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.

soil analyses, coldframes and seedlings

This winter I scooped up two cups of our garden soil and sent it away to Penn State for some testing. They sent it back with some surprising data. Our PH is 7.5. While most PA gardeners are adding lime to their plots, I have been instructed to add sulfur to mine. They also recommended adding Urea for a nitrogen boost. I wonder whether the limestone house is responsible for our higher PH. If you look very closely at our walls you can sometimes even spot little seashells buried in the stone.

Anyway today I did as instructed and added the recommended quantity of both sulphur and Urea. I also built our coldframe in order to use it as a spring seed starter for cold tolerant plants. I planted a mix of lettuce (broadcast), radishes, green onions, onions, brussel sprouts, beets, spinach and carrots. All of this is covered with metal chicken wire and plastic for a cheap and easy cold frame.

In one of my main sun garden plots, I planted my broccoli seedlings. They are about 6 inches tall and have been transplanted and hardened off. I hope they make it. A mid-march planting date may have been too aggressive, but I am hoping for an early harvest before we move.

Finally, I stirred the compost. It is a very cold soggy mix right now. Hoping that this stirring will fire it up.

13 lb Mid-November Harvest

We had a beautiful weather weekend on the 14th and 15th of November, so we worked in the yard. We can still harvest a nice salad just about whenever we want. The current staples are lettuce, spinach, mustards, chinese choi, broc, radish, carrots and peas. This weekend we also harvested some quantity as we cleaned out the remaining carrots and beets from the large patio pots. We also harvested a nice 5 pound red cabbage to mix with the beets for some weekend borscht. We had two wonderful harvest surprises as well. I ran across a nice little red norland potato mixed in with the peas and I discovered a huge 3 pound zucchini (our only one this year). It was buried underneath the privite hedge beyond the garden fence. It still looks good, so I am hoping for some fried zucchini for the Steeler game today. All in all it was a 13 pound harvest. Not bad for mid-November.

The rest of our garden effort this weekend was focused on the compost cycle. We would load up the big huge blue garden bucket (1/2 a rain barrel) with leaves, spent veggies and flowers, and make a green compost deposit. Then we would fill the same bucket with the black gold for garden distribution. All in all we added about 10 huge buckets of compost to various garden plots. I just spread it on top pretty thick, and didn't even bother to till it into the soil. I am slowly moving to a no-till garden approach. I exhausted the black gold supply during this exercise. Now both compost piles are green. One is completely full. The other has 16 inches of fresh add-ins.

What a nice weekend.

Garden update

It has been a long time since I've posted to my little electronic garden notebook. Certainly there has been some garden activity in the interim - it's just that the late summer activity is all about harvest and weeding and watering - not exactly noteworthy stuff. Anyway - as garden season starts to wind down, I am going to continue the single veggie posts and start some 2010 planning notes. For today - I'll just play a little catch-up...

Harvest Weight - 412 pounds - We are still harvesting quite a variety. Yesterday we had a salad made with 11 garden veggies (chard, spinach, beet leaves, romaine, carrots, red onions, grape tomatoes, cukes, peas, green beens,brocoli). It was really tasty. The romas have been the bulk of our recent harvests, but their production is dwindling fast. Two weeks ago I harvested 17 pounds of romas, this morning only yielded 6 pounds. I am really proud of our harvest this year. By the time I put the garden scale away for the winter we will likely be near 450 pounds of home grown organic food. That is a lot. For a frame of reference my entire family of 6 weighs in at 445 pounds. So we grew and ate our weight in food this year. That is fantastic. I am sure we ate more veggies this year than we ever have in our lives. Now that I have a baseline harvest weight established, I can't wait to try to beat this target next year.

I have been canning a lot in the evenings. It has been going very well. We have a wide variety in the pantry this winter as opposed to an entire basement of spaghetti sauce last year. More on this process to come in a detailed canning post later.


Leek note: Mary Ann - my Verona garden friend who lives down by the river, gave us a bunch of leeks from her garden a couple weeks ago. They were about 4 inches tall. She told me they will be ready to harvest in spring. I am hoping that I can plant a summer crop of peppers or tomatoes in their place after their harvest. I put them in the former onion plot in the sun garden.

