Things Are Sprouting

Last weekend, Saturday and Sunday, was my big planting weekend. On Saturday I set out most of my tomato, pepper, and eggplant transplants. I also seeded most of .the warm weather crops (beans, cukes, and squash), figuring I can always re-seed if we get a frost or cold spell and things don’t germinate.
Today, six days later, most of the seeds (except my Diva cucumbers) are emerging. That’s pretty good considering some of our nights were in the sixties.Meanwhile, the transplants are all looking great.

These sprouts are cucumber Summer Dance.This cucumber is a Japanese burpless type and is supposed to produce long, slim, dark green fruits. It has all female flowers so yield is high. I hope I get a few before disease wipes out all my cukes again. The joi choi there may have to learn to be less exuberant and stay in its square.



My pole beans Fortex are up and looking vigorous. The trick is to protect them until they develop a couple pairs of leaves. When they first emerge they are tempting targets for slugs and other predators that like to nibble off the growing tip. To the right in this bed are collard Georgia and kale.




These are cucumber Jackson Classic, a white spine pickling cucumber. I’m looking forward to lots of half sour pickles.



The bush beans are also coming up under the floating row cover. I planted 4 squares of Provider and 4 squares of Fresh Pick, rather than eight of each. This happened only because I had a brain freeze and counted out the wrong number of seeds to soak and inoculate. So, the NEW plan is to plant the remaining 8 squares next week, two weeks after the first. We’ll see if this succession planting scheme has any advantage.



So now if the Diva cukes will just emerge, my garden is pretty much on its way. Some of the lettuces are looking like they might want to bolt soon, so it is probably time to start some replacements. Let the harvests begin.