On Wednesday morning, I was doing okay, considering all I had done on Tuesday. I had to get the kitchen cleaned up and all the house plants fed before my general helper arrived at noon. I had delusions that I would have trays set up for her and most of the starting notes done, etc.
But in real life, it was all I could do to feed the plants on the second floor before I did the first floor.
I had plenty of help resting between feeding rounds. I managed to finish right at noon, so I was in no way ready for her to start when she arrived.
So I quickly made a list of what needed to come up from the cellar for her to bring up and then I started laying out trays.
She started putting pots in trays and then filling the pots. I started making markers, finding the seed, and making notes for her to follow. I found several mistakes but I think in the end we got it all sorted out, each tray ended up in the window it belonged in, and all the jobs were done. Except one.
We had made a list of vegs, herbs, and flowers to start this year. And on each list we made a list of what we had to buy, what I didn’t have in inventory. Well, Sweet William fell through the cracks. It made the to-start list, but not the to-buy list. So half of this tray couldn’t be planted.
We sort of but not really cleaned up the mess as it was 3PM and I’d decided a mad dash north to see if we could find Sweet William, feverfew (which we still hadn’t found), and to stock up on cat food.
It had been raining most of the day and we were threatened with a good size sleet storm. But we made it up and most of the way back before the sleet started at 4:30PM.
When we walked into the feed co-op, beautiful primroses greeted us at the door. Going into a place with gardening stuff in early spring is not a good idea… Look at the color on that flower!
So we starting hunting through the extensive racks of seeds and I found 1 Sweet William and neither of us found feverfew. Sigh…
So I decided to see if they still had pansies, as I had not been able to buy any in March. I ended up with 3 6-packs. And I found some with nice “faces” that my husband always liked.
I had one space that was tall enough for the pansies on the porch. Normally they would have gone into the cold frames, but I’ve not cleaned them out and set them up yet.
This was 5PM, that’s all sleet, frozen ice balls.
The primrose came in a very tall pot but I had a cache pot for it. I also got the Sweet Williams planted.
That tray nearly filled the bottom of the office area.
The dining room was supposed to be full, but we managed to put some into the leeks’ tray, some of which had to be restarted.
The north side of the porch is full.
The south side had 1 space left, but the pansies went there.
This is what was started:
Vegs:
Artichokes 9
Beets 36
Broccoli 24
Cauliflower 12
Mesclun 14
Swiss chard 18
Herbs:
Ashwagandha 12
Astragulus 6
Bible plant/Costmary 9
Foxgloves 6
Lavender 6
Parsley 27
Santolina 6
Sweet Annie 6
Wild lettuce 6
Flowers:
Canterbury bells 6
Dianthus 9
Love in a Mist 6
Stocks 12
Sweet William 9
Total:
21 plants
224 seedlings
I left the mess when I got home, just made scrambled eggs for supper, got the stoves going and was in bed by 8PM.
On Thursday while it storms, I have to clean up the mess, put water in all the seedling trays and finish laundry. My brother wants to make Parsnip Chowder for supper. He picked up parsnips some where a couple days ago. I’m hoping for a rest day.