Asparagus note: I am trying for a small fall harvest of asparagus. I read about this strategy in a book once. This weekend (9/13) I cut the ferns on about 1/2 of our asparagus plot. I snipped them off as close to ground level as I could manage. Then I covered this section with fresh compost. The book said that I can expect a fall harvest of asparagus as these plants send shoots back up. With the cool fall weather these shoots are supposed to be super-tasty. Crossing my fingers.

Cooking note: Roasted Beets and Carrots are just about the best darn side dish ever invented. Just toss a bunch of beets and carrots in a big alum foil pack, drizzle them with olive oil and some rosemary and put them in a 400 degree oven. They will take a while to cook. when you take them out you can skin the beets easily and slice the whole pile up. The beets turn the carrots the nicest color and the tastes blend together. It is the bomb. Sarah has been talking about this side dish for days. She wants it to become a Thanksgiving staple.

Replacement Planting

I planted three raised beds in the sun garden this morning. The spring snap pea bed was filled with compost, raked and replanted with some green arrow peas. The spring root crop bed, which never produced like we hoped, was filled with compost, raked and replanted with early bird garden green beans. The spring onion bed was filled with compost, raked and replanted with a variety of greens (spinach, lettuce, chard, radish).

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.

35 pound harvest

Today's harvest was unlike anything we have seen before in the Stacy garden. We pulled out 3 lbs of beats, 5 lbs of carrots, 3 lbs of green beans, 2 lbs of shallots, two pounds of salad fixings (lettuce, peas, brocoli), and 20 lbs of potatoes. Sarah and the kids had been away for the better part of the last two weeks, so we had a little backlog of harvestable stuff in the garden. We ended up preserving a lot of our harvest. We canned 5 pints of green beans, 3 pints of carrots, and two pints of beets. We also braided and dried the shallots - see photo. We had a delicious hungarian green bean and potatoe soup yesterday for dinner. I also made two big containers of vegetable stock using all the chopped off parts of the veggies - including a few stolen lower cabbage leaves. The stock had a nice reddish brown color to it and will be a fine base for some of our winter soups.

All this harvesting freed up quite a bit of garden space today. You should see some planting posts coming soon. Our harvest weight is now over 89 pounds.

Long time no post

Recent Activity -

• Sowed three mini rows of slenderette beans in the sun garden (sun garden now completely planted)
  
• Sowed eggplants and peppers (11 total) in both sq foot gardens. These were transplants from the cold frame. They replaced various empty lettuce and spinach spots that had previously been harvested by either human or groundhog.
  
• Sowed one grape tomato in a 10 inch pot
• Sowed 4 - 3 foot rows of carrots in the cold frame. I have had germination problems with my carrots this year. My theory is that I planted them too deep because I feared the cold weather from the early plantings. With this batch I just barely scratched a line in the soil and covered the seeds with 1/8 inch or peat moss. I am hoping for better germination. These rows replaced spinach and lettuce from prior harvests.
• Sowed one 10 inch pot of carrots. This pot replaced my highly successful January planting of carrots. I am guestimating this pot gave us approx 20 carrots - some as long as 8 inches.
  
• Covered lettuce in cold frame with burlap to provide some shade and groundhog protection (this is working well).
• Attempted to propogate the following Privite, Hydrandgea, rhododendren, impatiens, and holly. I snipped about 6 inches of new growth off each, cut off the lower leaves and planted them in seed starter mix.
• Thinned the tomatoes planted in the sun garden down to 4 total. They were too tight. There is now approx 18 inches between plants. I caged the two large ones. Unfortunately I am not exactly sure which variety I thinned out. I think I thinned the grape tomatoes - hence the pot planting above.
• Worked the compost piles - See detailed post to follow. I love the compost piles!
  

