April Showers...

March had given me a glimmer of hope... maybe the last frost will be a month early this year! Then came April. Not just rain showers, but plenty of hail showers and a snow shower too! There was an almost two week stretch where nighttime temps would reach freezing every night. This led to a bit of a gardening slump. At the beginning of the month I finished up all of the winter sowing that I could do. Then came the bad weather, so I couldn't get out in the garden much. It was mostly a time of waiting.

APRIL 1
- Tried transplanting one Oregon Spring Tomato with frost protection... still died a few days later.
- Started hardening off all of the tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, dill, and cilantro. This was also done too early since the weather turned ugly for the rest of the month.
- Winter sowed more amaranth (the direct sown have not yet germinated and the indoor sown have no true leaves yet).

APRIL 4
Amaranth outside finally sprouting! Later each and every one of these dies. =(

APRIL 6
Indoor sowed in peet pots:
Japenese egglpant - apparently it is too late, but I am going to try anyway.
Tomato, Double Rich and Sweet 100 - Timing looks pretty good, decent size by time I transplanted, but not leggy like the earlier ones. Was given free seeds for the hybrid, so don't really know what is going to grow.
Pepper, Cubanelle, hot thai, and hungarian hotwax - Good healthy looking plants, but small. In the future will start same time as the mini yellow bell.

Winter sowed lots of free seeds received from SASBE... only a few of them actually came up. The successes were:
Sweet William
Blue Sage
Lemon Mint
Garlic (from seed... don't know if it will make cloves or not)
Goatsbeard

APRIL 7
Direct sowed:
Space Hybrid Spinach - spinach performing well
Mangold WIterbi Chard - lots sprouted, then my dog walked on them and there are only two left. something keeps eating the leaf tips, so they are very slow to grow... still less than 1" tall.

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I stopped journaling at this point, so don't have the germination date or even direct sowing dates for a lot of the plants. Here are some pictures from the rest of the month.

Winter Sowing... can see sprouting Pak Choi, Broccoli, and Sunflowers
Shallots were brought inside when it started hailing
Perennial bed doesn't seem to be quite as upset by the freezing temperatures as the vegetables

A few veggies are standing their ground