I had a lot of work travel in March and April this year, including internationally, AND I sprained my ankle just before, AND I had a terrible cold when I got back from the travel, followed by a serious family illness crisis, leading to my father-in-law’s passing, all of which meant that my ambitious plans for seed starting were just abandoned.
My father-in-law was a great gardener; Ron would’ve understood my frustration. I had my first truly delicious tomato from his California garden, a French vanilla cherry tomato, I think, and I was absolutely hooked. Every year when I plant cherry tomatoes, I think of him.
Hopefully all (or at least most) of those seeds will be viable next year. But I do have some that I think can be planted in the ground now? I’m such a novice vegetable gardener, I’m really not sure. But I had Anand (age 13) help clearing out the beds this morning, and I’m going to go get some fresh vegetable soil to top up the beds this weekend, and then I’ll try planting them, and we’ll see what happens.
These beds are a little bit of a muddle — the ones near the house are mostly chock full of daffodils for cutting, but they’re dormant now, so I *think* I can plant veggies on top of them. There are a few new blackberries in those back bed too — I’m hoping I can keep them under control there.
I’ve just added three blueberries to the points of the central star, so I’m planning to amend the soil there to be more blueberry friendly — we’ll see how they do.
I think the front beds and the central star are available, though — so I’m planning to try swiss chard, beets, fennel, two varieties of kale, broccoli rapini, and yad foh (Chinese broccoli). Umm….not sure if there’s really room for all that in there, but oh well, I’ll start putting in the seeds and see what happens.
At least my tomatoes and peppers that I started basically on time (hooray) and in as close to full sun as I can manage in the back garden seem to be chugging along nicely.
I added some seeds to the pepper bed a few days ago, because there was room in the middle, but I’ve already forgotten what kind of seeds they were. Maybe a different rainbow chard? Maybe something else entirely? Oops. I swear, I TRY to take good notes (hence this log), and keep my seed packets, but sometimes I forget. Oh well.
Any veggie gardeners who know what they’re doing, please feel free to advise. 
