Slow Start!

It's been over month now since I started some tomato and jalapeno seed indoors. Almost all the seeds took and have grown well, despite only getting a couple hours of waning light a day. The house kept the soil warm though which is the most important factor early on. Three weeks ago I planted spinach and sunflower from seed directly in the garden, and they've all seeded easily. There's been almost constant rain for two weeks and haven't been able to do anything in the garden as the soil is too soggy, but maybe next weekend.

One thing I'm learning about growing indoors first is that the plants need to be "hardened" before directly transplanting them outside. I put out the tomato plants one day, each being small with two leaves each, and were in the sun too long and some scalded. They've mostly recovered but I've yanked a few out, which I had to do anyway as I seeded two per pot, and left the stronger ones in there. But in the future I need to put them out for an hour at a time at first, away from the sun, then gradually extend their time outside and also ease in their exposure to direct sunlight. I have no idea if they'll be "hardened" enough to transplant when I do, but I'll find out quickly enough if they fry in the sun!

But, these were simply an attempt to get some produce earlier in the season. Even if they all get wiped out I'm still planting tomato and jalapeno from seed. The spinach only takes 45 days to mature so I should have a bunch by early June. They aren't a summer plant so in the fall I can plant the rest along with the pumpkins.

On a somewhat unrelated note, for anyone looking to keep the extra weight off this summer I recommend two things: Special K (or the superior generic Shaws brand which has 1 extra gram of protein, is cheaper and stays crispier longer in milk, hell yeah!) and fresh fruit. I eat a big bowl of this with fruit on top twice a day and eat a somewhat normal, healthy meal for lunch or dinner. Shaws has had $2 blackberries and I eat a container of that for dessert. My blackberry bush is blooming strong right now so I'm hoping I'll have my own this summer if I can keep the birds, bears and squirrels away from it. I sprinkled some organic animal repellant around but I have a feeling I'll need some kind of netting, or possibly a machine gun.