Don’t Fall For it! It’s Not Time!

It’s very tempting to want to plant with our warm weather! Don’t donut yet, we still have a ways to go before Easter! 6 weeks! You can start your seeds but that’s about it unless you’re planting brassicas! If you’re looking for seeds. Please check us out!
https://alvaradocommunityfarm.com

Good morning Community Jill here with North Texas vegetable gardening canning recipes a little bit of everything we had a little bit of a surprise this morning so they were predicting that we were going to get down first to 29 and then they said uh 31 and uh so of course

We have our our little routine of coming out here and covering up especially these tomato plant starts and I woke up this morning and it was actually 26° outside and it was 31° and this big high tunnel let’s check everything out so this is one of our seed start

Tables and then we converted guys to um keeping our tomato plants alive um it’s 75° in there so these are some of our blueberry cherry tomatoes and these are some of the Peron now these are all from our seed um here are more of the blueberry cherry tomatoes here are more

Uh these are let’s see these are the Amish paste everything is looking good these are the pineapple tomatoes this is a new variety that we’re going to be growing this year and uh you can see everything looks like they’re okay on this table taking a gander at our beets in

Here guys these are just about gotten water logged but we’re supposed to dry out this week oh we got some some good looking beats in there let me get over here so I can show you yeah we got some beets in here that uh we’re going to start

Harvesting so here are our black cram Tomatoes you know this is one of our favorites that we love to grow so they’re looking good more black cream more black cream more black cream uh these are more Peron and I think I think we’re going to be okay was quite concerned this morning

Uh when I got up and saw how cold it actually got and this is on the um south side of the high tunnel more of Our tomato plants and they look like they’re going to be just fine so that extra added plastic guys is brilliant um it is really helping to

Keep our plants alive so thank the Lord thank the Lord so tomorrow morning we’re going to be 35° or at least that’s what they’re saying we’re going to go ahead and cover everything up just in case because we could take a dip um below freezing tomorrow but after that it looks like

Spring is sprung um we are going to be up to 81 degrees by Wednesday we do get a brief little cool front on Thursday but guys we have had a very mild February um kind of makes me wonder Wonder just how late it’s going to be

When we get a freeze because uh we are we are very warm uh we’re in seasonably warm February again has been mild and I think that we’re probably going to see um a couple of freezes in March and maybe one in early April I don’t think

We’re going to get one in late April this year but we’ll wait and see so a lot of our local forecasters are saying that our winter is just about done we shouldn’t expect any kind of winter storm ice or snow or anything like that um that we should be done with that

Um and if we do get down below freezing it’s probably going to be little onesies onesy tues like we’re experiencing now so we start our seege using the 72 trays the little seed start trays we’ve been doing this for years guys and then we uppot it here once they get a certain

Size and then we pop them in the ground when it’s time this has saved us loads of money um uh just for instance it was not uncommon when I was gardening years ago that I would go to callaways and buy uh plants this size right here um when

It was time to plant and they were usually $3.69 $4 a pop it was not uncommon for me to drop about $400 or $500 on Plants well now we’re just spending our money on a soil and a little pots which we can reuse um every year we just make sure that they’re

Cleaned up but look how many plants that we have gotten just from seed so this is why we use these little seed starts so let’s go over I have a holy basil which is brilliant um for anxiety guys and sleep and so we’re going to grow lots of this this lots of

This this year and I’ve got my deal is starting to come up this is some of our Thai Basil now this is all for our seeds holy basil more Thai Basil Thai Basil is my favorite I think it is very very delicious and has a wonderful Aroma um

My deal is starting to come up here and look Greg started some Rosemary and we are starting to see some of that come up so we are excited about the Rosemary as well and then some cilantro is coming up our genev basil we’ve got some Sage so we are really focusing here’s

Some of our opal basil we are really focusing on a lot of herbs this year guys and this is an Italian blend uh because herbs are the zest of Life they are the flavor to your food but they’re also very good for your health and you

Can use them uh medically and so we have focused on some new herbs this year um I got some cabbages coming up so I’m going to try to find a place to uh transplant these I probably need to pot some of these up cauliflower I didn’t really

Want them to start any cauliflower but I’ll go ahead and pot some of these these up too because I just don’t have a whole lot of luck with cauliflower and I’ll show you what I mean here in a minute this is marshmallow this is an

Herb so I’m excited to see how this goes um let’s see we got some kale I needed kale because we lost a lot of that in that last freeze holy basil we’ve got some th coming up we got some chamomile he probably needs to plant some more um

Let’s see here’s some more Rosemary coming up a o starting to see it start to come up and then he has some different varieties of tomatoes there that we’re going to try here’s some rudgers here’s some more deal some more deal cuz deal is a really big

Deal and he did start another tray of Rosemary or two other trays of Rosemary because we’re going to try to grow that like crazy and one of our community members Rosa brought this moringa tree by and we’re going to try to grow moranga and then we’re going to freeze

Dry that guys we’re GNA make some Moringa uh tea because we have been taking some of that um in capsu that Rosa brought to us and I tell you what it’s some really good stuff and I think it has really helped us through um this illness so we are having a

Little bit better time at getting back on our feet um let’s see it was uh I think it was two weeks in it’ll be three weeks from two weeks today for Greg 3 weeks from me um on Wednesday and uh it’s been it’s been a rough go um it has