Harvest has been both exciting and dissappointing. The peas have dissapointed. Despite significant growth, three plots and lots of blossoms, I am only harvesting approx 10 peas a day. That is just silly. How many flipping peas do I need to plant for a decent daily harvest? The exciting recent harvest has been the brocoli. We have harvested 4 heads so far. They were each approx 4 inches in diameter and very tasty. I attempted to leave the side shoots and am hoping for significant follow-up harvests. Our total harvest weight now exceeds 24 pounds. Carter is getting a little tired of salads despite my best efforts to change things up with different lettuces and dressings.

Pea blossoms

The weather has been wonderful and we have been busy planting, expanding and harvesting.

Planting:

• Started 10 musk mellon seeds and 10 pumpkin seeds indoors
• succession planting of 5 small spinach rows in the high wall garden- between romas (more on spinach below)
• succession planting of approx 10 seed saver lettuce seedlings in low wall garden (between romas)
• transplanting of various lettuce from sq foot garden to sun garden to get away from the critter that has been feasting on them

Expanding:

• We created a large new flower border - approx 25 X 4 ft, and expanded another. These plots border our back yard walls and had previously held a smattering of bulbs and annuals at the base of the wall. We like flowers more than grass, so we expanded. We filled these new plots with various perennials that we transplanted from our other perennial gardens. We planted bamboo, hosta, rhodadendron, black eyed susan, daisy, mountain blewett, calencho, sweet woodruff, mini irises, large irises, ferns, lillies, and mums. We also bordered these plots with impatien seedlings that we started indoors. This new garden gets very little sun.
  

Harvesting:

• Spinach - We did our second large spinach harvest of the season. We now have over 2 pounds (3 one gallon freezer bags) of spinach in the freezer just waiting for our winter soups and pizzas. While I am excited about the quantity of spinach that we have harvested so far, I am concerned about the remaining crop. It might have a blight. Many of the leaves are turning a whitish color and drooping. The harvest yesterday took just about all the large leaves, so we'll know for sure in a week or two if this little blight is going to take the rest of our crop. I planted 4 new rows of spinach in a totally different garden plot this morning in an effort to keep us in some spinach even if the current crop doesn't make it. The beet leaves are suffering from a similar problem.
  
• Asparagus - still coming in at a rate of about 3-5 stalks a day. I have been roasting it in the oven with Emerril's Essense for a nice late night snack while I watch the Penguins - Yummy!
• Harvest weight is @14 lbs and 26 harvests
  

Other:

• I did something goofy to the compost piles today. I had some 4 inch black drain pipe laying around. I drilled a bunch of holes in it and buried one 4 foot section (standing tall) in the center of each pile. All I have read says that proper pile aeration is one of the keys to quick compost. Most recommend frequent turning (which I do), but I have seen the smokestack approach recommended a few times as well. The idea here is that this pipe allows the gasses to escape from the pile and introduces fresh air allowing the various bacteria to do their thing.
  
• The other photo is a mid-May update of our main sun garden.
• Note: We saw our first pea blossoms last year on 5/26. So we are 12 days earlier this year. I planted an "early bird garden" short pea this year on 2/28. Very few actually germinated, so I filled in with snow peas a couple weeks later. I also had this section covered with a mini-cold frame through the late winter. Anyway - It was a lot of work for 12 days of extra pea harvest, but I bet we'll be enjoying the fruits of that labor very soon. We have also been harvesting pea leaves for salads and spring rolls for a couple of weeks.
  

Braccias, eggplants and peppers

Well - our baby was finally harvested this weekend, so we welcome a new gardener to the family.

In the days leading up to the birth, we kept active in the garden a little bit. Yesterday I transplanted 5 eggplant, and 6 peppers into the cold frame. These were started as seeds in a six packs on or around 3/11. They had gotten to be about 4 inches high and I was afraid that their roots were going to get too bunched up in those six packs if I kept them confined much longer. I don't plan to plant them unprotected in the garden until June, so that is still a long time to wait. I prepared a small section in the cold frame and covered them with one layer of plastic. I plan to keep these covered in the evenings and on cloudy days. On sunny days I will open it up for ventilation.

