I think I will follow then. I started hardening my lettuce, Chinese cabbage, broccoli and other cabbage this morning. I put kale and spinach seed in the ground a couple of days ago, spinach was old seed and may not come up. I will pot up my tomatoes, peppers are still very small.

I tried tilling the upper end of my north garden this morning but it is still to wet. I will till it a few times to dry it. I dont like doing that but I do it almost every year in order to get plants in on time.

I need to rig up some type of cold frame or greenhouse to sit the plants in because of the strong cold wind. My little pup tent type of greenhouse died after 4 years use.

Larry

So now I have permission to plant too. That is how I am taking your posts. Tell me about your little pup tent greenhouse and how you used it. I bought a little thing at Sam's that is still in its box. I know it wouldn't keep things warm at night this time of year so I haven't tackled putting it together. I'm afraid the wind will blow it away also, but I am going to try it one of these days soon.

I don't know Helen, Larry is down by Ft Smith and I am here in Adair Co Ok. I know we all claim to be z6, but I suspect you are colder than we are. But all I planted was seeds and they are all pretty hardy, so you may be safe to follow suit. In warmer years I have put them in the ground a week earlier.

Helen, my daughter bought me the tent about 6 years ago. I thought it was the biggest piece of junk I had ever seen and did not even try it for two years. After I tried it I really liked it. It was too hard to heat so I only used it at above freezing temps. It was about 5'x6' and about 3.5or 4 . tall.
It had green thread in the plastic about the size of 1/2" hardwear cloth. One side of the top zipped open and it had a cloth screen that zipped open and folded back. Each end had a screened window and velcro flap. The frame was light metal tubing that I fitted into a 2x4 frame and staked to the ground.

I dont know what it cost but I am sure it was more than it was worth. I will try to rig up some king of visqueen shelter this year, it I cant make that work I may buy another tent.

Larry

Here is a picture of the end of it.

Me too! Thinking serious GREENS. Yum.

bon

Helen, I found a better picture of the pup tent greenhouse.
This is when I was sitting it up last year.

Since I garden on a serious slope, I am not direct-sowing seeds until after this weekend's rainfall has ended. Otherwise, if heavy rain occurs, all the seeds in each bed might wash down to the board at the lower end of each raised bed. I had that happen one year and all the plants sprouted en mass right along the board edging. I have my carrot, radish, spinach, swiss chard and beet seeds out and ready to go, and would have planted them yesterday if it wasn't for the rain in the forecast.

I transplanted most of my sugar snap pea plants into beds at the high end of the garden yesterday, and today I am going to transplant the rest of them and some of the lettuce, dill and cilantro started from seed in the greenhouse. We will have nights close to freezing next week (and had a low temp of 23 a couple of nights ago) so I know I'll have to watch the temps carefully and use floating row cover if needed. I also transplanted 9 Packman broccoli plants into the ground yesterday, but have dozens more broccoli plants in several varieties. Some of those I'll transplant later, and some are just for backup.

The onions, cauliflower and brussels sprouts planted last week look great despite that 23-degree night when the temps at our house remained below freezing for 8 or 9 hours. I have had onion plants freeze in the lower 20 before but that was in really wet soil and these are in a fairly dry area. Poppies and larkspur are up and some of the larkspur is about to bloom. Chamomile, which reseeds itself everywhere, already is blooming. Volunteer Laura Bush petunias are popping up everywhere, and the asparagus is beginning to emerge from the ground.

I wanted to plant potatoes in the ground before the rain got here, but I rushed to finish potato planting before the rain last year and then it rained and rained and rained and the potatoes rotted, so I am waiting until after the rain is over this weekend and then I'll plant potatoes as soon as the ground is dry enough.

I hope that I'll be able to get the direct seeded stuff into the ground as soon as the rains ends and the paths are dry enough to walk in. We are in that time of the winter fire season where we're having calls almost every day so my perfectly planned planting schedule doesn't necessarily get to proceed as planned if I am not here to do the planting.

Yesterday I moved the tomato transplants from the indoor light shelf back out to the greenhouse, hopefully to stay, as they're now so tall that they are touching the lights, and the lights are raised as high as they'll go, so the tomato plants can't go back there. I think they'll be fine in the greenhouse because it has been staying 6 to 8 degrees warmer than the nighttime lows as long as I remember to close the doors and vents in mid-afternoon to hold in whatever heat has built up inside of it.

Now that the light shelves are mostly empty (one shelf has month-old pepper plants and another has herbs and flowers sprouting), I can start more flats of warm-season flowers and herbs.

With the way the forecast looks, it seems like I'll have a couple of days indoors to sow all the seeds I want into flats. We need the rain, so I'm not complaining. I just hope it gets here, rains, and then the storms go away so we get a few drier days for planting.

Dawn

I finished planting my onions today, also planted lettuce, and 3 kinds of cabbage(plants). I have backup plants if the frost kills these,. I also noticed one potato plant breaking through the soil, I have hay out there at each end of the row. I am sure I will need it.

I am fast running out of room, but I only 1.5 of the 5 areas ready to plant. the remaining 3 will be for okra, melons and sweet potatoes, so I have a little time on those.

Larry

Larry, You mean your ground was dry enough to work? That's great! Of course, more rain is coming. Have you noticed rainfall comes in two amounts here: too much and too little.

I got a lot of my ground ready today and am pleased with all the progress I made. Our forecast here is for around an inch of rain this weekend, so I don't think it will interfere with me planting. I'll just wait a day or two after the rain stops for the pathways to dry and then I'll get busy planting.

Now that I have whipped most of the big garden into shape for planting, i can spend time next week working on the two new areas out back of the barn. Those two areas are for most of the warm-season crops. although beans, cukes and most tomatoes still will be in the big garden.

Dawn

Dawn, the ground was really too wet to work. I did till a little but the ground packed badly. I planted about half of the stuff in unworked soil. The soil was tilled last fall and was still in pretty got shape. I had to get some plants in the ground to clear some space under the lights.

My soil is looking better each year, but I expect it will always be bad to pack when I walk on it.

I would like to have my soil test back before I prep the garden because I expect my PH may be a little low. I should have sent the soil test in last fall and already had my soil amended and ready to plant. This is the first year that I have failed to amend my soil. Hopefully the soil will dry enough to add organic matter before I plant summer crops.

Larry