First planting shift

The past 3-4 weeks have found me planting seeds, and now little transplants, out in the vegetable garden, among many other activities & gardening tasks. This weekend was especially busy - I planted several brusselsprout, cabbage, and broccoli plants that I had grown from seed. Lots of people I know comment that "Yecch, I can't stand brusselsprouts!" Those people have NEVER had garden-grown & fresh brusselsprouts - there's no comparison between what you buy in the store and what you can grow in your garden. But I guess that pretty much goes for all of the produce we grow in our gardens.
Today I also planted four tomato plants and one pepper plant, also grown from seed under lights, and planted as seeds a little earlier than the cole crops mentioned above. I'd have gotten more plants in the ground today but several of the walls'o'water (season extenders) I was putting up around each of these tender plants had leaks, so I had to pull them up, dump the water out into my water barrel, and set them aside. Then start over with a new wall. I'm going to discontinue buying these - too expensive considering their fragility. Now I'll try to repair the holes if I can find them so I can continue to use them. Eventually I suppose I'll have to landfill them......
Last year I grew a couple of my peppers in walls'o'water the entire growing season--they were at least 1/3 again larger than the pepper plants grown without the walls, plus they produced more peppers. I will likely do the same this year with my two pepper plants.
I pulled my irrigation tubing out of its storage area so I can get it ready to hook up to the water supply. No rain in the forecast, and my water barrels are getting lower & lower. Irrigation season will have to start very soon!

Seedlings, blossoms & growth, oh my!

So much is happening in the garden! Lots of perennials are coming up that I wondered about over the winter - various penstemons, baptisia, agastache, evening primrose, much more. My little trees (serviceberry mostly) are starting to put on little buds. Lilac is about a week or so away from flowering. Cinquefoils putting on little green leaves, as are the fernbush, apache plume, alkali sacaton grasses. What a great time of year.

So far my spinach, sugar snap peas and mixed greens are poking their little heads above the soil. My tomatoes indoors are about 8" high, and all my other indoor transplants are doing great!

The image to the left is my Nanking cherry, which I planted for the birds' benefit, though it is still too small (2' high) to provide much of that. It has the most beautiful pink & white blossoms.

I haven't set up the irrigation system yet so am doing all of my watering by hand, but since the soil is not yet dried out it's not a lengthy task.

I tried to get my cold frame set up last night but the automatic opener device always causes vexing problems so I'm not finished there yet. My cole crops will go there when it's ready to go, so I can make room indoors under the lights for other seedlings.