I’m in a weird kind of holding pattern with the garden at the moment. One issue is that Memorial Day (one of our planting benchmarks) is on the early side this year, which had not lined up very well with my other benchmark – blooming iris. I actually do have one blooming, but it’s one of the hybrids, which have never before bloomed before my old fashioned iris. So it’s been a weird year, definitely. The old fashioneds are at least quite full of buds, so they should be blooming any time now.
The other issue is that the apartment downstairs is turning over at the end of the month, and my back yard garden is directly in the way of the path to the basement stairs. So I really can’t set that up until the turnover is complete. (The old tenants are practically moved out already, so hopefully the new tenant can come on the last day of May, which is the Sunday, and get that the heck over with.)
So in a fit of optimism, I bought two cherry tomatoes from the same sellers at the Farmer’s Market that last year’s monsters came from. And managed to snap off about half of one when wrangling the cage on. There are still plenty of leaves left, so I’m going to keep an eye on it this week. Hopefully, I won’t have to replace it, but there’s another Farmer’s Market on Saturday that I’m sure will still have seedlings, if I do.
I also planted the nasturtiums and calendula my mother gave me, as I started hardening them off earlier this week. My seedlings are smaller, and also in a larger container, so I just started hardening them off yesterday. They should be set for next weekend.