An Overdue Update

In the past couple of weeks, a few things have kept me from thinking about gardening. I had a visit from a good friend, took a weekend trip to Philadelphia, dealt with some messy bathroom renovations and am still in the midst of finishing my last grad school class. But, rest-assured (any of you who actually read this), the seedlings inside are really coming along and there have also been some developments in the pots outside as well.

First though, I'll precede the good updates with a little bit of disappointing news. I have finally accepted the fact that I will have no crocuses, daffodils or tulips on my balcony this spring. In the fall, I bought the bulbs and planted them in the containers outside along with some bulb food and red pepper flakes (to keep the squirrels away). But, I got lazy and never mulched. Perhaps this is why the bulbs failed, although I'm not really sure. This was my first time planting bulbs and I didn't read up on the matter very much before planting. In an attempt to get over this debacle, I took a lot of photos (like the one above) of flowers when I visited Philadelphia.

And now, the good news... While we were away in Philly, our outdoor seedlings started sprouting. I had almost given up on them and I'm now hopeful that I'll actually have peas and radishes this year. (I've never been successful with radishes before and only marginally successful with peas.)

And, the seedlings inside are getting a lot bigger. The cucumber plants are so big already that I'm not sure how I'm going to hide them from the cats for much longer. I had noticed that the edges of some of the leaves were getting kind of dark, but I think that they were actually just getting a bit too hot. I've since raised the overhead lights a bit and things seem okay.

With everything so busy lately, I'm looking forward to a few weeks from now when I'll be done with my class and will hopefully be able to focus on more gardening.