Planting Weather

Monday was a busy day around here.  By 1:00 we had completed the house cleaning, the laundry, and a three and a half mile walk. 

1:00 is lunch time.  We take an hour off to eat, to read, and relax.  That's when I read the paper and work some of the puzzles.  Tom reads the paper at breakfast, so he reads his book on his tablet.  

The sky was dark with clouds all day, good weather for setting out plants. 

In the afternoon I got busy outside. I transplanted the tomatoes Tom had grown from seed in the greenhouse. 

 In the raised vegetable beds, I set out sunflower and marigold starts, also grown from seed in the greenhouse.  Then I planted seed for cosmos, asters, and zinnias directly into the soil in the raised beds for the cut flower garden. 

 The dahlias for cut flowers were planted out over month ago.  They are now up and growing. 

 Over where the tulip border was, the gallon cans holding the bulbs have been lifted and stored away in a back corner.  In their place are dahlias started in the greenhouse for a head start. 

While I was planting, Tom made a trip to McClendon's for ingredients to make a new batch of potting soil. 

Back at home, he dug out compost from one of our bins and sifted it. Then he added Perlite.

 Someone gave us most of a brick of coconut fiber.  It takes work to get it loosened from its tightly compressed form.   Coconut fiber is a sustainable substitute for peat moss, sources of which are being depleted.  

This all gets mixed together: two parts compost, one part Perlite, two parts peat moss/coconut fiber. The he stores it in a plastic garbage can. 

 We needed to get the greenhouse emptied so we could use it to store these potting soil materials plus emergency supplies we store in the shed, because Irene was here on Sunday.  It was time for her to set up shop in the shed.

 Irene's Flower Shop is ready for business. 

Today we are expecting rain.  In fact we are hoping for rain.  We need it.  We may have to walk in our rain gear today.