Time In The Garden

We've been so busy with baseball and soccer games that we haven't had any time in the garden, until yesterday. It was amazing that we actually had a Friday evening available. Thankfully, we took advantage of the overcast weather and got a lot accomplished.

We are still in the process of putting our garden back together. At this point we are weeding and filling the border beds. Those beds are two feet deep and run around the outside of our garden area. We don't have all the border beds installed. Hopefully that will be finished this year as well.

We started off with a short border bed, weeding it and filling it with a mixture of top soil and mushroom soil. We were able to plant two rows of Giant Stringless bush beans. In total we used 53 seeds, planted 3" apart (the seed package said to plant them 1" apart) and the rows are 6" apart. We've never had any luck with beans so we are hoping for the best.

Continuing around to the second bed in the border, we transplanted all the broccoli plants that were growing in the house. We have a nice tradition of putting milk jugs over them for protection. The bottoms of the jugs are cut off. This acts as a make shift green house as well as keeping the wild life from eating our sprouts.

The next bed that was weeded and filled was planted with Spinach and carrots. We used to grow Bloomsfield Long Standing every year but had gotten away from it. I'm excited to see how well it grows for us again. We really like spinach and I'm hoping that the weather stays cool so we can get a good crop out of it.

This is our first year trying Short 'n Sweet carrots. They look similar to the half longs that we usually grow so they should be fine. When we grow in mushroom soil, our carrots generally tend toward peppery, so we'll have to wait and see how sweet they get.

The last bed that we got to was planted with Harris Model Parsnips and Purple Top White Globe Turnips. This will be the first year that we have even tried to grow these. I have no idea what we will do with them if they do grow. I figured that since we have had these seeds since 2011, it was about time to plant them.

Of course, I can't leave out that we lined all of our border beds with walking onions. You will find that we are in the habit of always lining all of our produce beds with walking onions. The truth of the matter is that we have such an over abundance of them that they get planted everywhere. We are thankful for the blessing. They are also a great deer deterrent....... so far.

I hope all of your gardening plans are going well.
Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."  Genesis 8:22

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Garden Mulch Update

Can you believe that we are almost finished moving all of that mulch that we ordered for the garden. (See the original post here) I thought that we'd never be finished with it. What's more surprising is that it's snowed several times, as well as rained a lot, since we first had the mulch delivered.

I can tell you that I am thrilled that it's almost all in the garden.... Then we can get the 14 cubic yards of topsoil x mushroom soil mix delivered, to fill the raised beds...... once we put all of those back in the garden as well.

I'm beginning to wonder why we signed up for such a huge overhaul of our garden. However, I'm staying optimistic that all of this work at the beginning will lead to less work over the course of the season and into next year.


Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."  Genesis 8:22

More Seeds

When we did our seed inventory (here) we also made a list of the seeds that we didn't have but wanted. We were able to pick some up, locally, when we were running errands the other day.

I was happily surprised at the nice selection of organic seeds that we found at Lowe's. All are from Ferry-Morse.

New Seeds In

Organic Broccoli ~ De Cicco (1890 heirloom)

Brussels Sprouts ~ Catskill (1941 heirloom)

Cabbage ~ Copenhagen Market Early (1909 heirloom)

Organic Carrot ~ Rainbow Mix

Organic Lettuce ~ Black Seeded Simpson (1875 heirloom)

Organic Okra ~ Clemson Spineless #80 

Organic Radish ~ French Breakfast (1879 heirloom)

Organic Rosemary 

Organic Sage ~ Broadleaf

Organic Thyme ~ Common

Ultimately, I prefer organic, heirloom, regional seeds. I choose organic seeds because I don't want genetically engineered or modified seeds (GMO). I choose heirloom because I'm a history buff who loves to see and taste the old time vegetables that families have enjoyed for generations. I choose regional seeds because if people were able to grow the seeds in my growing region 100 years ago, then I should be able to grow them just as well now. 

Seeds We Still Want To Get
Hyssop
Anise Hyssop

We used to have Hyssop and Anise Hyssop just off the back porch. They self seeded and came back year after year. I'm not sure when they disappeared, but we don't have them anymore. I'd love to find more.

Root-stock We Still Need
Potato
Sweet Potato
Asparagus

We generally start our potatoes from store bought organics. We just cut them into pieces with at least 2 eyes each and plant them in the garden. We generally harvest several five gallon buckets from just a few potatoes planted this way.

We've tried sweet potatoes once before. They grew well and developed very nice sized roots. However, the mice got to them before we did. We were very disappointed in our luck, to say that least.

As for the asparagus, we should have planted a bed of them when we first moved into this house. We could have been enjoying them for several years now. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and we have yet to start a plot. Crossing my fingers that we get it started this year.

Next up, we have to set aside time to get these new seeds planted so they will be ready to go out into the kitchen garden, once it's warm enough. We've already planted our nightshade vegetables. Here's the link to that post, if you are interested.

