Busy weekend

It was a beautiful weather weekend and a busy garden weekend. I...

1. Planted a 25 foot row of potatoes. These were seed potatoes purchased from Lowes. I planted two varieties: yukon gold and red norland. This is double the quantity of potatoes I planted last year. Last year I did a 13 foot row of red norlands which yielded a 33 pound harvest. This planting is in the northern most raised bed of the sun garden. Our planned move date is 6/10, so if the potatoes follow last year's pattern, we will only enjoy a few stolen potatoes from this planting. The new owners will get the bounty. This row was heavily composted in the fall and was treated with Urea and Sulphur last week. This row grew peas last fall and potatoes last spring.
2. Planted 1/2 of a 20 foot row of beets, carrots, green onions, radishes in Sun garden raised bed #2. This row was also treated with Urea and Sulphur last week. This row grew corn and broccoli last summer. 1/2 of it was sown with white clover cover crop in the fall.
3. Planted more peas. The peas that were sown in November sprouted a couple weeks ago, but it is clear that there was serious seed loss to this planting. Maybe only one in five seeds sprouted. So I filled in empty spots in this sun garden row #3 with new pea seeds. There are two varieties planted in this row - green arrow (pod peas) and snow peas. This soil was not treated. I also planted more snow peas in the tepee garden.
4. Planted yellow onions from 1 pound of sets. These are in the final sun garden row #4. They complete the row that was sown last fall with leeks. Soil treated with compost in the fall, urea and sulpher last week.
5. Planted 6 romaine and 6 buttercrunch lettuce seedlings in the cold frame. It is clear that our impending move has made me abandon one of last season's garden goals: not purchase any nursery stock. Indoor seed starting isn't the most attractive thing for prospective home buyers to see, so that goal got tossed for the greater good. Hopefully these seedlings will allow us some late March and early April salads while we wait for the coldframe lettuce patch to mature.
6. Planted two small rows of Kale and 12 red cabbage seedlings in the chimney garden. The cabbage I interplanted with a ton of spinach seedlings.
7. I also turned and chopped the compost hoping to fire it up. Parts of the pile were plenty hot - other parts were cold and soggy. I am guessing it will be ready for spreading in a couple weeks.

The strange thing about all this work is that we will not likely enjoy more than 10 pounds of what I planted today. I am essentially gardening this year for three reasons - First - I refuse to turn this beautiful soil back to grass. Second - It looks pretty. Third - I have this hope that the new owner will enjoy both the harvest and the garden. But more than any of those reasons, I continue to garden this season because I absolutely love it. I have reached the point where gardening is one of my favorite things. The journey is the reward.

Great news - I just finished my morning garden walk and noticed three asparagus spears sticking up. We also noticed the garlic popping up yesterday when we removed the winter covering of straw.

Replacement, replacement planting

Remember my last post where I said I planted peas, chard, beans and spinach in the main sun garden? It must have been a dream. Nothing has come up. Well almost nothing. The swiss chard is doing well. The former onion, root, and pea beds have done next to nothing. So this morning (almost two weeks later) - I tried again planting the exact same stuff. Green arrow peas, early bird garden beans, and spinach. I also tossed a few rows of winter greens in the cold frame - kale and mustard greens. I used a spot that I had previously filled with kale seeds - again nothing. The only thing I can think about the poor germination of these late July plantings is the the weather must have just been too hot and dry for them to get going. Only 60 days left till first frost (oct 15), so not much time for planting left. This weekend will likely be it.

The harvest weight is up to 212 pounds. We had a 23 pound harvest on Monday. About half of the harvest was tomatoes and the rest was corn and beans. A big heavy storm did some major damage to our main corn planting. It knocked all the stalks over. We harvested it all and we are definately dissappointed in the result. The ears were about 1/2-3/4 sized, but despite their kid-sized ears, the kernals tasted chewy and old - not sweet at all. The variety was Goldam Bantam - recommended by Sarah's grandfather. We only yielded 8 pounds of corn - which if you exclude the unedible ear is likely more like 4 edible pounds. This same garden row planted in tomatoes, potatoes or beans would have yielded much, much more. I won't be doing corn in the main garden next year. I love the look of it, and the stalks do wonders for the compost pile, but it just takes up too much space and light for a very small - not so tasty yield. Farmers stands will get my corn business next year.