I also did some various transplanting this weekend. I moved the cabbage and broccoli out of the cold frame and into their permanent homes in the sun garden. For the most part these seedlings have done quite well. Throughout the early spring I noticed that a few broccoli leaves had begun to be eaten by critters. I very liberally plucked these seedlings and tossed them in the compost pile. So the remaining seedlings (both broc and cabbage) are very healthy and big. I'd say they are between 6 and 8 inches high. There are 14 total (6 cabbage and 8 broccoli). I spaced them approx 12 inches apart. I composted the bottom of the planting hole and also side-dressed the seedlings with compost. This sun garden plot also has some spinach and green onions growing in between the braccias. The groundhog has not found the sun garden yet, so I am hoping that these veggies are safe. He ate all the braccias in the sq foot garden.

I weeded, respaced, and composted the cold frame lettuce and spinach. I could not be happier with the health and vibrancy of these. Not a bug hole in site, and big thick spinach leaves. These are much, much better than any spinach I have ever grown before. The romaine lettuce is also top notch. Some of those heads are approaching 1/2 size. One head now will give us a full family salad.

I dropped a few radish seeds in the corn row of the sun garden in order to keep the succession planting moving along. My radishes took a hit from the groundhog last week.

I hilled up the potatoes for the first time. They look wonderful and seem to grow 6 inches a day.

I planted some foxglove, delphinium, and rhubarb inside in homemade seed starter mix. I had previously started all these seeds inside in January and it is looking like that was way too early. The seedlings started strong and were ready to transplant long before the outside temps were ready. Then they just got weak and leggy inside. I doubt any of the transplants that we tried will survive. So we are trying again.

The harvest is up to 6.5 pounds for the season. Asapargus, spinach, lettuce and onion tops are being harvested daily. As you can see in the photo, we are also harvesting cut flowers including iris, lilac, azelea, and bleading heart

Tomatoes

I was sick all week and weekend too. But I did manage to do a little work in the yard...

1. Seeded approx 4 rows of lettuce - mesculan, romain, and buttercrunch
2. Planted 7 tomato seedlings in the sun garden - two grape, two silver fir, three early bird garden - these I am covering at night with cloches made from 1 gallon milk jugs sliced in half.
3. weeded and composted the sq foot garden #1. Added several seeds of various, wherever some were missing.
4. Seeded three rows of carrots in the sun garden (root plot)
5. Seeded three rows of corn in the lower wall garden
6. Seeded approx 1/3 sun garden plot of peas
7. Transplanted three silver fir tomato seedlings to pots - two hanging.

4 am garden work

We are literally minutes away from spending a couple days in the hospital harvesting the baby seed we planted 9 months ago, so work has been heavy and sleep has been light. This morning I woke up (with a little help from Sarah) at 4 am. I decided to spend this cold, foggy morning in the garden. I started several seeds way too early. Now that we are supposedly past the last hard frost of the year, I decided to throw caution to the wind and plant some of these leggy, crummy seedlings and hope for a miracle.

1. Rhubarb - I planted about 10 of these. At one time about a month ago these were one of my indoor seed starting success stories. Now they are just barely alive. I put 4 in their permanent bed on the north west side of the house "blueberry garden". I hope that at least one survives. I planted the remaining 6 in a temporary location in the cherry tree garden - for future transplanting. NOTE FOR NEXT YEAR - I don't feel like looking it up now, but whenever I started these seeds this year was probably about 2 full months too early.
2. Sunflowers - We started these as seeds about three weeks ago as a church nursery project with the kids. They shot up fast. I have had a couple in pots outside for the last week or so, and while they aren't thriving (they are kind of leaning over), they aren't dead yet either. So I decided to plant the rest this morning. I put about 10 in the ground. I planted 7 at the base of our first wall along the alley. This section is historically a weed festival, but we have been trying to convert it to something at least manageable. We have transplanted lots of pacasandra, and dafadils over the last two years. We also have tried to get rhodadendron seedlings to take in this section with mixed success. I added these sunflower to the very front section hoping to add some sparkle to the folks driving up Center avenue. The three other sunflower I planted in the sun garden at the end of my garden paths.
3. Geraniums - much like the rhubarb, I was very proud of these geraniums about 2 months ago. Now they just make me sad to look at. I planted three of them next to the sunflower in the sun garden.
   

