It can be so hard to find gardening time when you have young kids! For several days, it’s been my intention each day to get my tomatoes in the ground and plant some corn seeds. Tonight, my wife was gone to her regular Tuesday night youth activities with the girls at church, and I had the younger kids at home. I thought maybe I could get the twins to watch our two-year old son, but he’s such a bundle of energy lately, and they didn’t seem quite up to it tonight. So, I played with him outside and listened to his funny conversations (“Boys like dirt, right Dad?” “Yes, McKay, boys do like dirt…”). Anyway, by the time I got to planting stuff, it was getting dark, so I finished up about 10 p.m. (OK, not exactly midnight, but “the midnight gardener” just sounds cool, doesn’t it?).

Here’s what I planted tonight:

• 3 ‘Sweet 100’ cherry tomatoes
• 3 ‘Sungold’ cherry tomatoes
• 2 ‘Bloody Butcher’ tomatoes
• 2 ‘Brandywine’ tomatoes
• 3 rows of ‘Mirai White’ super-sweet corn seeds
• A small stand of ‘Henri Wilde’ sunflower seeds
• 2 cantaloupes from pots that my twins started indoors

I still have maybe six tomato plants left over (some from each of those varieties except the Brandywine), and I’ll give those away this week. I hope someone I know can use them. I’ll plan to plant the rest of the corn in two or three weeks so we’ll get a longer harvest season out of it. I also need to plant some pumpkin seeds and some zucchini seeds very soon.

Oh, I also wanted to mention that this is the first year I had some dud pea seeds. Usually peas are extremely reliable for me, but this time, only four plants came up from the 30 or so seeds we planted. The twins always help when I plant peas — the seeds are easy for kids to handle, and they also know they’ll love eating the peas when they ripen. So, not many peas this year — bummer! The spinach I planted earlier is doing pretty well, although our warm temps this week (90 yesterday) might make it go to seed very soon. I’ll have to keep an eye on them.

I also still have a lot of flowers that I started in the greenhouse, and they’re currently outside the greenhouse, hardening off in a mixture of sun and shade under a tree. I’ll write more about the flowers later.