Replacement plantings

This weekend I did a bunch of consolidating and replanting in the sq. foot gardens. The spring plantings in these 48 - 1 ft square mini plots were either harvested or spent. I harvested the two remaining onion plots, which yielded almost 30 medium sized yellow onions. There were a bunch of plots of carrots, lettuce, and beets which the groundhog absolutely decimated, which gave us nothing. I added a bunch of compost, reworked the soil and replanted. Sq foot garden #2 is now all peppers, tomatoes and eggplants - three things which the groundhog does not have a taste for. It also holds one small artichoke plant (a transplant from a neighbor). Sq foot garden #1 was empty except for three squares of climbing cucumbers, which are doing well. I planted the remaining squares as follows:

• 3 sq basil
• 2 china choy
• 1 slenderrette beans
• 1 red mustard
• 2 cilantro
• 2 green beans
• 1 radish
• 2 green onion
• 2 buttercrunch lettuce
• 2 kale
• 2 romaine

All of this stuff will be tasty for the groundhog, so I am going to need to fence it in or transplant it before too long. Much of it I tossed in the ground thinking that I would eventually transplant it to the cold frame, which is next on my hit list for a remodeling. Not sure whether July was too early for some of these winter veggies to get started, but seems like I always wait too long.

Easter chores

These photos are of the strawberry wall (see previous post). Yuck - I hate this section. The strawberries are on the low side of the hill, very top of the wall. In the plastic I planted pumpkins and mellons last year. I have the same plans this year. Like I said yesterday - a wonderful permanent solution awaits. I just haven't been inspired yet.

I planted some corn today. One of the sun garden rows is dedicated to corn. I have a variety called Golden Bantam. This variety is supposed to stay about 3-4 ft tall. I didn't want the 9 ft variety I planted last year in the sun garden rotation plan because it would likely shade another row or two, but I am hoping the golden bantam plays nice with the neighbors. I planted about 1/4 of the row (the east section - gets the most sun). I planted corn in the sun garden last year on 4/20 and it did well. It came up fast, so I needed to cover it a few chilly nights, but for the most part it was a nice garden success story. Not entirely sure I have enough goldam bantam seed to fill this row.

I planted three herbs that came in the mail from Shumway. I think they are chives and taragon. These are for Sarah's herb garden, but they had been sitting around the house for a couple of days, so I just stuck them in the ground in a temp location.

I potted up some tomatoes yesterday. I started these in flats a while back, and I have them scheduled for either pots or cold frames soon. I potted them in soil/compost mix to give them some nutrients and a little more room to grow. Their roots had pretty much filled out the six packs.

1. Early bird garden - started 2/27 - 3 seelings - final destination is likely in large pots
2. Shebyogan - started 3/9 - 5 seedlings - this variety is said to do well in hanging baskets, so I might try that
3. Silver fir - started 3/7 - 5 seedlings - These may get a row in the sun garden along with the cherry tomatoes that I have going. I may move them to the cold frame next.
   

The pepper seeds are now doing much better. 17 have emerged and one flat is still pretty fresh, so I expect at least that many more. I will have enough.

I did another 1/4 lb kale, beet leaf harvest for Easter dinner. We had a side dish of carrots, kale, beet leaves mixed with balsmic vinegar. Total 2009 havest to date 1 3/4 lbs.

I rowed on the water this morning. While we were rowing I noticed a rain barrel washed up on the shore. After the row I nabbed it and made another one. This now gives me five working barrels. I still need one more for myself, and a few more for friends who have put in orders.

Scales and Strawberries

I read another garden blog the other day. This blogger is weighing her harvest this year. I kind of like that idea. I am a numbers guy. I believe in goals and accountability. Sure - let's weigh the harvest. We have a baby scale just collecting dust in the basement, which should work just fine. This morning I harvested 1/2 pound of kale and asparagus. I'll estimate the other 4 harvests at 1/4 pound each. So lets say so far I have 1 1/2 pounds of produce. Fine start for early April. Since I haven't weighed my food since Thanksgiving 1997, I have no idea what kind of poundage to estimate for our year's harvest, so I'll refrain.

