First Garden Post of the Spring!

Well, as usual I stopped blogging half way through the gardening season last year.  Actually it was a tough summer - very hot and wet.  Many of my varieties of peppers and tomatoes didn't do as well as previous years - except the Ghost Peppers, which grew like a damn tree!

Well, here it is, March, and gardening season is upon me again!

I'm curtailing my gardening activities a bit this spring because of shoulder surgery I underwent about 5 weeks ago. Luckily I'd managed to turn and prep most of my garden beds prior to the surgery and covered them up with landscape fabric so they'd be ready for planting come April and May.  I'm not doing as much early spring gardening this year.

I did start some sweet peas about 6 weeks ago - they're coming up nicely, as you can see here:

I also have yellow onions that I planted in the fall and they've overwintered quite nicely and look like they're picking up the pace again - they're still pretty small, I do not expect to harvest them for several months still.  This particular location in my back yard is about the only place that gets full sun all winter long.  Most of the rest of the back yard is heavily shaded by my house in the winter.

I also picked up some lettuce starts at the farmer's market this morning and planted them today.  I got two varieties of leaf lettuce - one green (buttercrunch) and one red (don't remember).  We are right in the middle of lettuce planting season here in Raleigh!

I also planted some Cilantro from a seedling a month ago and it's doing very well.  Cilantro is a cool weather herb that is an annual but it does easily re-seed itself in the heat of the summer and so you will often find it "coming back" every year.

Here's a few more pictures from the garden today too.

Heather in bloom - it started blooming about a month ago.  It's nice to have some color in the yard in February!

Strawberry Plants - they look like they're still mostly dormant, it's been chilly.

Camilia - also a nice late winter flowering plant.

Helibore flowering and looking very nice along with the groundcover I planted last year.  It's not doing much covering yet.