( it was worse the risk  ) It survived and is spreading nicely.

                 I found this dried sunflower in the backyard.

I love muscari. It has been nice out, still a little chilly especially at night. Soon it will be really warm and it won’t bother me at all.

seed starting and spring planting

so, i went ahead and did some early planting (thanks for the encouragement last week!). this weekend was beautiful so i finally sat down and took some inventory of my seed collection, i have a lot! i made a list of everything that i had, and i was only missing a few things that i wanted to plant.

i need (and want!) to do a better job of seed saving this year. it would be great to never have to buy seeds again, wouldn't it? another great way of avoiding seed buying is to swap and share seeds with fellow gardeners. these calendula seeds in my hands were sent to me for my birthday this past year by a dear friend who lives in oakland. it's so fascinating how different they look from the calendula seeds i saved from my own garden last summer (i sent her some of those in return). she didn't tell me the variety, so we'll have to wait and see what they turn out to be. i love that a piece of her will be in my garden this year.

as for what i planted? i can say for sure that it's way too much! but that's okay. last year i was happy to share some of my surplus seedlings and i know i'll be doing the same in a month or so. these seedlings are now taking up three trays under fluorescent lights in my basement. two trays are on heating pads and one (the chard and kale) is not. the lights are timed to stay on for sixteen hours a day. currently, i have plastic covering all of the trays to create a greenhouse effect, but as soon as they start sprouting (which some already are, after only two days!), i'll remove the plastic and bring the lights up a little further (they are suspended on chains from the ceiling so i can adjust the height as the seedlings grow).

i planted:
-silverbeet chard
-kale (dwarf blue curled scotch, lacinato, red russian)
-basil variety
-zinnias (red scarlet, cut and come again)
-amaranth
-tomatoes (cherokee purple, ace bush, yellow pear, sungold, matt's wild cherry)
-peppers (early jalapeno, bull nose bell)
-calendula ("leah's oakland", zeolights)

i also began my outdoor planting of early spring plants, arugula and radishes, but didn't get very far before the weekend was suddenly over (and i was down for the count with a bad cold). i'm hoping to plant some carrots, spinach, and snap peas over the next week.
shari posted some good seed starting links a couple of weeks ago here, here are a couple of my favorites: my post last year detailing my setup, you grow girl's instructions for setting up a diy lighting system, more instructions from you grow girl, another you grow girl list of handy links. i also referenced a few books i have: backyard homestead, and rodale's illustrated encyclopedia of organic gardening.

what are you all starting to plant so far this season?