Just as a the sun rose this morning, I headed out in the yard to work in the strawberry patch. This patch has been a real struggle for me. It occupies one of our few very sunny spots of yard, but it is on a steep hill, hidden behind a thick hedge of private. It is also on top of a 30 foot wall with no fence or handrail to keep me from plummeting to my death, should I tug a weed a little to hard. Are you getting the idea why this section of yard has been tough for us to figure out? Before we moved in this section of yard was just a weed festival. The previous owner mowed it about once a month with a weed whacker. I did that the first year myself. But as our only truly sunny spot, I just refuse to waste this yard. It is also visible from the street, so allowing weeds to fester is just plain bad for neighbor relations. Last year I ordered about 150 strawberry roots from two different nurseries. It was a fiasco. They were crappy to begin with, then I couldn't get them in the ground right away, so I lost a ton of them. When I finally got around to planting them, it was a struggle. The weeds just overtook the tiny little plants so quickly. Anyway - no crying over rotted strawberries. This is the first time I have looked at the berries this spring. About 50 remain alive. I composted them, consolidated them and spread hardwood mulch around them. The ones that lived look just fine. I expect we'll get some berries this year. But I still don't think this is the permanent final solution for this section of yard. I'm sure we'll struggle with this for years.

Picked up a 1/2 yard of hardwood mulch today and spread it in various spots including the Koi pond, strawberry patch and shed wall.

I cut a river barrel in half today. It had a strong odor of oil, and I wasn't able to clean it out well enough to make it into a rain barrel. So I cut it in half and made a big garden basket out of one half of it. It holds about 10 five gallon buckets of mulch, compost, brush - you name it. It works pretty well, but can get to be very heavy filled with mulch.

Snow in April?

We got some overnight snow last night and it continued on into the morning. This photo and video show our backyard and major veggie garden (we call it the sun-garden). In the snow you can really see the raised beds and garden paths. It isn't ridiculously cold this morning and it is neat to see the flowers standing tall with snow on their petals.

Another meal of kale, and asparagus last night. We are harvesting something just about every other day now. The asparagus is wonderful. We have swallowed approx 25 spears so far. About half of them are big fatties and the other half are a little skinny. I was reading about aspargus last night, and it sounds like I should keep my asparagus harvest to a little more than a month (a least on the skinny ones) to give them another year to thicken up. I was super, super aggressive with the spacing of my aspargus bed. I was unwilling to sacrifice the 4-5ft between rows that the books recommend, so I planted them tight - probably 12-18 inches diameter between root plantings. Because of that bold move, I intend to make sure that these roots are always first on the list for a thick layer of compost. I read an interesting strategy for extending the asparagus harvest season into the fall. This book says you should harvest 1/2 your bed in the spring, and let the other 1/2 grow into ferns without harvesting it. Then in September you snip all the ferns off of the unharvested section. The book said this section will regrow, allowing a fall harvest. It is said to be a super sweet harvest with the cold night air giving it the sweetness. I don't think I have a large enough bed to try this, but maybe after we tear out the driveway we will expand our bed.

Hot butt and dump

No this is not a compost recipe. This is a kids game that we played today while we gardened. We loaded up the hot and steamy compost into the wheelbarrow and then sat the kids on top of it (Hot Butt). "All hands and feet inside the ride please". Once the wheelbarrow, compost and kids reached the destination, they all got dumped! Hence the title for this post "Hot butt and dump!" Now don't you wish you were five again.

We did a ton in the yard today. I was outside from 7:30 till about 5 pm. Most of our effort was spent creating a brand new garden bed. This will be a partial sun to full shade bed that runs in front of the weeping wall (ask me later). It is about 20 ft long and about 6 feet wide at its widest point, but it serpentines. Sarah wanted to make this bed to help soften the wall and give us a little privacy from our neighbor. Yesterday we planted a cherry and a rose in this section - today was all about soil turning and prep. I turned all the sod. Sarah and Quinn chopped it and broke up the dirt clods. Then I mixed in about 7 wheelbarrows of compost.

I can't say enough about our compost operation at this point. Today was 4/4, and we were using compost that we basically started on 3/7. It was so hot as I peeled it off the pile that you had to pull your hand away after about 3 seconds of touching it. It is a deep brown and smells absolutely wonderful. This new section of garden really made a dent in our compost - our "black gold pile" is down around two feet high - from almost 5 feet a couple weeks ago. The good news is that I added just about as much or more material to the "green bin". I did a really nice job of layering these additions as we worked today. I would add a layer of sod (upside down), spread some lime and greensand on top of that, and then add about 4 inches or so of sticks and leaves. I repeated this several times.

Veggie work today was limited, but I did do some minor stuff. I planted approx 20 onion seedlings that I had started from seed. I put these in the chimney garden.

