It's transplant time!

I planted many brusselsprouts, cabbage, and broccoli seeds, indoors, a couple of weeks ago. I planted them in very small pots, and was planning to transplant them to larger pots once they developed true leaves. Tonight, I judged many of them to be ready to repot, so I filled a bunch of 2x2" plastic pots with moistened potting soil--luckily it's now warm enough outside in the evening to do this somewhat messy job outdoors on my work table--and prepared all the necessary other items, consisting of one chopstick (to make the hole), a plastic fork (to remove the little seedling from its dirt bed), a container with water, and strips cut from a yogurt or cottage cheese container to serve as plant markers/identifiers. The latter is a great way to reuse the many yogurt containers I have on hand.

Not all of the seedlings are large enough yet to transplant, so after this evening's efforts, I have 18 newly-transplanted pots of mostly brusselsprouts with a few red cabbage thrown in. Yet to transplant are more brusselsprouts and then some broccoli seedlings - those are growing more slowly than the other plants. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find space under the lights for everybody.......I hope to be able to move the cool-weather brassicas to my cold frame after a couple of weeks so I can make room for the annual flowers I'm growing from seed also.

The lights setup I have is shown in the image - it works really well. It's a large, four-shelf shelving unit, and the metal slats are perfect for hanging fluorescent lamps on. I have enough lamps (4) for only two of the shelves to be functional for growing. I put two lamps side-by-side so the plants get complete coverage. I could improve the light distribution by using aluminum foil as sort of a curtain over each of the lamps to reflect the light back to the plants, but I haven't gotten it that much together. I have all the lights on timers, and they're on from about 6AM to 10PM, so 16 hours. Believe it or not, plants need the night time hours to do their own thing (they don't really rest, they actually do plant activities, whatever those are); what I've read is that they should be in the dark at night, just like we are!

Excess enthusiasm causes irrigation line holes

After two weeks of exhausting work-related travel, I eagerly headed outside yesterday to plant some raspberry canes that had arrived by mail a week ago. They were overdue to be planted, that's for sure. I ordinarily use a pulaski-like hand tool (see photo) for my digging work here, because, unlike WI, an ordinary garden hoe would break in less than five minutes with this hard dirt. The difference between the tool in the image & a Pulaski is the pointy end, which replaces the axe portion of the Pulaski.
Irrigation lines are the underground tubing that delivers water to the sprinkler heads scattered throughout the yard. Many homes in this part of the country have automatic irrigation systems due to the need to water to keep turf reasonably green. Annual precipitation in the San Luis Valley is only 7 inches.

Since I've had problems NOT missing irrigation lines before, I thought I'd learned a lesson, and have tried to be careful when using the tool . But the irrigation line that I hit yesterday was a mere 6" below the surface - way too shallow! The puncture holes are visible in the black tubing in the image - there are two of them right next to one another. The ruler is there so that I could figure out what size of connecter to buy to replace the damaged segment of tubing. (Since this has happened three times before in summer of 2007, I'm somewhat familiar with the repair process .....)

So I had to trek into town to visit my favorite True Value hardware store (favorite because of all the connecters I've bought there before....). The parts needed to repair puncture holes are shown - the flash drive is shown for scale. The only additional tool that's necessary is a hacksaw to cut the piece of damaged tubing out. Of course, this means that the hole in the ground needs to be enlarged to accommodate the hacksaw. The process of planting my raspberries, which I could have completed with ease yesterday, will now be extended into a good part of today. *^&$%@!#(%

Snow has mostly melted

These are my allium bulbs that have come up over the past couple of weeks - two days ago this is what they looked like sitting in the snow from the storm that swept through. 95% of the snow is now gone, and with the temperatures predicted over the next few days we'll have none left in a short time.
My onion bulblets look good - I did cover them w/ some Reemay based on the advice an anonymous poster submitted.
Indoors, my tomatoes and peppers are doing great, and now I'm soon going to be transplanting basil, cabbage, brusselsprouts, and broccoli seedlings.
Some raspberry canes have arrived in the mail, and now I need to prepare the bed for them. I have several varieties that I've planted over the past three years, but I've had little success with them. Where I planted them is an area I did not have a soil test run on, so I don't know if it's the soil quality, too many hours of hot & pounding sun, wrong raspberry variety, or something else.

Onion bulblets planted

Tonight I planted the first garden plants of the season - about 40 or 50 small garden bulbs of Walla-Walla onions. They went into the newly sifted raised bed that I changed a little bit this year (extended in length and shrank in width, the latter to ease access). The planting instructions recommended each bulb be about 4-5" apart, and rows separated by about 10-12". Until I set up my drip irrigation system, they'll be hand-watered

about an inch a week.

The cool weather we've had the past couple of weeks slowed all growth down - the green shoots that had been coming up all over outside are just sitting in place, probably waiting for warm temperatures again.

Even the indoor seedlings aren't doing a whole lot; every day after work I rush into the plant room to see if anything shows noticeable growth - what I see is mostly NO. Maybe too cool? Seems like in the past there's been a visible spurt of growth not long after they're transplanted into bigger pots.

More patience is needed!