I’m going to try my best to get these Friday PhotoEssays up and going for the rest of the spring and summer. This week the theme is “all the non-garden renovation stuff we have going on that I haven’t blogged about yet.”

Our tomatoes, peppers, etc have been growing along in my office. They didn’t grow as well this year until I gave them a hit of fertilizer a couple times last week. They are a little smaller than I’d like for them to be, but I think they’ll be fine to go ahead and plant next week after we get the irrigation lines in place.

I thinned out the red shiso seedlings this week. The seeds were so tiny that we planted several in each pot. However, the plants themselves get pretty big, so I snipped out the excess, leaving a single, healthy seedling.

The roselle (hibiscus) and jicama have been outside getting used to the outdoors since the end of the week last week. They are definitely ready to be planted in their permanent homes.

We planted 3 varieties of hanging basket tomatoes last week (before Herb Day). The 3 varieties are ‘Cherry Falls,’ ‘Red Rambling Stripe,’ and ‘Gold Rambling Stripe.’ They have doubled in size since this picture was taken! I haven’t seen any flowers quite yet, but I’m sure we’ll be at that point soon. They are supposed to be trailing varieties, but thus far they are still pretty upright. Something else to keep an eye on!

I also thinned out the Red Aztec Spinach seedlings last week sometime. Same story as with the shiso. If these seedlings look an awful lot like the common garden weed known as Lambsquarter….that’s because they are both in the Chenopodaciae family. They are cousins! (Hey, we could be growing lambsquarter as an edible green too!)

That’s all I’ve got! We are looking forward to getting our drip irrigation in place on Monday afternoon and then planting like crazy on Tuesday morning. We also have our annual spring Master Gardener Garden Tour coming up a week from now, so there should be lots of posts to look forward to next week. (Or lots of things to come out and see in person if you are in the Wichita area!)

Have a great weekend!