An early Spring! For me, anyways!

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that the USDA changed their hardiness zone map for the first time since 1990. I am now in zone 7a instead of 6b. This means I am in a "warmer" zone, and *should* be able to plant stuff outside earlier. If we have typical weather. But I don't think Oklahoma has the same kind of weather from year to year. At least it hasn't since we have lived here.

After I found out about my supposedly earlier planting dates, I went ahead and planted some tomatoes and peppers. I now have about 10 tomato seedlings. The pepper seeds were a couple of years old, and so far they haven't sprouted, so I am guessing I need to go buy some new seeds.

I planted four different varieties of tomatos: San Marzano,  Jet Star hybrid, and I couldn't resist trying to grow different colors of tomatoes, so I planted a couple of heirloom varieties: Black Krim and Cherokee Purple. Just because I thought it would be interesting to try purple and black tomatoes.

Today, I was able to pot up my tomatoes for the first time. Tomato plants will grow roots on any part of the stem that is under the soil. So I have read that if you pot them up a few times, each time planting it deeper in the pot,  it will grow a larger and stronger root system, which makes for a stronger  plant. I am going to try that this year. I also think I initially had the lights too far away from them, because they seemed "leggy" so when I potted them up this morning, I planted them almost to the leaves.

Today I also planted several herbs (seeds), some lettuce, spinach, and broccoli seeds,  yellow onions, red onions, and white onions. I planted the onions from seed, because I never seem to have much luck planting sets. I am really hoping I didn't wait too long to get those going though. We will find out eventually! I also will plant some green onions, but I might just wait and plant those directly in the ground when it is warm enough outside for me to go clean up the bed (this is the bed a stray cat has been using for a litter box, so I plan to remove the top several inches of soil and replace it, because that is just gross).  I do already have some green onions growing and some red onions growing that I planted in the fall (the red are from sets, the green are from seeds). I guess they will be ready around late spring?

This year, I decided to try using the jiffy pellets for planting seeds. This was the first time I have used the pellets instead of filling pots with seed starting mix/soil and the pellets were easier and less messy. I found it easiest to fill a dish with warm water and then soak the pellets in there instead of pouring water over them, because it seems to take quite a bit of water to get them to expand. They remind me of those little foam animals in the caps that I used to get as a kid, you know the ones you put in a bowl of water, and they "grow?" Once the pellets expanded to full size, I found it easy to use a toothpick to carefully move some of the dirt aside, drop a seed, and cover the seed back up. No mess!




We found a small greenhouse on sale at Atwood's and Jake helped me put it together.
I won't be able to put it outside with anything in it until it warms up, ALOT. But I am glad I have it in the house now, because it gives me a temporary place to put my plants.

 This year for my birthday, Brian gave me        "an early spring." He built me a seed starting station/ miniature greenhouse type thing in the garage. It is complete with weather stripping, a plexi-glass door, an adjustable grow light shelf, and a heat lamp.

The piece of furniture he used was actually part of his bachelor pad entertainment center in Orlando. When we moved into our house, he painted it white, and we used it for a computer desk, then we moved it into the garage and we used it as a potting bench/storage area for gardening supplies. Now it is a potting bench/greenhouse!

Brian also put the lights on a timer... so I can set the lights to turn on for 18 hours per day, then turn off! This is great, because I am sure I would be forgetting to do that!

He actually just completed it yesterday. It has been bitterly cold here this weekend (for a Florida girl, anyways), too, and we just got our first snow of the season today. I have not moved any plants out there yet, because I want to let it get a little warmer in there. We might need to add another heat lamp. I am waiting for it to get up to 65 degrees inside the greenhouse. When I checked it this morning it was up to 56. It is supposed to warm up this week though, and when that happens, the temp in the greenhouse should be warm enough. If it doesn't reach 65 in the next day or two, I am going to try putting hot water bottles in there. I don' think it will come to that, though.

