April 9, 2014 - A Late Start

The 2013-2014 winter was the second snowiest on record - a total of 67.4" fell in the Philadelphia area and I suspect that is on the low side for Downingtown. All that snow is now gone and Spring is here. Unfortunately, because the winter weather continued late into March, I am behind schedule this year getting the garden cleaned up. It was VERY swampy until this past weekend but after spending the first warm weekend out doors it is now ready to go.

While cleaning up I noticed there were some onion-looking things sprouting in suspiciously neat rows.  I think these may be the leftover ramps from last years market.  I wonder if they multiplied?

Here is the tentative plan for this year:
8 Tomatoes
9 Peppers
2-4 Cucumbers
3 Eggplant
1 Zucchini
1 Yellow Squash
And a rotating crop of salad greens

I'm trying my hand at successive plantings this year of some of salad greens.  It's always something that I intend on doing but this year I'm planting 5 Watermelon Daikon Radishes and 5 Merlot Lettuce seeds every weekend for a month - the first set went in on April 5th.  As soon as I get some spinach seeds I'll work them into the mix too.

The biggest experiment this years is a new setup I have for starting seeds. I'll add another post detailing the setup, but I have 18 Polvarini Tomatoes, 18 Green Zebra Tomatoes, 3 Rosa Blanco Eggplant, 18 Grenada Seasoning Peppers, 6 Golden Bell Peppers, and 6 Yellow Bell Peppers - all of which are doing well.   The biggest lesson so far has been how slow the peppers grow.  I really should have started them 2-4 weeks earlier I think.