Captain, we have liftoff!

So, this proves it CAN be done!  After the debacle tomato seed undertaking, I cleaned house, sent the surplus to Amy, and made room for the two pumpkin varieties I got from Johnny's.  As you can tell, we're in business....  

The ones on the right are Racer.  People w. eyesight much better than mine may also be able to detect some germination on the left.  The front 4 cells are L'il Keeper cantaloupes from Totally Tomato, and in the back are the Moonshine pumpkins.  Those are the white ones from Johnny's.  We're off to the races!  

Outside has it's share of activity as well.  On the way back from babysitting my nephew in CT, the missus and I decided to stop of at the Farmers's Daughter in Millbury for our first foray into a garden center for plants this season.  Here's the bounty

Both packs of lettuce, although labelled differently, were both clearly romaine.  Nonetheless, four of them have homes already

As do two of the broccoli:

Feels good to finally be out from under the snow, and on to the growing season!  I'm sure these chives feel the same way

That's a wrap on the first week.  We've been waiting all winter for this weather!!!!!!!!

Let the games begin!

Yeah, you could say it about the Red Sox, but you could also make the argument they havent started yet.  Horrid weekend in Texas.  Wow....  if John Lackey is our #3, this is going to be a VERY long season.  


Of course, no one comes to this blog looking for baseball information.  What you want to know is what's going on in the Urban Farm™.  Well, at the moment, not a whole hell of a lot, but the plan is for that to change in a big way starting this week.  After over 7' of snow this winter, the itch to get outside and start preparing the area for this year's Eden has been worse than ever.  Even though it's going to be overcast this week, the fact that it's going to be tickling 55° is easy to take.  Going to head to the nursery on Saturday to pick up kale, broccoli, and lettuce starts.  I also intend to get another salad grow bag from Gardener's this week.  The fact that we could grow almost a dozen heads of romaine in one of these and get the results we did astounded me.  I thought these things were gimmicky, and I was skeptical to spend almost $70 on one of these plus a tomato and pepper bag as well, but the results spoke for themselves.  This week's agenda also includes sowing the watermelon radishes I got from Totally Tomatoes


What you see below is this year's baby.  These are Moonshine pumpkins from Johnny's.  My late grandfather and I grew pumpkins for all 26 years that he and I "ran" the garden together.  However,  he was so old school that the idea of an albino winter squash made him shudder.  In fact, it was a chore even getting him to agree to red potatoes one year!  This year though, all bets are off.  This puppy is going to be the centerpiece of the 2011 plot.  Don't worry though, Vavoo, I'm still gonna plant orange ones as well, so you can continue to rest in peace ;-)

Snow + seed starts = sdfhjahsdfgkauagfadhj

So, here we are at the end of March, but someone forgot to tell Ma Nature.  She's got her a/c working overtime as we've struggled to get to 50° for a majority of the past three weeks, and have a truckload of snow coming Friday!  For those of you calendar-impaired, that's April 1!!!!    In fact, I dont ordinarily say this in March, but I'll gladly take some of the 80° weather Sarah, Scott, Lisa and I left behind in Vegas two weeks ago!  But despite the chill, the gardening season is under way!  I've been gardening for the better part of my life (supposedly started when I was 3 years old [family pictures to prove it]), but dont have a recollection of it until I was 7.  Be that as it may, that's still going on 27 years where reaping the benefits of hard work in the soil has been part of me.  However, it's been over 15 years since I've tried growing tomatoes from seed, and the latest effort plays into that.  Ack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Germination rate of about 10%, and I'm sure it's something I'm doing.  This is one of the reasons I'm glad that Amy and I came up w. the CSA option for this year.  The rest of the Lemon Boys have been sent to her to see what she can do w. them.  Hopefully, between the two of us, we can pull off what you see in the picture.  Regardless, it's going to be a fun ride as the challenges of the Z5 growing season always are!  Gotsta pick me up some broccoli and kale starts in the next few weeks also.


In unrelated news, really looking forward to Jared and Jen's arrival this weekend.  It's tough when your brother lives 3000 miles away on the other side of the country, and compounded when your 5-month old nephew is out there as well.  Should be a great week w. them here!