I brought my fall seedlings inside to stay cool today. They're covering most of my dining room floor. It's mid-September and it's going up in the 90's!! Hard to believe.
I'm growing the seedlings for our community garden, but it's been a struggle to keep them happy this year. They'd like cool weather. They were outside the last 2 weeks, but now they're inside. Tomorrow we'll sell them and gardeners will plant them out. Fortunately the forecast is cloudy and cool (low 80's) with scattered showers.
I'm growing the seedlings since it's hard to find a good selection of fall seedlings in stores and fall is (usually) a great time to grow vegetables. The cooler (usually), fewer bugs and diseases, and gardens usually have extra space with summer crops gone. But it's just been so hot this year! I tried growing them outside when they were tiny, but I lost several pots in the hot sun, so they all came inside. I handled most on my plant shelves under lights in the cool garage. A few others stayed on a window sill.
I have 10 trays of plants, 11 types of plants, some with two or three varieties. About 166 4-packs in all. Gardeners have pre-ordered most of these, but we'll have a few extras for other people. They're $1 each, proceeds will support our garden (especially the huge water bill we have this year!).
4 comments:
Ooh! Ooh! What are they? Are they in your 2016 variety list?
I'm planning how to get a fall garden in in time, twitching with frustration because I'll be away from the garden for THE NEXT TWO (CRITICAL) WEEKS AUGH! I have no way of knowing if the scallions and lettuce and beets and carrots that I did get planted are coming up or not. (They're all huddled next to mini-soakers set to run briefly every day, so, hopes.)
I'm consoling myself with the fact that the garlic can wait until October to go in.
I added a list of the varieties I planted but, I don't know, I'm not feeling great about fall crops this year. I know many local farmers waited a couple weeks later than usual to plant because of the hot weather. But the heat is continuing and the drought. We all have watering restrictions in the area, so I have no auto sprinkler and have to remember and have the time to go water by hand after 6 pm or before 9 am. I'm just not sure the fall crops will do very well here.
Thanks for reminding me about leaving space for garlic!! I had forgotten. I'll probably do this at my community plot. I'll need to bring in a lot of new compost. My garlic was so small this year and I'm sure that's the reason.
GARLIC!
Ahem.
For once, we didn't have watering restrictions this year. A good thing, because it got warm freakishly early, so the garden lost much of the benefit of the damper days of spring.
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