The last of the Spring produce?

This evening, Wifey proudly showed me this picture she took of the bounty she harvested from the garden.  She'd noticed that some of the leafy greens were starting to bolt and decided that enough was enough: time to pick the rest.

There were a few more heads of both green and purple cabbage and 2-3 more cauliflower heads as far as I'm aware.  She thought that the cabbage might be a bit worm-eaten, though.  I guess we'll check in another day or two and make a final decision.

I have to say -- I'm quite happy about getting back a fair amount of more garden space to work with.  I want to plant some more beans and tomatoes.  I also have some experiments (louffa) that I'd like to try.  We could use the room.

Cabbages are developing nicely

I'm happy to report that our cabbages are nicely developing into heads.  This is very timely since our temperatures are finally starting to climb.

Cauliflower heads and cucumber sprouts

I had a little bit of time this afternoon to go through the garden to see what we may have coming up.  I'm really pleased to see that we have two small cauliflowers coming up.  Each is maybe 1.5" across.

It's also exciting to see that we have our first cucumber sprouts coming up.

Tomato flowers!

I planted four more of the Amish Paste tomatoes in the garden yesterday in an area where we're going to start phasing out of the Spring crops.

While leaving the garden, I was happy to see that three of our Old Virginia tomatoes have flowers on them.

Time to make another garden?

Wifey and I have recently lamented that we're having a hard time finding room for all the summer crops we want to grow while keeping the spring crops we still have.

Ideally, we would have more lettuce, spinach, and cabbage than you see in the picture above to go along with snow peas (which never germinated this year).

We want more room for more beans, some experimental stuff (like luffas), more potatoes, more asparagus, more garlic and onions, and strawberries.  The area down the hill doesn't get a whole lot of sunlight and since all those (minus flowers) don't need much sunlight, we figure we're good to go with using that area for this purpose.

To that end, we've been talking about cutting in another garden down the hill from the current one.  This would encompass where the potatoes currently are and allow us to have a separate garden for the cool-weather crops and permanent plantings and dedicate the one up the hill (our current garden) for summer crops and a little bit of cooler weather stuff.

The area that is more or less in the yellow are would be 32' long by 24' wide.  It would avoid being any closer to the septic field than 5'.  The tentative plan is to rent a deturfing machine to cut away the sod there then put down black plastic to cook off any remaining roots for a few months and install the garden in the late summer to use for the fall planting.  The turf may end up being transplanted into the orchard over top of weeds.

Garden work today

This afternoon:

• The Girl wanted to pick some radishes to go with dinner.  After she did that, I weeded a good part of the radish bed and planted more seeds.
• I planted a row of green pole beans from last year's saved seed.
• I removed a San Marzano that had been nibbled on quite a bit by something and planted one of the spares I have kept.
• The Girl planted 3 of the leftover tomato plants and weeded her garden area.
• We collected two long sprigs of mint from the front bed to use in a batch of iced tea. 
• Wifey harvested chives from the front bed to go in a salad.

 

Added more Asparagus to the garden

Two weeks ago I roto-tilled my parents' garden for them.  My mom was done trying to get asparagus to grow, wanted to get rid of her crowns, and wanted the entire garden done.

I salvaged the crowns and put them in contractor bags and brought them back here.  Over the last two weeks I kept the bags open and allowed them to get the moisture from the various rain storms we've had.  Having the bags open also dissipated heat so we wouldn't end up cooking the roots.

Yesterday I dug out small segments and supplemented what we already had with the crowns.  I added maybe 8 or so to the existing two asparagus boxes. 

No pictures; dealing with the crowns in the bags was really muddy work.

Frost-free morning

I don't know what the true low was, but it was 35 degrees when I woke up at 7am this morning.  It's still chilly (44 on its way up to the mid-50's) and breezy, but I think it's time to uncover everything out in the garden.

Just need to remember to cover everything again tonight.  Another cold night is forecast.

Chance of frost!

Tonight and tomorrow we have a chance of frost.  Lows are predicted to be down to the mid-30's.  Because weather is an inexact science, Wifey and I are covering up the cold-sensitive stuff in the garden.

Hopefully we get through the temperature drop unscathed!

A dinner harvest

Yesterday afternoon we got to spend a fair amount of time working in the garden.  Removed some of the spring crop beds where the older seeds never germinated and planted some canteloupe and cucumber seeds.

While out there Wifey and The Girl picked some kale, radishes, and asparagus to supplement dinner.  The kale was baked in the oven with some oil and sea salt to become kale chips.  Asparagus was steamed and the radishes went into a salad along with some of our oregano and chives and a homemade salad dressing.   Went well with some grilled chicken.

Leeks and San Marzano tomatoes are in

After I finished work, I got a few hours to work in the garden.  I divided a 4-cell starter we bought of leek starters and planted them per instructions in rows 4" apart.  I have three rows of those.  Having never grown leeks before, we have no idea what to expect.

Once that was done, I got a number of the San Marzano tomato starters in the ground as well.  They weren't as far along as the Old Virginias that I planted the other day but still look to be in decent condition.

Kids are on the board

As we have done in the past, Wifey and I are sectioning off part of the main garden for each of the kids.  As with the past, we have told the kids we will provide them with some plants (ideally of their choosing) to grow.  We will support them and help them with the garden, but the responsibility is theirs.

