April Showers Bring...May Showers?!? What...

Tangerine seedlings from some store-bought tangerines (at 30, 52, 70 days respectively)

The beginning of May has seen days of hot sun, wind, clouds AND rain. The rain is like an unwanted visitor. It shows up whenever it wants! But, the weirdest thing is the heat. We had two days where it felt like summer, the temps were in the mid 90s which is odd for the beginning of May. My garden, on the other hand, appears not to notice the weird weather fluctuations we’ve been experiencing. The tomatoes are growing like crazy. I have a Super sweet tomato in a white five gallon bucket and it’s about 4 feet tall and blooming. Once it reaches 6 feet, I think I’ll trim the top to keep it from growing more. Strangely, I have another super sweet tomato in a 3 gallon bucket and it’s only 3 feet tall. My advice: the bigger the container the better.

My stocks are blooming and the snap dragons have bloom clusters but no blooms yet. The petunias are blooming steadily. Every other day, I have to dead head the flowers to encourage more flowers or else, they’ll go to seed and die, which is what I don’t want.

I finally cleaned off my garden bench that was inundated with seedlings. I planted four additional tomato plants in the ground (jelly bean, tiny tim, cherry, and an unknown variety). So as of today, I have 11 tomato plants in the ground! I’ll have tons of tomatoes by summer. I have super sweets, romas, cherry, patio, tiny tim, and jelly bean. I also planted some more jalapeno and bell pepper seedlings into the ground too. Instead of committing plant genocide, I decided to give away a lot of seedlings to the other people in my complex. I took a box of seedlings and put them in the laundry room with a “Free” sign and by the end of the day, not a speck of dirt was found.