I also seeded a couple rows of buttercrunch lettuce this morning in the traditional cold frame. It has been a while since I have sowed lettuce.

This morning photos are of cold frame lettuce and brocolli and our asparagus patch. Mom if you are reading this - you will be eating some of this soon!

Third salad

Another salad for lunch today - 2 romaine, 3 spinach and some onion tops. All three of these veggies began inside and were planted in the sq foot garden cold frame. The salad was delicious. Now that a bunch of stuff is popping up, I am more willing to harvest my meager little seedlings.

What is doing well?

1. Beets in the planter are doing excellent. The beet leaves which I have harvested twice already, are big and vibrant. If I would have taken the time to check on them this afternoon, I certainly could have had a bigger salad.
   
2. Aspargus - We counted 21 spears poking up now. The largest is about 4 inches tall. I bet we will have our first aspargus harvest next weekend. They are growing about 4 inches a week.
   
3. Spinach - all over the garden little spinach seedlings are emerging. The seedlings that are planted in the cold frames are growing quite well and are about 8 leaves per plant.
4. Peas in the sun garden - These are popping up everywhere and very thick. These peas are kicking the holy crap out of the peas that I planted in the cold frame. Those are really spotty despite the fact that I planted about 100 of them, I bet only 20 seeds have emerged yet.

After my harvest, I replaced the lettuce and spinach with 4 small seed savers lettuce seedlings. These were started on 3/9. They aren't huge, but big enough to survive I hope. I also replaced a dead geranium in sq foot garden #2 with 4 swiss chard seedlings.

Compost

You got yourself a whole mess of compost pictures and videos here today. It was a nice afternoon , so I cut out of work a little early and headed home to play in the dirt. Quinn and I stirred, turned, chopped and piled the compost. It was absolutely amazing. All the books told me not to use leaves and not to use wood chips in my compost. Well this pile is just about nothing but leaves and wood chips - layered with mushroom manure. Let me tell you it couldn't have been cooking hotter. Steam was just cascading off the pile as I dug and turned it. The whole pile looks beautiful. Keep in mind this contains an entire winter's worth of cardboard boxes, paper bags, rope, banana peels, avacodo cores, apple cores, jimmy johns cups, and even two "compostable plastic cups" (see photo). Just about everything was broken down. Even the compostable cups are well on their way to decomposition.

This isn't my first foray into composting. I have had a couple smallish piles for years, but these two 25 cubic foot bins are an operation unlike any that I have ever had before. First off the quantity is astounding. After my work this afternoon, I have one completely full bin. Inside this bin are 2 full truck loads of wood chips, two full truckloads of mushroom manure, an entire fall worth of raked leaves and an entire winter worth of kitchen scraps. That is an amazingly big pile! I actually think we are going to have enough compost this year. The other astounding thing is how quickly this stuff is breaking down. Keep in mind these piles sat dormant and frozen for most of the winter. Only three weeks ago on 3/7 did I activate them for the first time by layering in manure and stirring them. Now on 3/27 they are just burning up, and breaking down. It is utterly amazing. I said in my last post that I thought we would have compost by June. Well that seems ridiculous to say today. Heck we can start pulling compost out of this finished pile in a couple weeks if we need it. All we need to do is wait for it to cool down a little. Check out the video above of the steam coming off of the compost pile.

I did some planting today also...

1. buttercrunch lettuce seeds approx 30 in chimney garden
2. romaine lettuce seeds approx 30 in traditional cold frame
3. spinach - approx 15 transplants, and 10 seeds in cold frame
4. 5 red cabbage transplants in cold frame
5. 3 buttercrunch lettuce transplants in cold frame
6. 2 brocolli transplants in cold frame
7. 14 onion transplants in cold frame

I also fashioned ribs for the cold frame out of some 1/2 pvc piping that I had laying around the basement. These ribs should help allow the rain to cascade off of the cold frame and not puddle. They also give the plants a little more room as they start to grow.

A little later in the evening I did some indoor seed starting...

