Spring blooms!

 2 sunny daffodils, on the far side of the house, far back corner.

I didn't even notice them until I went back there looking for something else!

There may be some tulips coming in the same spot, too.

I think this may be Western spring beauty, which (if it is) is a Washington state native wildflower. 

There's just this one up on the slope by the big aspen tree, and 2 more in front by our mailbox.

It's about 3 inches high, and the flowers have blue stripes down the middle of each petal.

Even though they are few in number I am grateful to see some flowers again!

By this time next year there should be more to see, if I have my way this fall.

Pruning and Planting

We had a gorgeous, sunny day yesterday, so we spent all afternoon outside working on garden stuff. Hooray!

One little chore we got done was pruning the raspberry bushes. There were quite a few dead canes, some of them hollow in the middle--bug hotels. Some pieces of the crowns even came right out of the ground with just a tug. I noticed quite a few carpenter ants as I cleaned up the canes, leaves, and other debris around the base of the plants. I hope a little better housekeeping will mean fewer homes for those ants right next to our house. Last year the berries we got were very small--I'm also hoping this pruning will encourage production of bigger berries.

I had also purchased 12 daylily bulbs from Costco last week when we were there, so we got those planted. 3 each of: Doublicious (orange with a double flower), Condilla (yellow with a double flower), + 3 each of Fire and Fog (red with yellow border), and On My Own ? (yellow, single flower).   I'm not sure if they'll make it or not--the one package seemed too wet, and several of the leaves were slimy. The other one seemed too dry, and they didn't really even seem alive.  Oh well. We'll see how they do and if it was worth it. I usually try to avoid purchasing anything alive at Costco.  I put them around the base of the biggest aspen on the slope back there.

We also raked out quite a bit of dead grass from around the aspen tree where we wanted to plant.  This hillside will become beautiful! I'm determined to make it so.  I can't handle the "dead bunch grass" look. Even it was green and alive, I see so much more potential for that slope.  We kept running into thin pieces of pebbly cement sort of half-buried, I assume to help hold up the soil or something. I pulled them out whenever I found them.

Next up: blueberry bushes, if I can figure out where to put them!

The Ways of Seedlings

I haven't planted very many things from seed. So I have been fascinated to see how these different plants grow. You saw the beans last post. Here's the other half of that seedling tray:

 L-R: violas, Marigold Mars, and Marigold Bonanza mix

The violas, from such a tiny seed, start out with those 2 round seed leaves, then begin adding more leaves from the juncture of the leaves, one at a time, the same round type.

As you can see, the marigold 'Mars' is a dud. I haven't had a single one germinate! I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, or if I ought to call the seed company and have them send me out another package.

The other marigolds, though, are going strong in all the trays. They start with the long slender seed leaves on a short stem. Then first put out the two larger toothed leaves you see there. It's kind of hard to tell, but after those first two, the leaves grow in groups of 4, with 2 pairs, each coming below the bigger main leaf.

This tray, L-R: hollyhocks, violas, cosmos, basil

So the hollyhocks' seed leaves are big and round in shape, then their new leaves come one at a time, also round, growing from the juncture of the seed leaves.

Cosmos resemble marigolds at first, with the 2 long, slender seed leaves, but their stems are all about 4 inches tall. Then the true leaves, as you can see, are very finely cut, coming out in pairs close to the seed leaves.

The basil has been very interesting to watch, too. The seed leaves are those larger, spade-shaped leaves. They originally were so close together they looked like one leaf, with two little eyes in the middle. Now they are growing apart and the true leaves are appearing, so far in pairs, right from the middle.

By the time the trays are at this point, you don't need to check your paper anymore for what's what. It's very obvious by their growth.  I have really enjoyed this learning process so far!

Transplanting the beans

 As you can see, the beans had outgrown these little trays.

The roots were already coming out the bottom holes.

Luckily, we've been eating a lot of yogurt lately!

I poked holes in the bottoms of the yogurt cups with a nail, then filled them with a mixture of the seed-starting soil plus regular potting soil.

They are fighting for windowsill space now, but all seem to be growing taller.