All three kids have their gardens at least started.

The Boy has some peppers, basil, and cherry tomato in the ground.  He would like more flowers which we will try to get this weekend.

The Bruiser (our youngest) being still quite young has a smaller garden area (at least so far).  He has a bell pepper, a cherry tomato, and a squash growing.

The Girl wanted hers to be partially under the Japanese maple.  Because parts of that area had been used for Spring planting, we weeded it out.  I was going to roto-till that area, but she was interested in keeping some lettuce (from this year).  She also wanted to keep some volunteer tomatoes from last year to see what they are and how they do.  We planted basil, a bell pepper, and a cherry tomato there.  As with her big brother, she wants flowers which we will be getting this weekend.

First summer plants are in the ground!

We finally have summer plants in the ground!

I'm taking a little bit of a gamble here.  Technically, our 10% chance of frost date is April 29 (see below from the National Gardening Association.  I felt pretty confident planting a few days early, though, since our temperatures have been running a bit on the warm side and the lowest forecast low temp for the next week is 41 degrees.  Forecasts may be off, but I think it's unlikely they'd be off by 10 degreesl



We still have a lot to plant both in terms of seeds and transplanted starters.  At least we have the Old Virginia tomatoes, yellow banana peppers, and some basil in the ground.

Trying the "Ruth Stout" method of gardening

While meandering through the labyrinth that is Youtube the other day, I came across a video by a couple who grew a considerable amount of potatoes with almost no work.  It after watching it, they referenced a methodology that was developed by Ruth Stout in which you continually add mulch on top of existing soil and keep planting on top of itself.  In that manner, you continually have little/no weeds, replenish nutrients, and have to do very little work as far as tilling or weeding.  They also did a video on that approach.

I discussed it, showed the first (potato) video to Wifey and we decided to give it a shot.

In the video, they laid out a grid of chunks (appears to be 2"+ thicknesses) of straw bales to their field in the fall and let the straw rot.  In the spring they took the rotted hay, fluffed it up and pulled sections apart in areas and laid out seed potatoes.  Once their potatoes were laid out, they covered them up again.

Note: I learned that although the terms are often used interchangeably, there is a difference between hay and straw.  Hay is dried field grasses where straw is hay that has had the seed pods largely/entirely removed.  Hay is often consumed by animals and straw is bedding.

I took a trip to the local Ace hardware and bought 4 small bales of straw.  Wifey and I then laid them down in a grid to rot for the remainder of the winter until it gets to be potato planting time.

More garden work

I had a little bit of time when I got home from work so -- big surprise -- I went out to the garden.  I rototilled parts of the garden that were developing weeds as well as an area that had been stomped down when I was adding Leafgro to a few areas that hadn't received enough compost last year.

Once all that was finished, I weeded around the spinach and lettuce (planted a month ago, but just now coming up) and planted two types of carrots adjacent to some radishes (planted a month ago).

Sorry.  No picture.

Finally some stuff is planted!

We had a pretty steady rain for a good chunk of the day today.  As a result, the soil was relatively moist without being overly muddy.  I took some time when I got home to go out and get some seed planting accomplished. 

Since beans fix nitrogen in the soil (replacing what tomatoes and peppers consume), I planted beans in a decent chunk of space where they tomatoes and peppers had been planted last year.  I need to buy some more of the green 8' garden support posts; I ran out.

Since I ran out of support posts, I planted some lettuce along with the heat-tolerant greenery.  There was a small swath of space between the sections of greenery so I added some radishes.

Garden progress

I took yesterday afternoon and all day today off of work to get some work accomplished around the property.  Yesterday I deturfed one of the garden paths.  It had been an issue last year with the grass and weeds encroaching into the garden areas adjacent to the path so this year it was time to address that problem.

Today I made many trips with the mower and wagon and delivered all the turf pile (left side of the picture by the fence) to the woods then pitched everything in there.

Once all the turf delivery was done, I rototilled the garden to get prepped for planting.

Side garden update

It's been a bit since I've posted here, but that's kind out of necessity.  There really hasn't been much going on until this weekend.

• We've transplanted the tomatoes twice now.  Not because they're doing fantastically, but because they're having many of the same issues as last year despite not using much of our well water.  Wifey and I think that it may have something to do with the potting soil so as much as we hate to not use organic, we're trying a type of Miracle-Gro brand soil.  We'd rather sort out what's going on with the plants and have them not die before going into the ground than stick to our principles and have a lot of dead plants.
• A week or so ago we had our biggest snowfall of the winter.  As a result of a lot of heavy snow coming down, a small tree adjacent to the garden fell down into the garden.  That has since been removed, although, I need to repair the deer netting still.

Robbins Ave Update - 15 Sprouts!

So I just checked the sprouts under our grow lights.  What I found led me to muse, "Alright, God.  Now I have to think you're just showing off.  And I'm really impressed."

As of this morning, we are up to 15 Robbins Ave tomato sprouts.  We got one more overnight.

Simply amazing.

Weeding the strawberries

Wifey had some time to herself while The Bear took his nap yesterday.  Because it was really warm and she wanted some sun, she weeded the strawberry bed at the bottom of the side garden.  I'm incredibly thankful because I had been dreading that job.  It looks fantastic now.

Where previously it was a vast canvas of green, we can now see the strawberry plants!