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The Old Guy's Garden Record
Clicking through one of our banner ads or some of our text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. It’s turned cold here again. I used the few warm days we had to work on our main raised bed. Initially, I was just preparing an area at one end of the bed for our Champion of England and Maxigolt early peas. But I realized that tilling the bed with the heavy grass growth still in place wouldn’t work. So I took our riding mower into the bed and mowed and blew most of the dead grass out of the bed.
I still have some hand weeding to do along the sides of the bed. But after a half inch of rain overnight, it will be a day or so before the soil dries out enough to rototill.
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When I got outside to look at our main raised bed, I took a rake with me. A lot of the grass mulch there raked off pretty easily. With a little more work with the rake and some hand weeding, the bed should be ready for our early peas without any rototilling. Our early peas, a mix of the Champion of England and Maxigolt varieties, usually go in the first week of March. But we're still early enough to get some good sweet peas.
I began my efforts by firing up our riding mower and mowing around our raised beds. Then I cleaned up Bonnie's Asparagus Patch. Since it isn't in a raised bed, I just ran the lawn mower over it a couple of times. And fortunately, neither of our asparagus beds are showing any asparagus shoots coming up yet. I'd like to get a good layer of compost over them before the beds begin producing. My next outdoor job was to pull tomato cages and the T-posts that supported them. The cages and the decayed vines came out of the ground easily. I was surprised to find the ground moist and thawed which made pulling the T-posts fairly easy. The T-posts and cages will go right back into use next month when I transplant the tomatoes I started on Wednesday. My pleasant gardening surprise of the day yesterday was discovering a double red gloxinia in full bloom. It was sitting at the back of our dining room table. I just missed seeing it. Then I ran into a single purple blooming gloxinia in the basement that I promptly brought upstairs to join the red bloomer.
I started two deep sixpack inserts today with the Quinte tomato variety for an early planting. The plants will go into one of our raised garden beds, although our tomato plants that go in much later in our East Garden plot seem to do better than the ones early planted in a raised bed. Anyway, getting out to do some bed cleanup in the next few days will be a good test for my aging body. I'm really not sure at this point of how much gardening I'll be able to do this season.
Save 20% with promo code "Spring20" It's almost seventy degrees outside, but the wind is howling with gusts up to 50 MPH. We're predicted to have some severe storms tonight. Not really an outdoor gardening day today.
I took some lettuce seed downstairs this morning to re-seed several cells that hadn't germinated. As it turned out, our Coastal Star and Majestic Red lettuce seed was just slow to germinate. I also re-seeded some celery. Not all was lost on the trip downstairs. Some good cole slaw recently got me to seed six cells of cabbage. Thursday, March 12, 2026 - Signs of Spring
We have daffodils in bloom. Some tulips are also up. The tulips looked good a day or so ago, but now look a bit bedraggled. Inside, I moved our trays of geraniums from under our plant lights to the sunroom. They'd grown into the lights over them. In the sunroom, they'll experience very warm days and cool nights. The cool nights actually help their growth.
It's a warm, but gray day out today. I had a bunch of inside jobs to do, so I didn't get out to do any garden cleanup. I did, however, get some brassicas started. I seeded Goliath broccoli, Amazing cauliflower, and Long Island Improved brussels sprouts.
The Goliath broccoli variety is one we've been saving seed from for years. It produces large heads and sideshoots late into the season.
It's raining hard here today and the rain is supposed to continue for several days. That apparently is a good thing for farmers worried about dry soil conditions. A local weather person said this week that her farmer father was pleased with the rain predicted. That station suggested we may receive three to four inches of rain over the next few days. I moved the Abundant Bloomsdale spinach seeds I'd been soaking to a communal pot last night. This afternoon, I sorted out seed of our favorite lettuce varieties to start. I started two cells each of Barbados, our two favorite head lettuce varieties, Crispino and Sun Devil, our two favorite romaines, Jericho and Coastal Star, and Better Devil, a red romaine. Seed for the Barbados and Sun Devil varieties are no longer available commercially.
The seed went into deep sixpack inserts filled with sterile potting mix topped with vermiculite. I didn't cover the seed, as some lettuce varieties germinate better with a little light. The tray with the sixpacks just went onto our plant rack, but not over a soil heating mat. Lettuce seed germinates fairly well at 60-70°F.
As I looked over the calculator list, I realized that I had missed getting some spinach transplants started on time. So I put to soak about thirty Abundant Bloomsdale seeds from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I'm hopeful the planting will go well, as the seed was some I purchased just last year. I also noticed that I'm running way behind the calculator's recommendations for starting stuff. But after our late start experience last season, being a bit late on getting things started is better than having transplants getting too old when the ground is too wet to work. I moved some dianthus and vinca from their communal pots to a fourpack and three inch pots. While it's cool out today and probably tomorrow, it appears that we may have a warm, but very wet stretch coming soon. We really do need the rain.
Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening |
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