1. 12 california wonder (shumway 2008) bell peppers
2. 12 serano hot peppers
3. about 10 aneheim chili peppers started in wet paper towel and plastic bag to see if they have any life to them at all.
4. transplanted one delphium to a larger pot
5. transplanted one foxglove to a larger pot

Second Harvest

We had another small salad for dinner last night. I harvested 2 small heads of romaine, three heads of spinach, about 5 beet leaves, and about 6 radish seedlings. The romaine harvest cleared out one of my squares in sq ft garden #1 (cold frame). I replanted this square with 5 more lettuce seeds (seed savers variety). The spinach harvest kicked our fall spinach that successfully wintered over. That was a nice little surprise. We certainly could not have made these two early salads without the spinach. You couldn't even taste the radishes.

The compost is hot, hot, hot. I can't wait to really dig in and turn it this weekend.

Harvest!

Well I did it. I ventured out into the 20 degree chill, opened the cold frames and harvested a salad for later today. It was 30 degrees inside the frames and the leaves were borderline frozen when I harvested them. I hope that doesn't ruin my plan for a nice taste of summer on the first weekend of spring. Anyway I harvested...

1. Chives from a six inch pot inside on a southern windowsill
2. Beet leaves from a 12 inch pot that has 5 beets in it. I took most of the usable leaves leaving about three young leaves per beet
3. Spinach - two full plants left over from a fall planting. They are small, but much bigger than any of the seedlings I have planted this year.
4. Romaine Lettuce - two small heads from seedlings started inside in Jan and planted outside in early March.

I can probably build two more salads of the same size and ingredients before I have wiped out the first seedlings of my succession plan. At this point it is hard for me to imagine the second wave of lettuce/spinach/beets will be harvestable (I love making up words) when the first wave is spent. There will probably be a long lapse between this salad and the next.

I will finish out the salad with some dried cranberries and nuts of some variety. Can't wait.

PM update: The salad turned out great. We each had a small one.

Later in the day we did some minor garden duties. Mainly I hauled two truckloads of rock (from the torn out herb planter) to my friend's "clean fill wanted pile". Then I built two Pea climbing apparati. One in the sun garden and one in the tepee garden. I used natural logs from various trees that I have cut down over the years. In each section, I built a frame with two posts and a crossbar. The peas will climb twine hanging down from the cross bar. Another pea popped up in the sun garden - makes two total. We haven't had any material rain yet this spring, so I filled the compost tea barrel with water from the hose.

Sarah spent a good deal of time outside while I watched the Pitt game. She helped load the rocks and watered all our new grass and various plantings.

Onions and Sidewalks

Today started late as it was 20 degrees at 8 am this morning. So we went to Chapons (Our favorite Pittsburgh nursery) early and worked late. At Chapons we bought some Walla Walla sweet and Red onion transplants (100 total), and some shallots. Both the shallots and the onions were super cheap at 1.99. Chapons also sells seed potatoes, but we didn't buy any. We also got some Greensand to add potasium to the soil. At noon I got to work. I began by doing some planting. In Sq. foot garden #2 I planted five more squares...

1. 15 shallots from Chapons
2. 9 spinach seeds
3. 16 green onion seeds
   
4. 5 Romaine seeds
5. 9 beet seeds

The most noteworthy planting was the beets. I removed all the soil from the square to a depth of about 18 inches. Then I loosened the bottom soil with a fork. I added back the top soil/compost mix by screening it through our wire lath screen. The beets should love this nice soft, loose home. The rhubarb and geranium are just about dead. If I wind up tossing those two, I have 4 squares left to plant in this garden.

Next I planted sugar snap peas. I planted these in the tepee garden. I worked the soil (it looks nice) and innoculated the peas. I bet I put about 100 in the ground. I put them all along the back of the tepee and along the house wall below the window. There are three rows covering about 15 linear feet total. If I am good about my climbing apparatus we may even be able to pick peas from inside the house by opening up the window.

My last planting for the day was to put 50 of the walla walla transplants in the sun garden. I have to admit I was getting a little worried about my seed onion transplants. They are so darn skinny, that I am losing confidence that they will amount to anything more than green onions for us. The 4 bucks spent on onion transplants was hopefully well-spent. Although this went against one of my garden goals (Buy no nursery stock).

