heavy planting day

According to my PA master gardener guide, May 10th is the last day of average frost in Pittsburgh. I checked the 5 day forecast and the predicted low next week is 38 degrees. So I figured what the heck - lets get the remaining stuff in the ground this weekend.

This morning I planted...

1. 3 squares of pickling cucumbers. These replaced some of my earliest cabbage and brocoli plantings which were killed by the critter.
2. 2 squares of zucchini. These replaced a leek, which never took and seed saver lettuce, which also never took.
3. 1 square of butternut squash - replaced a nibbled broccoli.
4. 1 square of replacement carrots. The original 16 seeds had only germinated 6 carrots, so I added replacement seeds. I planted these replacements pretty thick, thinking I'll thin later. The single seed approach for carrots has certainly not worked well, as germination is a real issue.
5. I finished the sun garden raised bed pea planting. I put in about 50 innoculated goliath edible podded snow peas.
6. Like the carrots, the golden bantam corn has not germinated well so far. I planted the rest of these seeds with many of them filling in blank spots in my original planting. I bet the germination rate on this 4/13 planting was less than 20%. I'm hoping the cold had something to do with that and today's planting comes in nice and thick. I ran out of seeds and was only able to plant about 2/3 of this raised bed in corn.
   
7. In the remaining space of the corn bed, I planted approx 17 Fin de Bagnol bush beans. These were from a seed savers seed exchange. Beans and Corn are supposed to do well together. I interplanted pole beans with my corn last year and it was really cute.
   
8. I also tossed in three mini rows of green onions
9. I completed the root crop raised bed. I put in 4 rows of beets. 2 rows of cylindra and two rows of early wonders. I didn't bother with the deep trench and screened compost approach that I used for the first two plantings. I just decided to plant traditional rows with pretty tight spacing for future thinning. It will be a nice experiment to see if the additional effort of the first two plantings results in better beets. I also reseeded some carrots due to the bad germination rate of prior plantings.

I found a couple interesting volunteers this morning. One I believe was an avocado core, which had sprouted in the sq foot garden. The other was a stick from a tree, which was growing and new tree. The kids were excited about the tree, so I replanted it in a pot.

Yesterday I removed the green manure from the high wall garden and added it to the green compost. I also added 5 large buckets of black gold compost to this garden and used my 8 inch fork to till it in. This will be a roma tomato garden. The tomatoes are hardening off outside now. I am becoming a big fan of green manure. The rye was about 3 feet tall when I tore it out. It was a fall planting that wintered over. The clover had formed a lush, 6 inch green carpet. This was a spring planting. They added about 10 inches of good nitrogen to the compost. It felt like I was completing the cycle as I would run alternating trips of green compost and black gold to and from this garden.

I also hilled up potatoes for the third time yesterday. They are just darn huge. I am basically out of available dirt to keep hilling them up.

The harvest is up to 9.25 pounds for the season. I also started tracking the number of harvests (basically trying to count our home grown veggie meals). We are up to 18 harvests for the year. We are grabbing lettuce, spinach, beet leaves, and onion and shallot tops multiple times a day now. The asparagus gives us 5 stalks a day as well. The Pok Choi is being harvested, but is disappointing as it flowered very quickly and it's leaves are sparse and small.

No subject

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.

8 degree differential

7:30 am: 18 outside and 26 inside both frames. Supposed to get pretty hot and sunny today - I may need Sarah and Quinn to vent the square foot garden cold frame in the afternoon.

I unloaded a full truck of wood chips from sylvan into the compost pile this morning. The "green compost" bin is overflowing. I want to get a load of manure on Friday to rebuild the compost piles and get them burning again. The problem with compost bins in the winter is there is an abundance of carbon ingredients and absolutely nada in the way of nitrogen. That plus the cold temps meant that my compost sat pretty stagnant this winter. It is supposed to get warm this weekend and if I can get them fired back up with a load of mushroom manure (nitrogen), and some good layering of the two, I think I may be able to jump start them back into action. I think there is probably also a couple cubic feet of finished compost at the bottom of my "green pile" which I need to expose, remove, and prepare for use. I may even get a chance to work the soil in the "sun garden", removing the green manure (wild rye and white clover) and spreading a thick layer of finished compost.

Can supply update: Last year we canned approx 125 jars of various fruits and veggies. As I have said in some of my earlier posts, our 2008 garden produced an abundance of black plum roma's and hot peppers. Therefore most of our cans included these two ingredients. We had a ton of spaghetti sauce, salsa and chili. While we are definately getting tired of spaghetti sauce, our canning work in fall 2008 has served us very well over the winter. Here is an update of what we have left.

• 11 qts spag sauce
• 2 qts cabbage soup
• 7 pts apple sauce
• 2 pts pickle relish
• 2 pts pickles
• 1 qt pickles
• 5 pts salsa
• 1 pt spicy beens
• 1 pt beets
• 2 pts carrots
• 5 pts various jellies

Total of 39 jars of stuff remaining. The chili went the fastest and was definately the most popular. The hot peppers were fantastic and a big hit. I never, ever thought we would eat all of those. Those peppers were excruciatingly hot when fresh, but when canned they became much more mild. I add them to everything. Of course my seed starting was so bad last year, that I am not even sure what kind of peppers those were. The pickles were also a pleasant surprise. All of our friends seem to love pickles, so they made for nice little gifts. The kids also eat them, so we used them much quicker than I imagined. I definately struggled with finding a variety of recipes to can last year. I was in a spaghetti sauce rut. This year I will be more creative. Sarah is copying recipes from a nice canning book as we speak. We also overdid the vinegar in most of our recipes last year, becasue we were concerned about spoilage and safety. I think our second canning year will be much better due to our experience in year #1.