Thursday, February 26, 2009

Planting out, again.

Today will be my second day of planting out wintersown seedlings. Some have been sitting in their containers since early January when we had unseasonably warm temperatures. The Mountain Bluet and Lunaria (Money Plant) have nearly pushed their lids off the containers. Yesterday I pulled about 10 containers aside that looked like good candidates to transplant. I'll provide a full list after I'm done.

There are two reasons for transplanting today. First, it's a cloudy, overcast day where highs are expected to reach the mid 60s. No direct sunlight means I can take my time planting and watering. Second, the moon today is in Pisces, a water sign. According to this site, Pisces is the second best sign for transplanting. You can figure the sign of any day using this handy calculator. Or, you can do like I do and just ask Farmers Almanac. These sites are also listed in the "Helpful Links" section on the right hand side of the blog.

My grandmother was a stickler for planting based on the moon. She would be the one telling my dad or uncles that they're wasting seed by planting on so-called 'barren days'. It's been too long for me to remember if she was always right, but I do remember days of hoeing and picking beans and tomatoes in rows so long you could barely see the other end. The way I see it, these old-timers know a lot more about gardening and farming than I ever will. If they say don't plant, you don't plant.

Cloudy and 39 degrees. Rain expected all weekend beginning Friday evening.

11:52am - Planting out is done.

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In the perennial bed:
■ bee balm 'lemon mint'
■ red coreopsis
■ rudbeckia
■ mountain bluet
■ Virginia stock
■ linaria 'flaming passion' - toadflax
■ hollyhocks (yellow, double yellow, and Indian summer)
■ sea holly
■ salvia 'blue bedder'

In the moon garden:
■ Shasta Daisy mix
■ Lunaria (money plant)

In the potager:
■ Borage

While digging around in the perennial bed, I found some of the direct sown poppies have begun to sprout. Oh, and lots of acorns with 6" tap roots.

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Everything got a bit of fertilizer and watered. It's 50 degrees and overcast but the sun is trying its best to make it through the haze.

3:53pm - 63 degrees. Mostly sunny. I've got the windows open.

7 comments:

Heather said...

Looks like you are going to have a great start on the season. I am able to see more and more of the mud around here. That actually doesn't make me cry this year. No snow is a good thing.
-Heather

ARK said...

I'm SO glad I found your blog...I am trying winter sowing for the first time and started sowing the end of January. It's great to see an easy to read "real person" blog about how it is going for you! It gives me hope that my little seeds will actually sprout! (I'm in zone 5...so we have a little more winter left :)

Tom - 7th Street Cottage said...

Thanks. I'm trying to keep a running total of everything that gets planted out. In the tag cloud, you can find 'planting out' and 'wintersowing' tags with all my posts related to these two topics. I'm surprised at how much has germinated already and how big some things have gotten. The Mountain Bluet was on it's 3rd set of true leaves. It needed a new zip code.

Thanks to Heather too. I'm really enjoying the new warmer weather that showed up yesterday. We're not going below freezing until Monday. Maybe the hard long winter (below normal temps for us) is almost over. The trees and flowers seem to think so.

Catherine@AGardenerinProgress said...

I'd never heard of planting by the moon. That's pretty interesting. I see that Cancer is the best moon for planting. Everything looks so green and healthy. We ended up getting snow today, hopefully tomorrow I can try and get some seeds started.

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Nice pics of your WS'n crop. I came to your blog via the WS'ing forum.
Since you have a link to phases of the moon, wondering if you or anyone of your readers are aware of a site that has all the phases of the moon in Images.
I used to buy one thru the mail, but have no idea where the address is, and I really like seeing the phases.
thanks,
ellen

Tom - 7th Street Cottage said...

Hi Ellen, Try this. It's from a link at google.

http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases_calendar.phtml

Catherine, you can continue to wintersow seeds all the way until summer. I'll be starting my annuals at the end of March.

Anonymous said...

That's beautiful Tom, thanks, I bookmarked it.

ellen