Saturday, June 12, 2010

Garden Update

Rain, rain, go away. We've got too much, you're drowning the farmers' fields, and I want to dig the apartment garden.

Hello. My seedlings are all still in the apartment windows.

My window chard (which was meant to be window chard) is now the size of baby greens:
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After taking this photo, I broke off a leaf and munched it. It tasted green, and faintly bitter. (I think swiss chard is supposed to be bitter, so that's not a complaint, just an observation. I think swiss chard is also normally eaten cooked, but figured that wasn't important when it was this young and tender.) Looking at it, I have enough baby greens for a side salad (if I wiped out my crop), but figure it would cook down to nothing if I actually attempted cooking with it. Perhaps I'll just graze a bit for now... lately my veggie intake is pretty low, so grazing would probably be good.

My seedlings, which are meant to be going places, are also still in the window:
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(The aloe there on the left is staying, of course. Speaking of it, it has another sprout.)

When I was checking on my seedlings this morning, I discovered a wee tiny flower bud on one of the poppies!!!
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Isn't that crazy? The seedling is only about two inches high, and the bud is minuscule! I really need to get these planted outside.

When it became obvious that several pots weren't going to sprout, I planted a few more cedars, and a bunch more calendulas. I love calendula seeds... they're so vigorous! I have no idea why two of the original bunch didn't sprout... especially when, after putting another two seeds in that spot, I now have three! All of the new calendula seeds sprouted. :) I have more cedars now too:
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I'm positively tickled that I was able to grow cedars from seeds that I collected myself. :) I'm going to make one of them a bonsai, and then plant the rest in the apartment garden, after checking with my landlord. The garden could use some height, but cedars won't pose the same problems that the elms would have. (Plus, the elms were dying, were *immediately* next to the foundation, and were pruned to look like ugly shrubs.)

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