The first round of seedlings are ready to move on, so I’ve been busy potting up in the glasshouse. I have even put seedlings and plugs in the ground!
Yes, April is quite early in northern lower Michigan to be planting in the garden. With warmer than average winters and springs over the last few years, I felt like taking the chance. There is one night in the forecast 10 days out that will be close to freezing, and our average last frost date is not until June 1. If nighttime temperatures dip close to or below 32F, I’ll definitely need to get the frost cloth out.
Planting pansies and violas
As you can see in the photo above, the glasshouse is bursting with seedlings! I already hardened off the cool weather plants like delphinium, foxglove and pansies and violas. I potted some of the violas that bloomed already, and started planting pansies in the potager.
Potting up tomato seedlings
As I wrote in my blog post “4 Easy to Grow Vegetable Seeds for the Summer Garden“, I grow a large quantity of tomato seedlings. I keep as many tomato plants as I can fit in the potager, and I sell the rest at my roadside stand for a few weeks in May. I have grown tomato plants for over 20 years; it was spring of 2020, (I wasn’t going anywhere…), when I decided to start all the seeds I had, and the plant sale was born.
This year I have 46 varieties of tomato seedlings started! I did restrain myself and only started 8 plants each of the cherry tomato varieties on hand. They don’t sell as readily as the canners and beefsteaks, which I sowed with abandon! I started the seeds a couple of weeks ago. This week, I have been pricking out seedlings and potting up the young plants.
Tomatoes definitely do not like cold weather, so they are cozy and warm in the glasshouse, along with the hot peppers and the second round of snapdragon seedlings.
Potting up the first batch of snapdragons
I love snapdragons! They are easy to grow from seed and are popular flowers for floral arrangements. In recent years, I grew mainly for personal use, but this year, I am tripling efforts for the seasonal flower shop I work at, Bloom Floral Design, in Charlevoix, Michigan.
I am just beginning to pot up the second sowing of snapdragon seeds. The first round is outside at the moment, hardening off. In this sowing, the fastest out of the gate is the Avignon Pink II variety. I have watched a number of flower farmers thin their snapdragon seedlings, but I prefer to prick each one out and pot up. Each seedling has potential, and it’s already growing, so…
I will give the freshly potted up snapdragons a few days to settle in inside the glasshouse before starting the hardening off process.
What is in the ground
Cool weather flowers and vegetables can handle short dips at or just below freezing, so they are good candidates to get in the ground early.
Last year I grew ranunculus in pots in my efforts to have tulips and ranunculus in pots like English gardeners. It did work well, and I was planning on cutting the blooms for arrangements, but they ended up getting infested with aphids just as the blooms were perfect for cutting. It was bad! That was disappointing. After the plants died back, I dug up the corms, dried them, and put them in a brown paper lunch bag for the winter.
This spring, I soaked the corms, and had a pretty good success rate with sprouting. I planted a few in pots, and the rest went in the new raised beds in the potager. Everything in the smaller raised beds except the kale, are spring plants, so I plan on replanting the small raised beds with summer plants later on. With pink snapdragons.
I planted the stock, foxgloves, delphinium and lisianthus plugs this week. Some of the foxglove are in containers, (saved from a landscaping project), and some are planted in the potager. I also planted the lettuce, spinach, tatsoi, and kale that I sowed in the glasshouse. I plan to direct sow the second round of these plants.
Potting up seedlings in April
The goal of starting seeds indoors is to have mature plants in the garden when the warm weather arrives, especially if you live in a short growing season like northern lower Michigan. Chances are, the seedlings will need to be potted up before they can be planted outside.
Potting up seedlings takes space, and time, but the summer harvest makes it all worth it! Have you started seeds? I’d love to hear from you; what are you potting up in April?