In the meantime, I still have all my seedlings in the house on that greenhouse we bought:

So we have been busy with garden stuff even though it is still technically winter, but it is hard to find time to write and post pictures with a 2 year old and 6 month old. :-)

Turning over a new leaf (literally)

So, I have tried blogging in the past, but I get to busy with life to keep it updated. I am going to try this again, and this time change subjects completely. I still like to use coupons, and buy two papers every Sunday for that purpose, but I don't have the time or energy or patience to coupon the way I did in 2010. Plus, it seems harder and harder to get those kinds of deals now, thanks to shows like Extreme Couponing.

Now I am going to (try to) use this blog to document my gardening successes and failures. I am pretty sure I will have more failures than successes for awhile, but that is what this blog is for, so hopefully I won't repeat the same failures twice. And when I find something that works, hopefully I can remember it. I have thought about keeping a gardening journal and writing it on paper, but anyone who knows me, knows I will lose it haha.

This will be my third year trying to garden. The first year, 2010, I actually had what would maybe have been a successful garden- I had lots of healthy looking plants that were starting to bear lots of fruit/veggies but then, my wonderful husband, whom I love very much, accidentally killed it. All of it. Every last plant. That I grew from seeds. If you haven't heard the story already, you can read all about it here.

I did re-start my garden that year with plants that I bought, but it wasn't the same. I was unable to use my garden beds for several weeks because of the toxins in the soil. By the time I transplanted my sad looking tomatoes I was so over gardening and didn't care much for any of my plants. I did stick some bean seeds in the ground and left them alone, we actually got several pounds of green beans from my neglected bean plants that I watered once in a while. I also had three squash plants growing quite well until the lawn service mowed over them. Only one came back... and I neglected it, too. We got lots of squash that year from that one plant! We ate so much squash, it was a while before I could even look at squash again. Tomatoes don't do so well with neglect. I got a bunch of green tomatoes but the cold came and killed them before they could ripen (I didn't care enough by then to cover them up so I just let them go).

Last year, 2011, was even worse. Most of you know that my husband was in and out of the hospital most of the year (I think the grand total was 5 stays, for a total of 40+ days, 3 surgeries). I was so excited in January/February to get my garden going and seeds started. Then Brian ended up in the hospital again and again and I stayed by his side as much as possible. My seedlings all died from neglect.

Last Spring, we went to an herb festival right around Easter. I purchased 4 rosemary plants, 1 oregano plant, and 1 parsley plant. I really wanted basil, but couldn't seem to find any that looked that great. I planted all my herbs behind the rock in front of my house, and here is what they look like TODAY in JANUARY.

My 2011 herb garden, still thriving in January 2012!

Oregano & Parsley

Rosemary

Later in the year (can't remember exactly when) Brian found a really sad looking basil plant at Wal-Mart on clearance for $2.00 He knew how badly I wanted basil, so he bought it anyways and we put it next to the rock (behind where the parsley is). I wish we had a before picture, because this plant really took off and got huge. I mean HUGE. It was probably about 4 feet tall. I had so much basil, I didn't know what to do with it. It died when we got our first freeze last year (in October, I believe). I wish I would have dried or frozen some to use in the winter. I kept putting it off. And then it died.

That tall green plant is basil!

Last year was a really tough year on my plants. In addition to all the neglect due to time spent in the hospital, it was a REALLY hot summer. And it was REALLY dry. Temperatures regularly soared into the 110's. I remember our outside thermometer that was on our porch (so in the shade) read 119 one day. It truly was miserable. Oh, and did I mention that I was pregnant during all of this? Rachel was born August 17, 2011, so right in the heat of things (literally) I was too miserable to go outside and be more miserable in the heat. I did somewhat regularly water my garden for about half the summer, but due to extreme heat and drought, most plants (like tomatoes, peppers, and squashes) probably should have been watered multiple times a day. But after an astronomical water bill from just once-a-day watering, we decided it was no longer worth it. So we let everything go. Including our lawn and flower beds and herb garden - seems much of the neighborhood did the same last year, it is soooo expensive to keep everything green in that kind of heat and drought.

I am hopeful that 2012 will be a good year for us, and a good year for gardening as well!