Welcome to NakedTomatoes

All about tomatoes, heirloom and home grown.
With a bit extra thrown in about Brugs and bread, growing and baking, and other semi-relevant thoughts. And maybe a few recipes.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Garden Treasures


The snow is almost completely gone, and the weather has been incredible. It wasn't just warm today, working outside, it was hot. I was digging through the raised beds, pulling out some of the dead plants from last year, and shoveling some of the kitchen scraps off of the bed and into the compost bin. I tend to use one bed to dump kitchen scraps in the winter, as it is easier to access than the compost bin when we have a lot of snow. While I was shoveling, I realized I was actually wiping sweat of my forehead. It was hot in the sun.

I found the biggest, juiciest worm in the bed. Even my daughter thought it was pretty cool. It's a very good sign to see big happy worms. It means your soil is pretty healthy, and lots of worms = lots of worm castings = lots of plant food.

The crocus are up and blooming their heads off. The tulips are growing, and I can see the buds on the apple trees swelling. The seedlings have been going outside everyday, and I've left them out over night tonight. I've been leaving a few test subjects out over night in the greenhouse shelves for the last week, and even when the temperature dipped to -5C, they came through just fine. As long as the weather stays nice, which it is supposed to, then I will be able to start planting as soon as I get my tunnels built. Some cold weather tolerant plants can even go in sooner, such as peas, which my kids helped me plant today. These were actually sprouts I was trying to grow in the kitchen for eating, but they just didn't seem to want to grow very much so rather than compost them, it was a fun half hour planting peas with the girls.

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