Really Zapped our energy um it has really uh even kind of affects your mood a little bit um just don’t just don’t have a lot of ump to get out and get done what we need to get done but we are working as hard as we can to try to get

There um Greg’s mom is home from the hospital she does have some home health care and so you know we all seem to be on the men and bouncing back but you can tell them a little winded and um so we are really taking our vitamins and

Doing our herbs and uh trying to get back on top of this my cousin Mickey has been very very sick so lots of things going around my grandson had the flu Mickey has the flu there’s just so many things going around here that kind of makes you afraid to get out and about

But you know I’ve been going to work um and um and Greg has been trying to hold down the fort here and we’re been keeping an eye on pop he’s a little tired today which kind of has me concerned but I went back and checked on

And he said he doesn’t feel bad he’s just very very tired so we’re going to be watching him this week but um you can see we’re going to have a lot of things to pot up but uh we’re excited about it and we’re so thankful for it

All and I think the biggest thing for us um as far as this whole mess has gone since we’ve been s is the fatigue and trying to get back on top of uh of our energy levels like last night I fell asleep at 6:00 p.m. and I didn’t get up

Till 6:00 a.m. guys that’s 12 hours I’m not a 12h hour sleeper it’s been a long time since I’ve done that so this is what I’m talking about when I’m talking about cauliflower so we got that hard phrase and started developing little heads I do have a little head of

Broccoli there and then all of a sudden man they just came out like this and I don’t know if I missed the time guys because I’ve been so tired and I just come home don’t have a lot of energy to check things over but yeah that’s about how well I do with

Cauliflower so our peppers are looking pretty good we move them up to the little high tunnel and this little seed table this is the first seed table that Greg made and we have had great success with it so yeah our peppers are looking okay we have some that we’re probably

Going to have to recede but all in all I’m happy with what I’m seeing so it’s time to get our containers cleaned up get ready to plant won’t be long guys won’t be long and need to go ahead and fortify my soil here where the carrots were cuz I think

I’m going to plant some more carrots um for early summer my goodness so much to do and clean our outdoor raised beds out um where we lost our greens and back when we got below freezing I don’t know for like four or five days but I think that was the Gest of

It w man oh man oh man so lots of cleaning today so the question is is when are we going to plant we’re still going to have to watch but uh with this mild week I know a lot of you are going to be tempted to plant and I am too here

Really really soon um maybe the end of March is when we’ll start putting things in the ground Greg was talking about putting some tomatoes in the ground in that big high tunnel already I said no no no we’re going to have to wait we need to wait and see what the weather’s

Going to be like and what we’re going to see happening in March because we need to be sure and protect them you can see in the yard we’re starting to see this High winter grass come up and uh the purple Clover which is usually indicative of spring is right around the

Corner winter time sure went fast for us here in Texas um we’re still down on Water we’ve gotten more rain this year than we did last year or the year before this time but this morning they said we’re still in a drought and we’re not expecting any rain at least for the next

Seven days so going to be watching that guys and seeing how we do uh with that this spring um right now we’re okay um as far as uh fire conditions and stuff like that because we have had quite a bit of rain and we still have standing

Water in places but that could change that could change like really really quick and um the cool weather has sure come and gone much quicker um than I really wanted it to and I’m really worried that this warmer week is going to cause these trees to think it’s time to start budding

Out you can see these are my apple trees yeah and this is our little peach tree and looky there this is our Elderberry one of our Elderberry bushes out here so has spring sprung the Lord’s creation a lot of it sure thinks that it has we’ll be watching it um yeah we’ll

Be watching it we’ll be it’ll be interesting to see what happens this spring and um it’ll be interesting to see whenever we’re all ready to take that dive and go ahead and pop things in the ground and see what happens and go ahead and and get things going because

Like I said I think this warm week that’s coming up is really going to um make a lot of things pop and it’s going to make us want to pop and make us want to get out there and plant but we just we have to hold off guys we have to hold

Off and see exactly what’s going to happen so um I don’t know if y’all watch mark on Hurricane track but he is one of the weather people that we watch and he is saying that we’re probably going to be wet through May and then the faucet’s gonna

Um turn off and we’re going to be a little dry and then linia is going to pick back up in the fall and next winter which could mean more of the ice storms and stuff like that but we’ll see you know things can change things can change

Um El Nino was if it if it goes away in may it’ be one of the really shortest ones because it just came on board um in the fall last year um it started to change but then really kind of on board in the fall and we we have gotten the

Rain from it and uh the weather pattern that we expected we just were hoping for a little bit more cooler temps and we were expecting for a little bit more rain um maybe spread out a little bit because when it comes it comes in days and and

It’s a it’s a mess but um we’ll see what happens in the next two weeks and see if we start to get some more rain we do need it we need as much rain as we can get going into the spring and especially going into the summer but I’m really

Hoping that we stay in a neutral pattern for the summer and um and I hope that market hurricane track tells me that that’s what’s going to happen so anyway um keep praying for us guys and we covet your prayers and we thank you for your prayers and uh we

Will be starting to ramp up more and more and more as spring comes on a little bit stronger and doing more planting and doing more up potting and I’m excited to see what we do this year so excited to see what you guys do and to hear how you’re doing and what you’re

Growing so we love you all take care God bless and we’ll see you soon