Patiently Waiting

We’re almost one month into spring, according to the calendar, and I still have another two weeks before I’m brave enough to plant tender plants outside. May 3 may be the day but it may be too wet then. We have rain and thunderstorms and lows in the low to mid-30’s predicted til then. As of this writing, the low on 4/18 is going to be 34 but after that, almost ever day has thunderstorms and too often this time of year, thunderstorms bring hail so I’m going to wait til the almost daily thunderstorms are out of the forecast. I’m so ready to plant tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers.

Yesterday morning we had a fairly thick coat of frost. You can see the white on the one gallon bags of turmeric. The weather man said it was 35 in Joplin but we’re almost always a few degrees cooler at our house and the bird bath had a good, thick coat of ice on it.

Vince has been working hard to get the self-wicking tomato buckets ready for planting.

He’s made 20 of these. The plan is that I’ll plant 10 tomato plants (or more if there’s room on the sides of the trellis). In the other 10 buckets, I’ll plant eggplant, bell peppers, brussels sprouts and jalapeno peppers. I’m also going to plant some of those things in grow bags that are not self-wicking so we can compare the differences in self-wicking buckets vs. grow bags.

Once everything is planted, I’ll take pictures and share all the gardening progress. If the self-wicking buckets work really great, Vince will do a tutorial for us.