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Eric Fernandes, Page 2

three large strawberries in my hand.

May: The Busiest Month of the Garden Season

May is probably one of the busiest months of the garden season because this is when most of your plants are transplanted, seeds are sown directly into the garden soil, the rest of the garden is being tilled, and even strawberries are starting to turn red and ripening for a June harvest. Right now all I have left to put into the garden are my pepper plants, eggplant, and hopefully some melon seeds into the soil as long as there is still some room after my transplants are settled into the ground.

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Spinach plant now added to the garden.

Waiting the Right Amount of Time to Transplant Spinach and Kale

April is one of the busiest of months during the springtime where I like to transplant my cold weather plants into the garden and into totes. I always place my onion bulbs in totes and that is what I have been doing for years. At the moment not all my totes have onions and I have only planted a few red onions into three totes so far. I will fill up the totes with enough onions by sometime this week at the latest.

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Using Coconut Husk Pellets for Planting Summer Seed Crop

I tried planting seeds into coconut husks last season, but they didn’t seem to work that well. This was probably due to using old husk pellets that I had for about five years. This year I bought brand new pellets and they expanded like they are supposed to and have planted a variety of summer crop seeds into all 72 plant cells. This particular tray is able to water the soil and seeds automatically with the proper amount of moisture per cell.

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PVC Pipe Sections for Spinach

Spinach, Lettuce, and Kale Getting Ahead for the Spring

It is now 2021 and it is that time of the season when I start planting seeds for the springtime temperatures that will arrive in a couple of months. In the meantime I can get them started in pots so once warmer temperatures are here they will be ready to be transported into the garden. This year I decided to stick to a few seeds of spinach, lettuce, and kale.

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tomatoes, peppers, and beans

The Latest Harvesting: Tomatoes, Beans, and Green Peppers

It’s been a long time since my last post, but I am still gardening and have some more harvests to discuss in this article. So far I have finished harvesting my radishes which were done a couple of months ago. My lettuce is also finished and once the hot weather came they were no longer able to produce new leaves and eventually turned brown. Peas did not do well this season and now that summer is here they are done as well. With a new weather season means new harvests to do and more vegetables to pick for the next couple of months until the next season, fall.

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Strawberry Harvest

Three Strawberry Harvests Completed This Year

I have finally placed all my plants into the ground with an exception of a couple which will be placed very soon before the end of June. The only successful harvest at the moment has been my strawberries. I have been picking some late broccoli as well, but these are just a few heads and florets. I have some good lettuce that I will start picking soon I just wanted to be sure that the leaves will not turn out bitter. I made certain to do a few consecutive watering with lime to sweeten the soil.

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lettuce transplanted into garden

One Last Spring Crop Left to be Transplanted and Some Summer Seeds Planted

Weather for the month of May has been rather cold for transplanting summer crops such as tomatoes and peppers. It has been good for planting cold weather crops such as potatoes, onions, spinach, peas, radishes, sunflowers, dill, alyssum, lettuce, and broccoli. All these plants are now in the garden and the last spring crop that needs to be transplanted to the garden would be carrots. These are growing in peat pots so planting them should be quick and easy.

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Cutting Potatoes and Placing them in Rows in the Garden

Now that it is the middle of April and soil is no longer frozen it is time to till part of the garden and add some cool spring crops. Three things were added to the garden yesterday. These include seed potatoes, peas, and radishes. These three crops are always sown directly into the garden and are not normally transplanted from pots or containers. I will probably start adding my spinach and lettuce plants into the garden next. These crops were grown indoors first and they have been outside for quite some time and are just about ready to be transplanted.

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transplanted tomatoes into larger containers

Larger Containers Needed for Broccoli and Tomato Plants

After planting all my tomatoes and broccoli in small trays this season it was time to get them out and place them in larger containers. Most of my plants were becoming pot bound and the roots could not grow any further. I used plastic cups for these plants and this will give them plenty of room for the roots to grow until it is time to put them into the ground.

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Plant Tray

New Seeds Added to Containers For Indoor Sprouting

I wanted to get started with some more seed sprouting indoors now that some time has passed and spring is upon us. Although it is too cold to plant outside I can still get some seeds ready for transplanting when the time is right. I thought it would be best to get all my tomatoes out of the way and start planting my new habanero and Carolina reaper pepper seeds as well. Some long maturing plants such as eggplant were planted and I also got a couple of broccoli seeds in pots for spring growing.

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