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Video Summary
Hello everyone! In this video, I’m starting seeds outdoors for the first time of the 2023 season. It’s April 17th here in Colorado, zone 5B, and I’m planting all my cold hardy crops. I take you through the process of cutting up potatoes that I’ve been letting sprout (though one turned out to be rotten!), and I end up planting 16 potato pieces in a small raised bed.
I also show you how I’m transplanting some spinach seedlings directly without hardening them off first – we’ll see how that experiment goes! I fertilize my blueberry plants with acidifier, plant carrot seedlings (another experiment to see if transplanting carrots works), and try growing radishes for the very first time.
At the end, I start some celery seeds indoors because I’m running a bit late on those – they should have been started about 10 weeks before our last frost date, but we’re only about 5 weeks out. Better late than never! I share a tip I learned that celery needs light to germinate, so I’ll be keeping those under grow lights. It’s an exciting day of getting the garden going for spring, and I hope you enjoy coming along with me for the ride!
Video Transcript
Hello everyone, welcome back. It’s Kari at Keep It Simple DIY, and today we are starting seeds outdoors for the first time of the season. It’s currently April 17th and I am in Colorado in zone 5B, and so I’m going to be starting our cold hardy crops. So I have a few potatoes that I’ve been letting grow and I will cut these and throw them in the ground. I’m going to be putting some radishes outside, some carrots outside. I also want to fertilize my new, well these are not new, my blueberry plants that I got last year. And we’re just gonna have a great time. So I’m going to start by cutting these potatoes and then we’ll go outside and we’ll get the show on the road.
I’m only going to be planting one small three and a half by three and a half foot bed of potatoes, so I have three different potatoes here. And what I’m going to do is cut them each into, well, let’s see. I was thinking thirds and do nine, but do I want to do something different? Maybe I will do fourths and do twelve. So let’s do that. Let’s do fourths.
And now not all of these have sprouted yet on all sides. Like these two sides won’t have them. I know I probably should have cut them a while ago, but you know what? Better late than never. We’re going to cut them now and they’ll do the rest in the garden.
Uh, that is a no-go. That is so rotten. All right, I thought that one felt funny. We are going to just throw that away. Rinse our knife off.
All right, let’s do this one. Much better. Well, now we only have two potatoes and the other ones in the fridge just aren’t shriveled or ready enough. So what do I want to do here? This is eight, and what could I do if I wanted to do nine or twelve?
Let’s, hmm, let’s do this. Let’s cut this one and let’s cut this one like this. I’m trying to leave an eye on each of these. These ones didn’t have eyes though. Let’s cut them. Yeah, how many do we have? We have, did I just do that into eight? So now I have 12. Okay, that’s how many we wanted. Do I want to do 16? Do I want to? It can’t hurt, right? We’re doing 16. Gotta love it. Gardening, you just go with the flow and do whatever you want. We’ll see how this turns out.
All right, we have 16 pieces and let’s go put them in the bed.
I added some fertilizer to this bed last, or two nights ago, because it was going to rain and snow. So now I’m just going to break the soil up a little bit so that I have room to get my potatoes down in there. Actually, it’s not very compacted anyways.
All right, let’s throw them where we want them there for fun. Okay, got them laid out. I’m going to just put them in. Okay, I need to go grab the hose so we can water those in.
All right, this bed here is for my spinach. And you know, I haven’t hardened off my spinach. I’m not sure if I have to do that with a cold weather crop, so I’m going to try just putting some spinach in here, and then I’ll also add some seeds and we’ll see how that goes.
I got this acid mix for my blueberry, so I am going to put that on them right now.
Carrots up to the end, and then we will have some other vegetables come summer. I’m gonna see how this goes with the carrots that I’m going to transplant. And worst that happens is they don’t survive.
All right, I need to grab some watering cans because my hose won’t reach over here. I’m just gonna do that on my own.
The last thing I’m going to plant are some radishes over in this corner. I’ve never grown radishes before, so this will be a first time for me. I’m only doing a little bit. Let’s just rip it open.
Usually I wouldn’t be using gloves for this, but I’m in the middle of cooking as well inside, and I just, I didn’t want to have the hassle of getting all the dirt out of my fingernails. This is how we’re doing it today, which is fine.
The last thing that I want to do is start some celery. Actually, I bought celery on Amazon because I didn’t think I had any, and then I found that I did. But I’m quite a bit late to planting celery. Celery should be planted about 10 weeks before the last frost date, and our last frost date is in, let’s see, let’s see, probably about five weeks. That’s all right. Better late than never. And I’ll water these when I bring them inside, and I’ll stick them in the grow light area.
I’m just going to add some soil. This soil is really dry. And then I’m going to sprinkle the seeds on the top and add a little bit more soil and call it a day.
Interesting, celery needs light to grow. I’m glad I know that before I’m going to be starting the seeds, so we’ll stick them up where the grow lights are.
Well, I need to add more to it if that’s going to be that one. Now I’ve grown this Utah tall celery before, but I grew it with a Mi Gardener seed packet. So hopefully this one does just as well. Last year though, I planted mine a little too late and they got bitter, but I cut them back and then the next growth that came was fine.
All right, let’s add a little more soil here and here. I’m going to bring these inside, stick them on the grow lights, and I will show you when we get in there. But I did want to say thank you so much for hanging out with me today as I planted in the garden for the first time of 2023. I enjoyed being here with you and I hope to see you next time. Bye!
