Somethings growning

Saturday we went to visit both Culvers and Pecks garden centers looking for Dogwood bushes to put in our front yard...we found them at Pecks.  I was not expecting them to get planted on Sunday, but they did!  Way to go Muscle Man!

Pecks was having their Spring Open House, we took advantage of their specialsand purchased lavendar, stevia and rosemary plants on sale along with a 6 pack of kholrabi - that made it into the garden today!  I've had the kholrabi outside for the last few days hardening it off and decided not was as good of a time as every to plant it. 

I think we are going to like the larger garden.  I also just planted an entire package of peas (Ferry Morse - Melting sugar - Snow Peas) The package says they are the early variety, can tolerate light frost and they don't like heat so I decided to plant them now and see what happens.  I was excited to get 3 rows and still feel like there is room in the garden - this has never happened before, lol. Still need to put in a trellis for the peas, don't think I have any "pea gates" left.  That's what Big Bird called the 3' sections of fence we used a couple of years ago for a trellis.

I also planted an entire package of radishes (Ferry Morse - Radish Easter Egg II Mixture) and Spinach (Ferry Morse/Organic - Bloomsdale, long standing.  I thought I was gong to doubble seed the area with the radishes and spiniach with the beans in a month, but I had enough room to plant the 2 packages and still have space for bean planting mid-May. Radish days to harvest: 28
Spinach days to harvest: 45
Peas days to harvest: 72

Oh, and the onions are up and look great - I'm sure watering them helped.  We haven't had any rain in a couple of weeks so it has been quite dry...not sure  how the grass seed is going to do with this dry weather.

The layout of the 2010 garden
East End Onions - white and yellow
Peppers will go next (n-s)
Peas and Beans (e-w)
Spinach and Radish (n-s)
Three tomatoes will go on the west end with the kholrabi planted under.


Today's funny: I told Little Bird to stay out of the gareden when he plays in the back yard...I put in some sticks and signs with veggie names on them to mark rows and crops...he says "Mom does that say "STAY OUT OF THE GARDEN?" "Um, Yes it does." Cause if that doesn't work I'm going for chicken wire!!!

2nd post today!

Just before rest time my 3 year old walked into the house with a handful of chives..."Here Mom we picked these for our pizza tonight!"

He is not afraid to pick, and eat chives straight from the garden!

Early Spring update 2010

We are working to expand our garden a bit - ended up adding 4ft to the west end of the garden. Hope this helps a bit to reduce the crowded feeling I've had the last few years trying to fit everything I want to grow into my garden. Last weekend we dug up the sod and put a new timber in to expand the garden. Weather permitting we have a tiller reserved for this weekend to till the new end of the garden.

It has been SO hard to not try and plant the garden this week. Our temps have been SO mild. Today is a reality check- its still warm, but not the 70's that we have enjoyed the last week. Today's highs are to be in the mid 60's, much more seasonally appropriate. We did plant yellow and white onion bulbs last weekend. I have 4 rows each about 3-4ft log of onions. Last year I inter-planted my onions with my tomatoes and that actually worked well because the onions were out before the tomatoes were to crazy.

About a month ago I started some pepper seeds. About 2 weeks ago one of my day care children had fun playing in the seedlings that I had sitting in the sunshine on a chair. Oh well. I can always get seedlings from the greenhouse! Someday we will have a south facing window for plants - this house just does not offer the windows or the space for that option.

Let me think back...What do I remember about last summer's garden?

• The beans did not grow well, but the ones that did grow were tasty
• The peas did not grow well.
• The tomatoes grew quickly but quit producing mid-August. They had some kind of blight. The cool temperatures in July and August may be part of that - temps were in the 70's and low 80s most of late summer. Roma tomatoes are a short plant...save the taller tomato cage for tomatoes with more vines and use a shorter cage with a Roma.
• Peppers are always a good thing to grow in my garden. Sweet peppers freeze WELL. Jalapeno poppers with cream cheese and bacon are YUMMY! Need to try to make and freeze them this year. I still have a bag or two of jalapeno peppers in the freezer. Don't try to dry jalapeno's, it just does not work; Maybe if we had a dehydrator it would be better.
• Kohlrabi is still one of my favorites! To grow and eat
• Onions grew better than I expected.

We also planted the "landscaped" area that was dug up in 2006 last summer. The grass, Russian sage, one lavender and other plant that I can't remember right know grew wonderfully. The rest never grew. I just emailed Gurnseys to get a copy of my order for replacements. The plants that came back look very healthy so far!

Split the grass clump on the west side of the house earlier this spring. All my tulips and daffodils there are in full bloom, already! Need to plant MORE DAFFODILS towards the north side of the house and some later blooming tulips, too. The salmon colored ones I have bloom on the early end of things.