When Sarah joined me outside (no kids - nap time and quiet play inside - that was nice), we removed the flagstone sidewalk leading to the barbeque. I pulled up the stones and Sarah spread new soil and sod. I also repositioned the flagstone sidewalk along the herb garden. I gave it a steeper curve and moved it out a couple of feet to give us more herb garden. This also gets my head a little farther away from the wisteria, which had become a headknocker for me. By consolidating and reusing the best flagstones, the remaining path has a much cleaner look. We will also really enjoy the extra herb space. This new and improved herb garden really looks nice.

A couple notables: I saw the first pea sprout poking through in the sun garden. That pea was planted exactly 14 days ago on 3/7. Wow that was fast. Those peas are not likely to be much behind the peas that were planted in the cold frame. But I need to remember that the ones planted in the sq. foot garden cold frame are a different variety. That may account for some of the difference.

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I did a little digging in the dirt yesterday when I got home from work. I cleared a path in the sun garden and tossed a few green manure seeds on the other paths. The green manure that I planted a couple of weeks ago is coming up on the paths pretty well. I hope that works well this year. I am excited to try something new and different with my garden paths, and the nitrogen in the soil and compost pile will be much appreciated. It will be nice to have the whole garden green. My big concern is that the clover and alfalfa won't hold up well to the foot traffic, and will just become a sloppy green wet mess - we'll see.

The inside seeds that we started on 3/11 are now popping up pretty consistently. I saw the first of the black romas hit the surface yesterday. Sarah's cumin and cupids dart also surfaced. The sunflowers we planted on 3/10 are doing well, except the moulin rouge ones that we got from Ryan and Kate. No sign of those yet. I hope those do well. A huge splash of red poking out of the garden would just be so exciting. Even the kids sunflowers that they just planted last week at church are starting to surface.

I am thinking about harvesting this weekend. I could nab enough lettuce, beet leaves and spinach for a small salad. I am struggling with my urge to begin harvesting or to let stuff grow longer. I keep telling myself that I should not protect these young plants, I have done a good job of planting a whole bunch in succession, so I should feel no guilt with an early harvest. When the first 8 lettuce and 9 spinach and 5 beets are all harvested (probably about 6 small salads later), there should be plenty ready to take their place on my dinner table. Anyway - the fact that I'm even thinking about a mid-March harvest is pretty amazing. We'll see this weekend whether I actually had the cohones to harvest my little seedlings.

PEAS!

That little green thing in the center of this photo is our first pea. I saw about 4 of them popping up in the square foot cold frame this morning. These were planted on 2/28. That is 19 days to sprout. Last year I planted our first peas on 3/20 and noticed the first sprout on 4/11 (22 days). So we are almost a full month earlier to first sprout. Hopefully that will translate into a full month more of tasty peas - one of our favorite garden vegetables. I also noticed beets popping up in the sq foot garden cold frame. These seeds were planted on 3/1, so 18 days for them. Radishes are popping up everywhere - including several places in our sun garden. This is the first growth in the sun garden. Now that we have peas coming up, I may do another small planting of them this weekend. I also need to establish some sort of climbing apparatus for them. The broccoli and lettuce I transplanted yesterday seems to have survived the heat (70 and sunny yesterday) and is doing fairly well. It rained last night, but not much - the rain barrels are still only about 1/3 full.

Foggy Bottom Boys

Besides being the single best name of a band in the history of the world, that title does a pretty good job of describing this morning. It is about 35 with a heavy, heavy fog. You feel it when you breathe. I have had a flat of broccoli and lettuce hardening off in the traditional cold frame for about a week. This morning I decided to plant some of it. I removed some old, spent kale, worked the soil with my deep tined fork (best gardening tool ever invented), added about 4 buckets of compost and a scoop of bone meal. Then I planted 15 broccoli and about 10 buttercrunch lettuce. The broc are about 12 inches apart and the lettuce I just scattered in between. These seedlings were started indoors 2/24. They are about 3 inches tall. The roots were good - full, but not yet being hampered by the small six packs. I watered them with compost tea.