Garden 2009 Photos

Here are some current photos from around our lawn and gardens. Oriental Poppies, Lady's Mantle, Mock Orange, Irises and Giant Blue Angel Hostas. I'll add more as time is available.

Greenhouse Update & Micro-greens

During the month of February, we decided to start tomato plants, from seed, indoors, and then move them into the greenhouse. There are 14 different heirloom varieties, as well as about 15 different pepper heirloom varieties from all over the world. One of our favorites, and we're very excited about watching it grow, is the "Ashe County Pimento," which as the name implies, is indigenous to Ashe County, NC. The seeds were found from a company in Missouri! Funny how seeds travel like that! It used to be via birds, now it's via the US Postal system.

As can be seen, we're attempting a variety of micro-greens, lettuces, and spinach to begin with, and later on we'll begin adding other types such as dandelion, arugula and other high nutrient greens. These work marvelously well in the greenhouse, usually producing just the right size in a couple of weeks. Then we simply re-sow the seeds, and begin the process all over.

Currently there are 5 tomato plants in the greenhouse, which have about a two month lead over the plants in the raised beds. In fact, the hothouse tomatoes already have blossoms, and if things continue as are, we should have tomatoes in about one month or so. Since the installation of the grow-lights, we've been able to see an enormous leap in the growth of the plants over last year. I'll keep posting about this particular feature.