I transplanted my tomato seedlings into bigger pots today. They’ve been growing very slowly, mostly due to the fact that I don’t have a grow light and haven’t always remembered to move them from the east window to the west window every day. However, they finally have a couple sets of real leaves even if they are still on the short side compared to pictures I’ve googled (maybe this is because they are bush tomatoes?) so I went ahead and transplanted them. I’ve also been setting them out for a short while every day since they aren’t getting enough sunshine inside.
I also have lots of little lettuce sprouts which I am finding both encouraging and frustrating. It is so exciting to see things starting to grow after all the work of ‘building’ the garden. However, despite the successive plantings so that I don’t end up with 12+ head of lettuce all at once, they are all sprouting at the same time. The first seeds I planted at the beginning of May took almost a full month to sprout; frankly I didn’t think they were going to sprout. I went ahead and planted more the middle of May and two weeks later both they and they first planting started to sprout at the same time. I planted again last Saturday (beginning of June) and already they are starting to sprout. So much for successive planting.
First planting
Third Planting
The other exciting (for lack of a better word) thing going on in my garden right now is my war against the ants that are trying to build ant hills in my garden beds. A couple days ago I set out some old grits next to the openings, but they didn’t seem to be at all interested. So this morning I poured boiling water into the ant hills. Since they are usually dormant during the heat of the day I will have to wait until tomorrow morning to see if it made any difference.
Sometimes it can be discouraging seeing how slow my garden seems to be getting going and I have to remind myself that the altitude here means my growing season isn’t much different from my Mom’s in Alaska. Our last frost was on May 29. Dh keeps reminding me that since this is our first year gardening that I need to look at it all as one grand experiment.
The spinach is growing well.
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