A day to plant

There comes a time when one has to plant and transplant. It's rumored that the moon is right for my planting today, and although the weather was a bit windier than I would have wished, I decided to transplant my first tomato of the season, an heirloom German Queen, into its permanent home for its productive life. That home is a large pot.

 I filled it with a bit of ordinary soil and a lot of potting soil, with a few rocks at the bottom for drainage. The poor plant had already been transplanted once, and was so tall it was bumping its head on the top of my makeshift cold frame. And something was eating its leaves, which had big holes in them. I'm actually a bit worried about this plant because as I was about to pull the bottom sets of leaves off for planting, I noticed a small black bug on the stem and all around near it the stem was white. I wiped off what I could of the white stuff and ditched the bug. Then I completely buried that part of the plant so that only the top leaves were showing above the soil line. I put a clear plastic container with a few small holes in the top for venting over the plant and put in a stake next to it. I hope that plastic container is enough to keep this warm for the next two days.

 The temperatures tonight and tomorrow night will be in the thirties. But the plant has been in the cold frame for weeks now, and I think it will be OK. I think it will have better bug protection where it is now. Time will tell. I also transplanted three petunias into the herb garden and a couple of seedlings in peat pellets into bigger pots.

Then I went to the other house and filled 72 more peat pellets with seeds for perennial flowers and herbs. I planted two kinds of basil, Genovese and Dark Opal Purple, catnip, marigold, Shasta daisies, perennial alyssum (Gold Dust), Iceland Poppy, viola, carnations, petunias, and cosmos. I thought I'd start them inside because I seem to have such dismal luck starting them outside. Though when the weather warms, I'll probably start some outside, too, and I'll even throw out the older seed and let God take care of it. I won't lose anything by throwing older seed out where it might have some small opportunity to sprout instead of putting it in the trash. God has grown some of my best flowers all by himself, with no help from me whatsoever.