New Toys!

My new garden knives arrived today!

Now, I get to go outside and see if the dirt's dried off enough to work with.

Planting in the Rain

This weekend was a bit of an experiment for me. I had some spare time and I really wanted to get some seeds in the ground. Unfortunately, it was raining. In the past I've had some success with transplanting seedlings out in a light rain. Cloud cover helps reduce the shock to the plant and, if the soil has been well-worked ahead of time, this can work well. Seeds appear to be a different story. For starters, the soil wasn't worked as well as I would like. Since our soil has a lot of clay, it was clumping and this made appropriate planting depth difficult to impossible. A more serious problem, though, was the handling of the seeds themselves. They were getting wet as I tried to spread them and they were sticking to each other and to my fingers. Moisture also got into my seed envelopes and I had to air them out or a while afterwards. Well, at least I learned something!

The ground is still too wet to work. Maybe by tomorrow or the next day I'll be able to get the rest of the bed planted. Hopefully, my new hori hori knives will arrive in the mean time!

First work of the year

Over the past few weeks, I've started to get out into the garden and get some work done.

The first thing I had to do was repair the greenhouse so I could get some seedlings started. The plastic covering did not hold up to the weather over the winter and had split and come open in multiple places. I repaired it with packing tape and am planning on working out a more permanent fix before next winter.

It doesn't zip up as well as it used to, but I can close off the top shelf and that seems to be enough to keep it warm. In the flat, I've planted tomato, tomatillo, eggplant, cumin, spinach and three kinds of chilli pepper. So far, only the spinach has sprouted.

The next job was to get my peas and potatoes planted. I turned this bed in the fall, but various weeds and grasses had taken over, forcing me to hoe it up again. The peas are planted in two rows on either side of the twine trellis running along the length of the bed. The potatoes are in the near area that's been worked. This is my first time trying potatoes.

This past week, I've moved on to planting some herbs and greens. My plan is to work 1/4 of my original garden area every two weeks, so I'll have a staggered harvest. When it warms up, I'll plant the purira peppers, the tomatillos, the eggplant and the cumin into whatever spaces I can find. The spinach will have to go out sooner and the tomatoes and other chillies will go into the garden on the other side of the house.

Over the past week, I've turned this area several times. Yesterday, I worked a good amount of compost into it and got a small bed of carrots planted in the upper left-hand corner. Today, I laid in a short row each of red onion, chinese cabbage, spinach, orach, cilantro, and calendula. Since it was raining, I'm not sure how successful this planting was. The seeds clumped up on me and were hard to spread right. Also, the clay soil didn't allow me to cover them like I would've preferred. When it dries up, I'll make sure the onion sets are covered properly. As for the seeds, I'll just have to wait and see. When the ground's dry later this week, I'll plant more of the same crops, continuing down the left hand side of the garden. In the circle, I'm planning on mixing dill and nigella.

I'm really enjoying the rosemary flowers and will try and postpone cutting it back as long as possible:

A Picture A Week

So, I've decided to take weekly pictures of my garden again this year.  This time, I'm taking them from the other side. Instead of leaning out the window, I'm shooting from the top of my tall step-ladder.

I know it's March, but let's call this one Week Zero:

3/17/2013 - No work done yet (well, you can see part of the bed I've turned to the left). That's bok choy flowering to the right, and some parsley and garlic near it that over-wintered. The rosemary is blooming nicely, too.

3/24/2013 - Spent some time this week turning about 1/4 of the garden and mixing in plenty of compost. Yesterday, I planted a small bed of carrots in the upper left-hand corner. Today I tried planting some seeds in the rain: bok choy, cilantro, calendula, orach, spinach, and onion sets. I'll plant in the rest of this area after it dries out later this week.

4/7/2013 - I skipped last week, but not a lot of change in that time.  I weeded the borage volunteers and finished planting the section to the left. Bok choy, arugula and orach are all starting to come up. Also, the onion bulbs are starting to sprout.

4/14/2013 - I got another 1/4 of this garden planted with herbs and greens and pruned the rosemary a bit.

Searching for Volunteers

Before starting to turn the soil for this year's garden, I had to have a look around to see what had come back from last year. So far, there aren't that many volunteers, but I did find a few things that I want to keep around:

Bachelor's Buttons

Borage

Calendula

Mystery greens

Nigella

 

 

 

 

Romaine Lettuce