Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Planting Celery and Brassicas

This morning was warm but rained a bit. After the rain stopped I decided it was nice enough to plant some more seedlings. The parsley, celery, and celeriac were a bit overgrown as it was. The bed at the end was partly frozen still, but the section I needed for these was thawed. Yesterday the soil on the far end of the bed by the brick path even got to 60F (15C) yesterday when it was sunny. That last foot by the fence though still doesn't see anything but very early morning sun, so that ice takes a while to melt out. But I'm not putting any transplants there. I'm going to let the fennel pop up on its own from seed heads that I tossed there last fall.

I had two extra celery plants left over and put them right next to the other ones. That area is supposed to get peas in a week or two, but I don't mind losing some space to more celery.

Next up was to decide which of the brassica flats to go in today.

I decided on the baby Asian greens. They were more tangled and I didn't need them to get worse with time. Also since they produce so quickly keeping them longer in the blocks tends to make them bolt more easily. They are the first of the brassicas to produce and I want them to get going quickly. With the weather so nice and warm it will really jump start them.

When I put the window box plants in this bed I didn't measure. It made it a pain as doing a grid lets me get the plants in without crowding better. Those window box plants didn't fit my grid well. So there is a bit of unused space in there. Maybe I should have just crammed them in tighter.

I still have 24 more little plants growing upstairs under lights. In a couple weeks they will need to go in. I'm hoping the window box plants will be at least partially harvested by then as I don't have anywhere near that space for 24 more plants. But worse comes to worse I can shove them in or just toss them. I might just pick some at the baby stage to free up room. They are already baby Asian greens as it is - small plants naturally. There isn't much to them if you don't let them size up. But I'll cross that bridge in a couple of weeks.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to the other flat of brassicas and the alliums. I'm not great at taking care of the poor plants that need to be watered at least once a day and sometimes twice on really sunny warm days. Sometimes I let them wilt too much. They are always happier planted.

5 comments:

  1. Your seedlings look so amazing! I don't know how you do it - mine are always so scrawny before I put them in their beds.

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  2. Those Asian greens do look great. They should take right off with a little sunshine. I'm not always good about getting mine planted quickly enough and they sometimes bolt on me before they ever get planted. At least in spring they do.

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  3. Just coming back to re-read this post as I was wondering about putting my parsley out now ... but you didn't mention whether you did or not? Can I put parsley out (seedlings over a month old and looking healthy) even though it might dip below zero a few more times?

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    1. Yes I planted the parsley out. It is pretty hardy. The only problem with them seeing a freeze is they might bolt early. I've never had that happen when they have seen frost though. Last year I had a couple bolt on me for the first time, but they saw neither a frost or freeze. Not sure why they did that then. Chard did it for the first time too last year. I'm guessing it was our very up and down weather.

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    2. OK thanks, I'll get mine out this weekend then.

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