Welcome to Denver, where the common wisdom is "don't plant until after Mother's Day" (May 9th this year), and even then, sometimes you'll get a frost (or a hailstorm). Sooooooooooooo I am just now starting some seeds indoors!
But I am very excited because I am planting BIG PLANT SEEDS. My building is going to have a community garden this year which they are hoping to have built raised beds for us ready toward the end of the month. I've tried growing things in pots on my balcony in years past, but there are some plants that are kind of too big for the pots I have. If I had had extra money, I would have bought giant size containers, but I have been living on a shoestring. So certain things that I would have liked to try I couldn't, but this year I can!!
Yuan halping me start seeds
Yes that's right, I'm finally getting to try growing jack-o-lantern size pumpkins! My little Samhain (Halloween) loving heart is happy. It's my favorite holiday and I have always wanted to grow jack-o-lantern pumpkins. :D
Since both of these packets of seeds are YEARS old (one of them says 2013, the other I can't even find a date, it's probably older than that), I went ahead and started ALL the seeds. I figure only some of them will germinate being that old, so this way I'll be sure to get a few plants (I hope). OTOH, I may be overrun with pumpkin plants, which, yanno, is a pretty good problem to have. :)
I am doing that thing where you start seeds in paper towels, mostly because I need to buy potting soil, but also I think this will make it easier to see how many start so by the time I get some more soil I can save time and space by putting them in dirt after they've sprouted.
On a related note, I also started turnip seeds! _
Big root vegetables are also a difficult thing to pull off in pots. I've tried carrots before with not much success. But turnips are delicious, and I'm not allergic to them! Related though because turnips are actually the original plant you carve for Samhain - pumpkins only became a thing in the Americas. In Ireland it was (is?) turnips. Can't imagine what that looks like? How about this:
this image is all over the interwebs but it's an example found at the Museum of Country Life Co Mayo
That would put the fear into a malicious spirit, no?
And finally, I started cantaloupe seeds!
The packet is again from 2013 so I put all of them in there but I also added some that I had collected just from scooping them out of a cantaloupe from the store. Cantaloupes actually grow well in Colorado, but again, rather a large plant to try and grow in a pot on the balcony, so I'm happy I get to have a raised bed in the courtyard this year!
I will probably be starting more seeds intended for the balcony later, smaller things like herbs and probably tomatoes (I always try tomatoes with mixed success, lol), as well as some more tree seeds.
I took a peek, by the way, at the area I had guerilla gardened in the fall with some homemade compost and clover seeds. It's an area that's mostly bare dirt under a tree that is always getting washed away in the rain or when one of many (MANY) of the neighborhood dogs pees there. Yes, literally, I have seen a big dog pee and cause a stream to runoff down the little hill, across the sidewalk, and into the gutter, taking dirt with it. The poor tree is inundated with dog piss and cigarette butts (I'm always cleaning them up over there), so I thought they could use some healthy compost and maybe some clover to fix nitrogen in the soil and prevent erosion. So far, there are some really happy weeds growing there, lol. We always get weeds around there too, but these ones look HEALTHY. I think they like the compost as well. 😂 No signs of clover yet, but it is really early in the growing season for us, so I'm not giving up hope. The building next door has clover in their front beds and I haven't seen theirs yet, either, so I think we're okay still.
Photo from last fall. Note the little line of landscaping rocks I put at the bottom to try and help prevent some of the runoff.
That's a year's worth of compost making, btw! Small scale apartment homesteading FTW. 😄
Have a great week in your gardens, everyone!
