Growin' in Spring

Finished seeding for a week or two :-)  This was a view of my end gate while seeding was still going on.  The round discs are seed plates designed to seed specific varieties. Some of them work really well, many of them didn't. 

Before the wind took over today and the rain came pouring down (finally!) I moseyed out to my garden plot while feeding cattle to see what was cooking.  Have you ever gotten that slightly desperate feeling after planting seeds that nothing is going to grow?  *panic!* It's too dry! It's too wet! Cutworms! Not enough fertilizer! Too Much Fertilizer! Seeded too deep! The seeder killed the seed! *panic!*

That's why it's always Such a Huge Relief when you walk through the garden and all you see - are nice, neat, long rows of Green! Wonderful Green! The tally of vegetables through the ground and growing today, includes: Red Norland, Warba, and Irish Cobbler potatoes (which were actually touched by frost a few nights ago), three varieties of Beets, Two varieties of peas, bunching onions, onions sets, two varieties of lettuce, and two varieties of radish.

It's hard to see in the picture, but this potato was touched by frost. 

In the greenhouses, the peppers are growing gangbusters and if all continues as it should, will be setting fruit in the next few weeks.  They seem to grow so painfully slow, but when I look back on the pictures I took of when they were first set out, they have really improved.  A few weeks ago, the temperature dipped down to 1.9 degrees Celsius in the pepper house, and 0.9 degrees in the eggplant/tomato house.  I was dismayed to find all the peppers and eggplants wilted and falling over.  You could practically hear them gasping out their last breath.  Quickly, I opened all the vents to get the air temperature down from 20 to ambient which was about 6, installed shade cloths (raided the linen closet for old blankets...) and by noon every single plant had stood back up.  I'm not taking anymore chances with the heaters so every night they're getting set just about as high as they'll go.

This is one of the hot peppers. It's been pruned to two shoots and the fruit removed up to this point in order to facilitate vegetative growth, but it's just about ready to fruit for real now! 

Aerial photo of --- Epic Eggplant! Awesome isn't it? Well, really, it's Epic... because it's Epic. 

In the other house, the tomatoes are doing fantastic, and the eggplant are starting to really spread out.  The strawberries have rooted in really well and when the weather clears up they'll get transplanted outside.  I had a request for some early radishes, and the first two handfulls were harvested today (yay!) and will be delivered tomorrow. It was a new experience for me growing radishes in the greenhouse, and so far it's been interesting.

And as promised, I'm going to include a picture of the water collection tanks that capture water off of the garage roof!  3000 gallons of storage and, right as of this minute, it's all full! 

Happy Spring to Everyone :-)