The last week or two have been beautiful: bright blue skies and yellow sun. But it’s been very very dry. That is, until Tuesday night when the rains finally came. It poured all day yesterday and it appears it may do so today and probably tomorrow.

I have seen definitive growth in the garden: the spinach is coming up and so are the potatoes. The garlic is doing good, and so are the onions (doing so well I have to thin them). The peat pots are doing so-so. What has come up is doing well (zucchini, summer squash, spegitti squash, pumpkins, a couple different beans) but the eggplant, tomatoes, cukes, and a couple other things are not doing well. I may have to buy them already started.

We have learned one lesson: no more peat pots. They are too difficult to keep moist. Someone suggested putting plastic wrap over the pots to keep the moisture in, but Wolf didn’t want to do that. And after he explained his reason, neither do it.

His reason: it’s not “organic” to plant seeds into plastic. I mean, aren’t we trying to reduce the amount of plastic we use? And who wants those chemicals in our food? While we still have much change to make (the starter seeds are in plastic or peat pots) we will try to prepare for next spring by stocking up on clay pots.

Another lesson I learned this year is don’t sprout the seeds then plant them. I say this because I never seem to have the time during the late winter/early spring to plant the seedlings as soon as they should be. Instead, they end up lingering, and I feel guilty, and then don’t do well when we plant them into seedling pots. So next year I’m going to put one seed in each pot in the winter. We just need a small green house outside so we can protect the plants from cats.

Ok, I have to go make the garden map so I can put the plants in the ground today while it’s moist, it’s not raining, and the moon is new.