Busy Weekend

Flowers everywhere this week.
The garlic is ready for that first shot of fertilizer - the key to large bulbs, so I am told.
The fruit trees are really near flowering - too early for comfort.
Today's salad came from these hoop house plants
Our French tarragon is so good in salads and of course in eggs. Make sure you get real tarragon and not the Russian variety from seed that does not taste good.
This is the best of the several clumps of sorrel we have - good rich flavor.
Pellitized onions were planted today - should make transplanting easier.
Two seeds per cell - so much easier than the old way - of multi seeds per inch in a tray.
Storage onions from last year are used as sets for this year.
Shallots saved from last year planted for this years corp - I sure hope they work.

Parsley seed ready for the hot water treatment before seeding into flats.

Most of this weeks activity was in the last two days. Saturday I was part of the Garden Expectations Conference in Kimberly WI sponsored by the Outagamie County Master Gardeners and the UW Extension. There was a great crowd of enthusiastic gardeners and I got to talk about vegetable gardening - what fun. I also was part of the panel of "experts" that answered questions at the end of the conference. I got a "best tomato question" and really did not answer it - like how can you? But I guess in thinking maybe "Sugary" would be a great inclusion to any tomato patch and then" County Taste" might also be a good selection - but best tomato - I am still looking for that too.
Warm weather continues and so I got some onions and shallots planted in the garden. Both were left overs from last year that kept quite nicely in the garage during winter and looked ready to go into the ground today. One row of shallots and one row of yellow onions - variety's from last year.
I also planted seedlings. I planted red stemmed dandelions along with pellitized onions seed from Johnny's that are pictured above. I also planted curly leaf and Italian leaf parsley. I did the hot water treatment to the seed. I heated water in the microwave and poured it over the seed before I sowed the seed into flats. Last year this hastened germination so I am trying it again to see if I have the process correct.
I harvested both arugula and spinach from the garden for salads today and also have a tray of sprouted sunflower seeds, so some of them ended up in the salad today.
Cool weather is predicted for tonight and as you can see the fruit trees are really far along for this time of year - sure hope we don't get hard frost on them. However, living as close to the bay of Green Bay as we do, the bay warms quickly and then helps moderate the weather for us, so maybe frost will not bother us.
Happy Gardening