More spring planting

I don't have any pictures this time but I did feel like writing something about gardening and what's been going on lately in my garden.

I planted some zucchini seeds about 10 days ago and they haven't come up yet.  I wonder if the seeds "expired" while sitting in my shed since last spring.   At this point I'll probably just buy some seedlings at the farmers market.

Speaking of the Farmer's Market, I did make a couple trips there this past weekend.  Saturday, I purchased and then planted two varieties of cucumbers for my garden trellis - one side of the arched walkway trellis will be Straight 8 slicing cucumbers, which have always been my favorite variety.  The other side will be some variety of pickling cucumbers. Mom said she had plenty of relish still so I'll probably try to make some pickles with my harvest.

Sunday, I bought some more herbs - Pineapple Sage, Orange Thyme, and Greek Oregano.  The Pineapple Sage is a fast growing and fairly large plant that smells wonderful and has beautiful red flowers.  I don't really use sage, so I'm actually just growing this one like a flower.  The orange thyme also smells wonderful and will look cool in my sidewalk herb garden.  The sidewalk garden (called that because it's right next to the sidewalk in the front yard) also has lemon thyme, creeping thyme, garlic chives, onion chives, rosemary, and one of the new pineapple sage plants.  Most of these are actually cold hardy perreniels that I planted last year.

This weekend, if I have time, it's time to get some peppers in the ground.  I'm planning to reduce my varieties and grow only Jalapeno, Habanero, and Bell Peppers this year.  I may also plant some corn, because corn is cool.

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.