I also did a sun study today - a chart telling me when and where the sun is hitting all our various plots. Do you know we have over 15 mini plots? Isn't that amazing? Our property is just wonderful. I did a couple of these sun studies last year, but we have added so many plots that I wanted an update. Our current parking pad is of course our sunniest spot - and as each day goes by, we are closer to getting out the sledgehammer and converting this to yard.

I harvested one large kale, 9 small spinach, and snipped about 10 onion tops. I made a really nice egg dish with all this good stuff and homemade bread. It was delicious. Of course Carter could barely sit at the same table with us - He HATES EGGS!

To Do List

It's Saturday and the weather is promising (30 degrees now - 51 high), so today will certainly spent digging in the dirt. It is too early right now to go out and wake up the neighborhood, so here is my to-do list for the day.

1. Build second sq. foot garden. The wood is cut, I just need to fit it together and fill it up with dirt.
2. Work soil in West half of sun garden. Make paths, add compost, remove green manure.
3. Plant potatoes. They came in the mail last week. I need to get them in the ground.
4. Prep soil in traditional cold frame, bring out various seedlings for hardening off - Pansys, mesculin pots, cabbage, brocolli flat
5. Plant various in cold frame and sq. foot garden #2.

I could say a million more things that are on my garden mind, but realistically I think that is all I can likely accomplish today. I'll check back this evening to see how I did.

End of day update: Well I actually did everything on this list - whopee!

Sq foot garden #2 was the first thing I worked on. It is 4ft by 6ft just like its brother. I conditioned the soil with bone meal, lime and compost. I planted all the squares but 7. Here is what I put in it.

1. Leek seed - one square
2. Spinach 18 seeds - two squares
3. Swiss chard - 9 seeds - one square
4. Seed saver lettuce - 5 seeds - one square
5. Beets - 18 seeds - two squares
6. Buttercrunch lettuce - 5 seeds - one square
7. Radish - 16 seeds - one square
8. Broccoli - 2 seeds - two squares
9. Carrots - 16 seeds - one square
10. Green onions - 16 seeds - one square
11. Red Cabbage - 2 seeds - two squares
12. Rhubarb seedling
13. Geranium seedling
    

The rhubarb seedling appeared to die almost immediately. Guess they aren't fans of cooler weather. I do not intend to cover this garden in plastic, since I didn't do many seedlings. I am fully prepared to lose the rhubarb and geranium.

Next project was in the sun garden. I also mixed bone meal in this section. I had previously mixed lime and compost. I created the main sunken path at approx 24 inches wide and one side path (north one). This gave me access to the north west raised bed for my potatoes. To prepared the soil, I took the dirt that I removed from the sunken path and threw it on top of the raised be area which had a smattering of green manure and compost laying on top. I worked it modestly with my fork and rake, but mostly just pulled large chunky stuff and green manure out with my hands. Then I dug 25 8 inch holes. I put the potatoe chunks in the bottom of the holes and buried them with about 2 inches of dirt. These were red norland potatoes from shumway. The plan is to continue to bury them as the sprouts break the surface. One book I read last night says I should spread one inch of chunky compost on top of them and then mulch them with apprx 6 inches of straw. I may do just that - if I can find straw around here. I am told to expect between 6 and 8 potatoes per plant, and that they can be eaten at almost any stage of maturity, since they are red.

The soil in the far west side of this section (grew corn and a fall planting of peas last year) looked absolutely wonderful. The rest of the soil was pretty rocky (from my paths last year), and had big sticks and chunks from my not so finished compost. But for the most part it looked nice and loamy. I did have to pull out another couple of concrete block chunks left over from the pond that I tore out last year.

Cold frame update: While I was prepping the soil in the sun garden, I transplanted 3 spinach plants that had survived the winter and are starting to green back up. I put them in the traditional cold frame and hit them with compost tea. I also watered everything that had previously been planted with compost tea. It is a nice light brown color coming out of the rain barrell. I wonder if I need to change the bag of compost at the bottom of the barrel from time to time.

Seed update: I saw a lot of new seedlings popping up today. SQ foot garden #1 now has the radishes growing in full force. I also saw two new spinach seedlings and one brocoli seedling popping up. I may have seen some buttercrunch lettuce popping up, but this may be a weed - still too soon to tell. In the traditional cold frame the spinach seeds are turning to seedlings, I saw some pak choi hit the surface, and I may have seen some kale. The geraniums I planted as seedlings in this cold frame about a week ago are certainly dead.