The emotional roller-coaster ride that is mystery plants from the Zellers garden centre clearance rack

Mystery plant outside, originally uploaded by jocelynb.

So, I am a total sucker for plants on the clearance shelf in garden centres -- the sketchier the garden centre, the greater my sense of pathos. (Actually the reaction I have is almost identical to the one I get from Spike Jonze's Ikea commercial. Or, actually, this clip from Community. Because the part of my brain that personifies things without consciousness has had too much caffeine. OR NOT ENOUGH LOVE.)

Anyway, as a result I end up with these sad, bedraggled plants in my garden sometimes, and I don't necessarily know what they are, or even whether they are annuals or perennials. BUT! This one is apparently a perennial! Which means that I really got my $1's worth. I have three of these, and they have pretty, variegated pink leaves. Plus their new spring shoots look DELICIOUS. And pink! Like Gaga Pink! Yay spring! Yay mystery plants! Yay lamp!

This picture also signifies the fact that I'm finally out in my outside garden, trying to clean up some of the disastrous last-year mess. I did NOTHING to clean up my garden last fall. I mean, literally, the snow is melting and under the snow are pots, and bags of lawn clippings, and 8 months' worth of dog poop, and apparently at least a few plants that are going to grow again. (Or at least, they'll grow again if I hold up my end of the bargain and clear away the debris that is blocking the sun.) But it's still not really at a point where I'm comfortable taking pictures of it. Just take what you see in this picture -- mud, dead leaves, dead plants from last year -- and extrapolate.

In praise of enthusiastic plants

chard, originally uploaded by jocelynb. Less than 24 hours elapsed between left-hand and right-hand pictures.

I love the plants that are started inside closer to last frost because they're showmen and keeners. I planted swiss chard (variety Five Colour Silverbeet), zucchini (Costata Romanesco, which I had great luck with last year), and cucumbers (Early Russian and Armenian, which by the way is actually a melon) on Saturday. Over the past couple days it seems they've been sprouting one plant per hour.

When I checked the plants yesterday morning when I woke up, there were a couple of slight disruptions in the soil where the chard was about to poke up. By the evening, half a dozen little plants had sprouted and spread their initial leaves. By this morning there were about 15 shoots. No sign of the zucchini yet, but the Armenian Cucumbers are all sprouted, and so are most of the regular cukes. No offense to the slow germinating peppers and asparagus of earlier this year, but these are my kind of plants. I guess because I have the patience of a first-grader!

And I have more of this to look forward to, because the only seeds left to start indoors (this coming weekend) are the melons and squash. I'm going to try two varieties of watermelon (Sugar Baby and Cream of Saskatchewan) as well as Bennings Green Tint squash. And then I will get to wait for all THOSE to sprout.

April 26 2011: Taking the seedlings out for a walk

Once a week or so, I take my older seedlings out of their watering trays and give them some liquid fertilizer. (Once they get their first set of true leaves, they're ready to start getting fertilizer.) I start them on a very dilute mix (one-quarter of its regular strength) and build them up to full-strength fertilizer by the time they're ready to plant outside. My plants are on about half-strength fertilizer right now. You can see most of my seedlings in this picture -- the only ones that aren't down here are the very new ones which haven't sprouted true leaves yet -- chard, cucumbers, & zucchini, and a couple varieties of flowers. (Oh, and the cauliflower and broccoli are still in the lightbox upstairs.) You can also see the totally decrepit old freezer our house's previous owners left in the basement -- it is too heavy to move up the stairs! HOW DID IT GET DOWN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE? Theory: the house was built around it.

I guess I could just give them fertilizer in their usual watering trays, but I'm wary of that because I don't want the fertilizer to collect in there -- it stops being dilute if the plants are sitting in it. So instead I take them out and put them on other trays just for today.

This is kind of a big job at this point, so to help make the work worthwhile I'll leave them sitting out for a couple hours with the fan on. I'm not sure if this is just superstition, but I have heard that setting seedlings in the breeze from a fan helps to prevent damping off.

I'm contemplating starting to move some of the seeds outside during the day -- partly to harden them off, but also partly just because I'm running out of space and lights. If it was just a little warmer, I would consider planting some of the tougher plants out. We are still getting night-time temperatures of 0 or a few degrees below, so I think it's almost time to plant out the artichokes, broccoli and cauliflower. In the meantime, I will just have to keep squishing them in, since I'm obviously not going to stop starting new plants -- that's a little too logical.