The garden season is upon us and suddenly I have more than I can possibly get done. I did try to work ahead of the season but there are so many things that just need to wait. We needed to wait for the soil temperature to rise above 50 degrees. We waited for the frost to be gone from the soil. We have needed to wait for the top soil to dry out a bit (even though we have had little snow and not much rain). Then the March winds hit and it made no sense to be raking when the leaves were just blowing all over the place.
But now it is mid April. The weather has settled a bit and it is time. I have completed the clean up of the front flower garden beds just yesterday. I like doing this because I am up close and can see what plants are returning. It is a good time to check for damage or disease on any of the plants. I also have a watch and wait list of plants that are coming up and I not sure that what they are. Are they really something I planted last year? At this early stage I leave them be but make a note to come back and check on them each week.
This also is the time to work on reducing or eliminated the invasive plants like Squill or Bellflower. They are both lovely when blooming but they literally take over the garden if not removed. An example is Squill. There is a patch of it on the Southeast corner flower bed. I started yesterday to remove it. Digging carefully and deeply I spent an hour or so and only managed to remove less than half of the patch. This cute little plant had what felt like thousands of tiny little bulbs. The little bulb are the size of a pin head. It I leave any of them behind they will grow. ( I know there are some left behind – there was no way I could get every tiny plant but I am working on it.) This will be a several years project since I really do not want to use toxic chemicals that would eradicate it more quickly.
The daffodils have begun to bloom and the returning perennials are now showing up. When I look closely there are flower buds on some of the tulip plants as well so we are excited to see more color soon..
While working on the outside clean up and exploration, to find what is growing, inside the flower seedling are growing quickly and need to be watered every other day. I am running a fan in the sunroom since I noticed a few plants were not doing well. There is this thing called damping off. Damping off is a disease of seedlings caused by several different fungi and fungus-like organisms. This disease causes emerging seedlings to collapse, often submerged in a mass of white fungal growth. I don’t see any of the fungal growth but several plants have just fallen over with weak stems. There is a fine line between enough water and to much water for these young seedlings. A fan helps to circulate the air and prevent this issue in most cases. It all feels a bit odd that I have the heat in the floor on and am running a ceiling fan at the same time. But hey, it seems to be helping.
I have fallen behind on planting. At this point I had hope to have the summer veggie seeds planted. The warm weather guys like tomatoes, cucumbers and basil plus a few other I plant inside. This keeps them warm until we are past our last frost date in May.
Outside there are cool weather crops that could go in and I have not gotten to it. Those are things like lettuce, spinach, carrots, peas radishes, cilantro, and kale. All of these grow better when it is cool out so I need to hurry with this planting. I am afraid by May it will turn hot and I will have lost my window to get this guys going.
Today is raining, which we need so not complaining just waiting for a good time to plant the cool weather veggies. Maybe this weekend! I will let you know next week!
Words from JL 
Wow! I envy your knowledge on flora and gardening. You have done so much in a short period of time. I enjoyed your parallel introduction and conclusion with the word and idea of waiting.
We have had SO much rain in our area that there is MUD everywhere. I tried to pull some weeds during a dry day recently and came up looking like a wet muddy dog! Kudos to you.
There is a lot more to planting that I ever knew. Wow! I hope you are able to get what you want in the ground at the time you want it!