Saturday, May 5, 2012

Week 9

Cabbage in the NICU
This was a pretty difficult week, both for the seedlings and for me.  I transplanted the cabbages on Sunday, even though a mild freeze was forecast.  Cabbage is a pretty hardy plant, preferring cool weather, and can take a mild freeze down to around 30°F or so.  But, these are seedlings that haven't been "hardened off" yet, so I was a bit worried.  Well, the low on Sunday night was 28°F, but when we left for work on Monday they still looked okay (maybe kind of wilted).  By the time we got home that evening, they had recovered completely and looked fine.  Unfortunately, the low that night was 25°F!  When we got up Tuesday morning, the cabbages did not look good at all!  One of them had its stem frozen off and was without hope.  The others were wilted severely.  But at that point there wasn't much I could do for them.  After work on Tuesday, I planted a couple seeds where the one cabbage had died, and hoped for the best.  The forecast for the rest of the week was good (rainy and warm), so I just left them alone.  They are still brown (for the most part), but their stems are stiff and have hardened, so we are hopeful!

Barely alive tomatoes
The other seedlings had a hard time as well.  When we got home Tuesday, they appeared to have suddenly given up the ghost, and I was baffled as to the reason.  I did recently change their watering schedule, but I don't know whether that was the reason.  The tomatoes had lost almost all their leaves, the celery appeared to be dead, and the cucumbers and squash were wilted.  But, I stuck to the watering schedule and crossed my fingers.  Only one celery has died (maybe), and the tomatoes still look pretty pathetic, but their stems are stiff and they have a few leaves that aren't wilted.  Hopefully, what doesn't kill them makes them stronger (and there's still the nursery if they do die)!

Promising melons 
On the bright side, the melons have germinated and look to be doing fine (so far).  I planted beets, radishes, and carrots in the garden today (they take a while to come up and are hardy, so its not too early), and planted my second set of lettuce.  We bought three varieties of lettuce (red, green, and buttercrunch), and each one takes about eight weeks from seed planting to maturity, so we plant two per week so that we will be able to harvest every week starting in early July!  Hopefully this week will go better and my problems will be resolved, both in the garden and otherwise.

1 comment:

  1. Hope things look up for you this week! Sorry its been tough.

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