Beans grow fast enough that I'm sure I could have just waited and planted them outside this summer, but it has been fun for the kiddos to see them growing so big and tall. Fun for me too, especially with this cooler spring than we're used to.

Once we got the beans moved, we filled up the spaces again with more seed-starting mix.
This time we did: 2 'Baby Boo' miniature white pumpkins, 2 'Jack Be Little' miniature orange pumpkins, (one of each type in Jacob's and in mine), 1 delphinium in Jacob's, some delphiniums in mine (don't remember how many). I also put some borage in mine. Didn't write down which was which this time, so I guess we'll get a surprise.  So far the pumpkins in mine are just starting to poke through.

It has been a little harder this time to keep the dirt moist for the seedlings, since I can't cover the whole tray. This might be another reason to do all of one type of seed in the same tray. That way, they would all be ready to pot up at once, and then the whole tray could be used again.

Seedlings up!

We've got some seedlings up already! I wasn't expecting to see any for another week or so.
As far as I can tell from my awesome note-taking skills, they are marigolds, cosmos, and hollyhocks.
Jacob and I were so excited when we saw them!

Some of them were bending sideways under the saran wrap, so we used toothpicks to make a little saran wrap tent for them. Some of them were quite dry, so I gave them a little drink.

Seed Starting

 We had fun starting some seeds today!

Since my only sunny windowsills are in the kitchen, and they are narrow, I actually took one of the trays and cut it down to fit, so 4 rows wide by 8 long. I ended up not using the second tray. I will probably hold onto it for next year, though.  These trays were really hard to pry apart, and some of the cells were damaged in the process. So not all of my trays ended up exactly the same size.

Tray 1: 4x8, above stove

2 rows + 1 cell: Cosmos--Sensation mix

3 cells + 3 rows: Marigold 'Mars'

2 rows: Marigold--Bonanza Mix

Tray 2: 4x7, above stove

3 cells + 2 rows: Petunia EasyWave Beachcomber mix

3 rows: Genovese Basil

1 row: Hollyhock--Summer Carnival mix

Jacob's Tray: 3 cells + 4 cells, above stove

3 cells: Royal Burgundy beans

1 cell: Cosmos--sensation

1 cell: Basil

2 cells: Marigold Bonanza

Tray 3: 4x7, above sink

3 rows: RB beans

2 rows: Marigold bonanza

1 row: Marigold Mars

1 row: Viola--Johnny Jump-ups

Tray 4: 4x6, above sink

2 rows: Hollyhock Summer Carnival

1 row: Viola

2 rows: Cosmos sensations

1 row: Genovese Basil

Since this was my first time doing this, I thought I would just list out what we did:

1. Poured special seed starting dirt into bin, added water, mixed with our hands until all medium was evenly moist, more or less.

2. Filled seed tray with mixture.

3. Put seeds in, covered them with more soil if needed.

4. Recorded what was growing in each one.

4. Covered trays with saran wrap and put on window sill.

I'm not sure if I'll have to water them at some point or not. Almost all of them say they should come up in 7-10 days, so I marked the calendar that we planted them--that way we'll know when to start looking for some green!

These seed trays are super small, so I may need to pot them up to a bigger size at some point before putting them outside. We'll see.

Seeds to plant outside: Royal Chantenay carrots, Super Sugar Snap peas, Wildflower Mix (on the slope), Bellflowers, and Sunflowers (when it gets warmer).

Violas and Lilac, Planted!

 I used almost the whole flat around the first tree.

They looked so lovely I just kept going and going.

 Jason helped me plant the lilac. I asked him to help get it out of the bucket and he noticed the hole I had dug was a bit on the shallow side. So he kindly made it much deeper and a bit wider.

Lilac: "My Favorite French Lilac", or Syringa vulgaris 'My Favorite'

Grows 6-12 feet wide and 8-15 feet tall.

Hardy to -40 F.

Slow growing, but should make a good wind break once it gains some size.

Lavender flowers.

 I ended up with 10 plants, in 3 clumps, around this back apple tree.

I still think they'll be pretty, and they may even last longer this summer as this side gets more shade than the other side.

Since I got them planted this week, we've had a hard frost, light snow, and another hailstorm.

So far they've held up beautifully under all of that.