Brrrr

It was 27 degrees outside when I got up this morning. I didn't realize the temperature was going to drop so low last night. I hadn't done anything with the plants and the leaves had frost on them. At least the top layer of soil in the pots outside the screen cage was frozen, but the pots inside the cage seemed to have stayed a bit warmer all huddled in there together. I drug some of them inside to thaw out and then put them back outside when the sun had warmed things up some. You can see the big broccoli leaves got a bit droopy. That's garlic in the front middle and the lettuce in the front right.

I hope the soil didn't freeze so much as to damage the carrots. They look good on top. Perhaps I should pull one up and check on them.

The little lettuces didn't get a lot of growth before this freezing weather has hit. I know they're supposed to like cool weather, but I don't know how they're going to do in the flat out cold.

Awww.. My First Carrot

I decided to pull up a carrot today to see how big they were and because some of them are crowded in a bit. It's a tiny little thing, but they're definitely growing. And delicious- I'm munching on it as I type this.

The broccoli is looking better although there's still no sign of a head. Most of the onions, at least from above ground, appear to be doing exactly nothing. Some of the garlic leaves are looking a little sad, but they're all sprouting away. Two out of the four I planted last have just broken the surface of the dirt. The first lettuce I planted is growing away. The others are still pretty small.

Purple Broccoli Leaves

My broccoli plants seem to be having some issues. The littlest one all but one leaf has turned purplish and the new leaves on the larger ones have done the same thing. I put some additional fertilizer on them this morning. Maybe that will help.

More Garlic

The rest of the garlic I planted has now sprouted. In the photo you can see the first one that came up and on the left one of the ones that just appeared recently. They ended up a bit too close together I thought so I tried to pull up the little one to put it in its own pot, but I wasn't able to pull it out. I acquired a couple more pots so I stuck two more cloves in each this evening as well. I love garlic.




No sign yet of anything that appears to be a broccoli head. Here's my tallest plant. You can see the one in the background that was eaten by the caterpillars. The blue/green pot has the last set of carrot seeds I planted.


Speaking of carrots, here is also a photo of the first set of carrots I planted. I don't know how things look underground, but the leaves above ground are growing away.


Lastly, here's a little lettuce I just thought was cute.

Growing

I transferred three little lettuces to the white tub in the front of the photo. It has no drainage holes, so I'm a little concerned the plants will drown in a good rain. It's supposed to rain some tomorrow, so I put the screen over it to provide some protection. We'll see how that works or if I might need to do a solid cover in a downpour.
More garlic has appeared. Most interestingly, the two cloves from the Trader Joes Colassal Garlic are growing. I had read that some grocery store garlic wouldn't grow because of something it was treated with. So it'll be an interesting experiment to see how it does. It's a better deal than the $10 I spent buying cloves off of thegarlicstore.com. As for those, I have three up now and two no shows.
The carrots also seem to be doing well.

Garlic!

One of my garlic cloves has sprouted! It's one of the ones I planted after letting it sit in the fridge for two weeks. The ones I didn't do that with haven't appeared yet.

Everything else is looking good too. As you can see in the photo the carrots in the white container are getting bigger. To the right of the carrots is one of the broccoli plants. The teal container has carrot seeds I recently planted. The container next to it and the two in the far back are onions.

Finally, the lettuce is growing as well. The second seed took a little longer to get going but you can see it on the left in the photo.

Carrot Problems

I just got home after a weekend trip and found the last container of carrot seeds I had planted had a hole dug in it. It's not that tall, so I'm thinking a squirrel climbed in there. The seeds hadn't sprouted yet, so I'll have to wait till they do to see how much damage was done. Half of the carrot seeds I'd planted in small containers for my mom had met some mysterious demise over the weekend, so I stuck the remaining ones in a large container and also tried thinning out one of my containers and transplanting the ones I pulled out. With such small, delicate root systems, I don't know if any of them will survive. If not, I'll toss some more seeds in there.

I dug up one of the cloves of garlic in my attempt to put it in a larger container. At first I thought all I had was a container of ants, but the clove was down in there, looking pretty much the same as when I stuck it in, only dirtier.