Friday, April 29, 2011

Update, Cornucopia Newsletter


The Cornucopia newsletter is now online, announcing our tour of six organic vegetable gardens on May 14 beginning at 2:00 PM. You can read it at http://cornucopianetwork.org/

Spring even SEEMS to be here this week! I went to the plant sale this afternoon of the Master Gardeners at Edgemont Park. My eggplant and peppers have not germinated after two months of encouragement, so I bought some there today and brought them home in the basket of my bike. Their eggplant plants are almost 9" high! How can that be on April 29? In the past I've sometimes persuaded Bartlett's, the garden center on Grove Street between Montclair and Route 3, to give me eggplant plants earlier than usual and I repot them and have them bigger than I otherwise could. Incidentally two other garden centers are Ploch's on Broad Street, Bloomfield, and one on Center Street Nutley. I have bought at all of them happily, but try to raise as many of my own seedlings as I can. The weather seems fine for planting out, so I now have peppers and eggplants in my garden.

The collards started growing rapidly on Tuesday, and it looks like Fred and I will not have a hiatus from fresh greens, as I had feared we might in a couple weeks for the first time in years. (The cold frame provides them all winter, including this one. We're still eating the yield from there that I picked before sowing green beans and corn in its place.) I can see some tiny strawberries. Happy discovery! Also, I actually have some flowers on my tomato plants. I've taken some of the WOWs off them, but want to leave a few for showing off for a while. They seem to be thriving both in and outside the WOWs now. It's always time to plant lettuce seeds, and now is a good time for outdoors. My outdoor lettuce plants are about 2" high, so I sowed another plot this week. If you want greens, it's fine to sow seeds outdoors.
I've sown summer veggies and flowers in my greenhouse window, but I suspect you can also safely do that outdoors.

Pat

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