MID-MARCH SEEDS & SPRING GARDEN CLEANUP
More seeds! It just makes you happy, ya know? This round of seeds include bell peppers, the first succession of broccoli, African daisies, creeping thyme, and alyssum.
I’m also experimenting with some larger cells for the veggies and ground covers to see if they will grow a bit better. I kept my vinca in the small 6-count cells for all 4ish months they were growing indoors last year and I think they could have benefitted from an increase in pot size in early Spring. I popped out one of the vinca that I started in late January and it already has roots almost to the bottom of the cells so I think the size increase will be necessary soon. So, the veggies and ground covers get to start in larger cells to hopefully keep them happier.
I’ve also had good germination so far on the early March seeds - petunias, pansies, echinacea, and yarrow. The saponaria had one seed shoot up almost immediately but that’s been the only action so far.
The current seed setup
I also took advantage of some of the warmer, sunny days we’ve had in early March and have done a little spring cleanup. For my yard, that means leaves. Our yard is up against some lovely woods that provide a beautiful green backdrop to our garden but that means a lot of leaf cleanup both in the spring and autumn. We use the mower in the autumn to mulch the leaves and get all the good leaf stuff back into the soil but there are inevitably plenty of leaves to rake, and plenty left over, so I wanted to show you my highly recommended leaf gear.
Flexible/adjustable rake - you can adjust the width of the rake head(?) to get into hard to reach or smaller areas and the flexible tongs(? - sorry, I’m not up on the official rake lingo) that let you rake through the garden beds without damaging plants.
Leaf chute - a must-have. It’s a piece of flat plastic that folds out to prop open and hold up your leaf bags. Simple and remarkable. If there are two of you raking leaves, get two chutes (and two pairs of the next item.)
Leaf scoopers - allow you to grab a whole bunch of leaves at once. You can also jam them into the leaf bag to help compress the leaves so you can have optimum leaf capacity per bag.
Now the walkways are looking a bit tidier and the beds are ready for mulch! I mulched in late March last year and it was great to just have it over and done with early in the season, so I’d like to get my mulching game on soon!