The first casualties of the season...

Well, I took a gamble. I wasn't a winner.

I had three good Amish paste tomato seedlings that I knew would dry up and shrivel if I left them in the house when I went to Florida. I chose to plant them. They did not survive.

In addition, not all of the pea plants made it. I lost about three of the plants in my pots. My peas in the raised beds all made it.

There are lettuce 'sproutlets' starting to come up. (Yugoslavian Red lettuce-- looks yummy.)

Soon, soon, soon, there will be fresh peas. Yummy!

Sunday update

My garden beds are in the back of our yard. In these, I mainly get peas, tomatoes, squash, and corn. There are a few herbs in the front of the left bed (rosemary, thyme, chives, basil, oregano, and cilantro). In the back of both beds, I planted the incompatible peas and garlic. There is one row of peas in the left bed and three rows of peas in the right bed. The right front of the right bed holds blackberry brambles, which are eating valuable planting space and must be moved. (We have our spot-- we will move them on a day that we are not drowsy from the time change.) In the right front corner of the left bed, I sowed Powers Heirloom tomato seeds today (these seeds are a yellow paste variety). I'm experimenting with directly sowing tomato seeds this year. I am curious to see if it works. Also in the left bed, midway between the rosemary and incompatible peas and garlic, is a sprinkling of a mixed greens (mesculun) mix. This mix was spread today.

In this pot, I sowed a Savoyed leaf Spinach. The seed was purchased last summer at Johnny's in Maine. This pot is on the far end of our garage, and the other two pots contain peas. (If I'm feeling like I need to create symmetry, I'll move this pot to the middle and move the other two on either end.) I like these locations because they catch both good sun and moisture. The other bonus is that I'm taking blacktopped ground and making it produce. My middle pot has about 10 pea sprouts, the tallest of which is about an inch tall. The far end has just a couple of sprouts. (Both pots were planted on the same day, so I'm not sure what is causing the delinquency.)

We're off to a Spring Break vacation as of midweek, so my blogging and planting will be without me for a while. If you're enjoying the blog, or have comments to make, please let me know that you stopped by in the comments section!

My First Mistake of the Year...

I purchased a really nice organic gardening book when I visited Seed Savers in December. Did I look at the book before I planted?

No, that would make sense.

So I planted two incompatible plants together. I planted garlic (for the first time!) last fall. So I planted my peas all around the garlic.

Why do I spend good money on books that I don't use when I should use them?