The Rest of the Story

As of today, it looks like the dill, chamomile, kale, next succession of green ice lettuce and radishes, and possibly one swiss chard plant are all sprouted, /and/ there is one rosebud just opening.

Tuesday I fertilized my roses with the last of my chemical fertilizer. Now I need to figure out how to take care of them organically. I also planted a second row of zinnias and weeded out the office bed. For some reason this year, a ton of vetch took over and climbed all over the box wood. Since it can be grown as a cover crop, I put the huge mound of it on the compost pile.

I have been unsure of having peat moss as the top layer of my lasagna bed. It dries out so fast, and I'm afraid my seeds will never germinate. I decided that I really should be watering that bed every morning, at least for a couple of weeks to see if that will help germination. I've also been having issues with the neighbors dog trampling through it, but I won't start on that rant. (I may not stop for a while.) However, Friday I saw that perhaps one seed has germinated (the aforementioned possible swiss chard), so things may be okay yet. I'm trying to work on patience, but it's so hard.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Thursday I discovered that cutworms had taken out another two plants. I wish I had followed through last month and put collars around all of my plants. I looked to see if there was any other remedy, but found nothing except collars and digging them out. I suppose late is better than never. I dug down to the roots, wrapped aluminum foil around the stem up to the leaves, and put the soil back. In the process, I did find two very fat cutworms and cut them in half. That felt great! I'm sure I missed some, but I dare them to cut through the aluminum.

Friday, I went to Ace and bought plants: rosemary, California Wonder bell pepper, Beuregard sweet potatoes, Brandywine tomato, Big Rainbow tomato, and 2 Roma tomatoes. I'm super excited because I also got a freebee cutting of lemon balm from my uncle today.

So, tomorrow, I hope to get a lot of planting finished and then post pictures of the garden as of the first part of May.