The babies are growing up!

The Morning Glories finally got too big for the seed starter so I pricked them out and potted them on and so far they are doing really well! The next bunch sprang up over today and will need to be potted on in only a few days, it looks like I am going to get seven healthy plants out of this first batch! That was much more than I hoped for I was going to consider myself lucky if I got one, but they really weren't as hard to start as everyone says they are. The cilantro is almost all up now and the cumin all burst out today, that one one seedling I kept calling cumin, I am pretty sure that is actually the one of the jalapeños, I am pretty sure we mixed up the labels! 

these are cumin I'm pretty sure

The weather is lovely again if maybe slightly warmer than I'd like for May, mid 80s (29 C) but it's supposed to drop into the mid 70s (mid 20s C) for the rest of  the week. So this earlier this afternoon I thought I would just pop down to the garden center to look at seeds, like you do. I walked through looking at the veg thinking I might also replace the watermelons as every one of them not eaten by squirrels all flopped over and died.

I couldn't resist taking a
photo of one of the bearded
irises at the garden center

I think it was the cold snap, I should have put them indoors and it looked as though we weren't the only ones to suffer losses as there wasn't a single decent watermelons left to buy at the garden center, they were all very sad looking or dead. So I looked around and found some bush pickle cucumbers and I've always wanted to make pickles and the label said they worked well in small gardens and containers which sounds much more feasible on a deck then watermelons anyway. So I grabbed a pack and wandered over to the herbs only meaning to look but then realized I needed some spearmint, I'm not sure why I decided that spearmint was the right no the only mint for mojito flavored infused water but I did so a healthy looking spearmint joined the cucumbers.

Bush Pickle cucumbers

Now at this point I almost bought a miniature rose. I loooove roses, when I was growing up my parents had quite an impressive rose garden, but I have never once in my life managed to keep a mini rose alive. I don't know what it is about them but I haven't been able to grow them. Still maybe I'll get one next paycheck and we'll see what happens, the definition of insanity nonwithstanding....

I did actually eventually make it to the seed section, someone had recommended I get those little stubby carrots that are round like radishes that are perfect for container gardening but they didn't have any seeds for those.

Spearmint

But then I saw the dill seeds and it became obvious that I needed to grow dill if I wanted to make pickles! Our original dill didn't make it, it was too damaged before we got it to ever recover and besides we are going to need a lot of dill for the pickles so growing it from seed seems like the best idea. I sowed them in the container as I discovered dill does not like to be transplanted. It's warm enough now that I can leave them outside and they should germinate just fine, dill's like a weed it grows quickly and easily and like mint it's best contained so it doesn't take over, happily not a problem in a container garden :)

Strawberries and Broccoli!

So because apparently I can't even go into the grocery store without buying plants, we now have two strawberry plants, a lemon balm, and another Italian parsley. As you can see from the picture, we already have berries, so if we can keep the plant alive and squirrel free we should have fruit in a month or so. Kellie pointed out that the broccoli has a a couple of baby florets, so we actually have crops already starting!

A cumin seedling sprouted up as well, the morning glories are still growing like crazy and the tomato still looks good. The watermelon are suffering, I think they got a little dried out the other day but hopefully they'll pull through. I found a piece of a robin's egg in the broccoli I have no idea where it came from we don't have any nests near by (at least none I could see)

As you can see from some of the photos I also bought a bunch of chili flakes and I put them everywhere, nothing was eaten last night so fingers crossed this will keep the squirrels away. I think I have figured out the solution to keeping the plants in the sun without them falling off the deck as well.
I am going to get long planters and tie them to the deck rails and when the time comes to pot the watermelon and tomatoes into bigger pots they will go in the corners and be tied to the roof supports.

My whole blog isn't going to be all gardening but it will be a large portion of it especially during the growing season, it's my favorite thing to do in the whole world and if everything pans out the way I hope, I'll be making a career of it someday.