I hope all of your gardening plans are going well.
Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."  Genesis 8:22

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We Have Mulch!!!

We have 11 cubic yards of mulch, to be exact. This is part of our new garden plan. And these are my three crazy helpers...... doing what they do best, being silly.

~ 11 cubic yard of mulch & 3 crazy kids ~

The method of gardening that has worked best for us goes by several names but we simply call it intensive, raised bed gardening. We decided that we wanted to make life easier on ourselves and mulch the walkways between the beds so that we don't have to mow. Sounded great..... until the mulch arrived. Now comes all the work in moving the mulch into the garden. Somehow this didn't seem nearly that big of a job when we were talking about it. Is it just me or do others make more work for themselves by trying to make life easier?


I hope all of your gardening plans are going well.
Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."  Genesis 8:22

Starting Seeds ~ 2018 Kitchen Garden

~ Starting Seeds In Yogurt Cups ~

I've never had much luck with the seed starting kits that you can buy at the garden supply store. Instead I opt to re-use single serve yogurt cups and potting soil. I'm really liking these clear Stonyfield yogurt cups because the paper label isn't glued down.

~ Big Boy Starting Seeds ~

I had planned on starting seeds at the beginning to middle of March but we have gotten a little behind. Here's what we were supposed to have finished already:

Seeds To Start Indoors 5-6 Weeks Before Last Frost (March 6-13)

Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Eggplant

Peppers

Sweet Potatos

Tomatoes

So far we've started Yellow Brandywine tomatoes, Red Brandywine tomatoes, Mr. Stripey tomatoes, Sugar Lump tomatoes, Pepperocini peppers, Red Cherry peppers, and Black Beauty eggplant. With 9 varieties of peppers, 2 varieties of eggplant and 7 varieties of tomatoes in our seed inventory, we have some decisions to make. Should we plant a few of each variety or a lot of a few varieties? We are currently leaning hard on planting only a few varieties. 

Seeds To Plant In The Garden 2-4 Weeks Before Last Frost (March 20 - April 3)

Beets

Carrots

Celery

Peas

Potatoe

Radish

We are squarely in the middle of this time frame. However, I'm not sure when we will get to planting seeds outside as we took down the garden a few weeks ago and haven't set it back up yet. What I mean by that is that we took all the raised beds out of the garden area and spread out the small amount of soil that was left in them.

We had a load, 11 cubic yards, of mulch delivered and then it snowed. We are currently waiting for the 13" of snow to melt so we can get to the mulch. It will be moved to the garden area and spread out as a base, so we don't have to worry about mowing between the beds. Once the mulch is spread out, we can put the beds where we want them and have a load of topsoil and mushroom soil delivered...... and moved to fill up the beds.

Our new time frame is to have the garden put back together and everything planted, as listed on this page, by the end of April. Wish us luck!!

Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."  Genesis 8:22

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Favorite Gardening Books

Over the years I have come to lean heavily on the great information found in my gardening books. I'd like to share my all time favorites with you today. I have been using these books for years and they are compilation books covering enormous amounts of knowledge.

Vegetable Gardening by Robert J. Dolezal

This first book is the first gardening book that I ever owned. I purchased it at Ollie's years ago for just a couple of dollars. At the time I knew nothing at all about gardening and had never grown anything except some spider plant clippings. I read this book from cover to cover and it has stayed my go-to gardening book ever since. It's called Vegetable Gardening, Your Ultimate Guide by Robert J. Dolezal. 

This book gave me a general look at everything gardening related. It covers types of gardens (like raised bed, intensive, and row gardening), provides charts for growing zones, site location, soil preparation, pests and diseases, and so on. The part that I keep using over and over again is the extensive vegetable encyclopedia at the end. This was the first book I grabbed when I started my garden plans for this year.

Seed To Seed by Suzanne Ashworth

This second book is an amazing encyclopedia type book. This alphabetical book covers, in great detail, every vegetable that you could ever want to grow. Each listing gives information about botanical classifications, pollination and crossing, seed production and harvest, seed statistics, how to grow from seed, and regional growing recommendations. This is a must have book for anyone wanting to harvest their own seed for future planting. I can not recommend Seed To Seed by Suzanne Ashworth enough. 

Organic Gardening by Geoff Hamilton

Organic Gardening, The Essential Guide To Growing Flowers, Fruit, and Vegetables the Natural Way by Geoff Hamilton is the third book to share today. This book seriously covers so much that it would be impossible to mention it all in one or two paragraphs. Each page is filled with color photographs of everything gardening related. I grab this book the most when I want an organic way to deal with garden pests, diseases and weeds. There are also amazing sections on garden design spanning ornamental, container, vegetable, fruit, herb, and greenhouse gardening. 

Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte

This well worn gardening book was picked up for $.25 at a book sale and well worth much more. This Gardenway book is another encyclopedia style book with very few pictures and those that it does have are in the form of sketches. Companion planting is a major part of my gardening. This is the practice of planting different vegetables, herbs, and flowers together in the same plot. In some cases one plant will add a needed element into the soil that will be used by it's companion plant. In other cases, one plant will repel insects from it's neighbor. 

I hope you have enjoyed seeing my favorite gardening books. 

I'd love to hear about yours.

Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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"The thoughts of the diligent [tend] only to plenteousness; but of every one [that is] hasty only to want." Proverbs 21:5

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2018 Seed Inventory

In the past I made huge, online seed orders. However, for the last few years we haven't been doing this. Instead, I've just been going to my local shops and grabbing some heirloom tomato and pepper plants and a few packages of seeds that I wanted to plant.

We have decided to put a lot of emphases, as a family project, on our garden this year. Before going online and purchasing to our hearts' content, I decided to see what we had left over from previous years. As it turns out, we have quite a lot. 

Since these are all old seeds, I'm not expecting miracles in germination. Most are from the order I made to Pinetree Garden Seeds in 2012. I was surprised to see that a few were actually from 1994. I have no idea where those came from or how they became part of my seed collection.

In addition to those pictured above, we also have a good bit of seed that we saved from heirloom tomatoes. We haven't tried to start those, so I'm interested to see how it goes.

Here's what I cataloged:

~ Beans, Lima - King of the Garden
~ Beans, Snap - Giant Stringless Bush, Kentucky Wonder Pole
~ Beets - Chioggia, Lutz Winter Keeper
~ Cauliflower - Early Snowball
~ Celery - Golden Pascal
~ Collard - Vates
~ Corn - Six Shooter, Golden Bantam
~ Cucumber - Early Cluster or Russian, Homemade Pickles
~ Eggplant - Rosa Bianca, Black Beauty
~ Flowers - Forget-Me-Not, Baby's Breath, Mammoth Sunflower, Hollyhock, Merigold, Chamomile
~ Herbs - Single Italian Plain-Leafed Parsley, Oregano, Italian Large Leaf Sweet Basil, Greek Miniature Basil, Lettuce Leaf Basil, Cilantro, Catnip, Dill
~ Parsnips - Harris Model
~ Peas - Knights, Tall Telephone
~ Peppers - Sweet Banana, Long Red Cayenne, Poblano, Anaheim Chili, Red Cherry Sweet Pepper, Marconi Red, Aconcagua, Golden Treasure
~ Pumpkin - Small Sugar
~ Spinach - Viroflay
~ Squash - Black Zucchini, Waltham Butternut, Bennings Green-Tint Pattypan, Zapallo Zucchini
~ Strawberry - Ruegen Alpine
~ Tomato - Polish Linguisa, Brandywine Red, Brandywine Black, Brandywine Yellow, Brandywine Pink, Mr. Stripey, Sugar Lump, Fireball, Aunt Ruby's German Green
~ Turnip - Purple Top White Globe
~ Watermelon - Sugar Baby

I will still need to pick up the following seeds; radish, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, hyssop, thyme sage, rosemary, and okra. Also, I'm hoping to do potatoes, sweet potatoes and start an asparagus bed this year.

I hope your garden is coming along nicely,
Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Genesis 8:22

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New For The Garden

Sunset's Container Gardening Book, Gayla Trail's Easy Growing Book,
and Pretty Gardening Gloves

Look what great goodies I got for Christmas; two books to read while I'm waiting for planting season and gardening gloves!! 

Until next time,
May all your gardening adventures be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Genesis 8:22

Todays Harvest

I'm so pleased with our garden harvest today. We haven't worked in the garden for so long that the weed have totally taken over. Thankfully, neglect doesn't stop the productivity of our nightshades.

What a great start to our morning's harvest!!

We originally went out to see if there was anything left of the potato patch. The plants had come up beautifully, grew thick and strong, and then died. I totally missed noticing that they died because the weeds took over so fast that the bed always looked green. By the time I noticed what had happened, I gave up all hope of having a harvest.

The last (and only) time that I left the potatoes in the ground the mice had very nicely eaten them all. When we went to harvest, we found lovely holes where there had once been mature potatoes. After that episode, I vowed to harvest the potatoes as soon as all the plants had died back. That didn't happen this year, of course.

As I was saying, we originally went out to see if there were any potatoes to harvest because I purchased a lot of chicken in my last grocery trip and I had wanted to make chicken in the crock-pot. I'll post the recipe another time. I had just used all the potatoes that I had on hand and my fingers were crossed that by some chance, we could get at least a few potatoes out of the bed. I was well pleased to find half a bucket full.

Then, we all turned our attention to the adjacent beds that were full to overflowing with tomatoes and eggplants. I'm surprised how many cherry tomatoes are still green. But it's reassuring that there will be plenty more in the next days and weeks. A great deal were already split and many more were already on the ground. Those will all go to the hens.

Today's harvest all washed up and sitting pretty.

Until next time,
May all your gardening adventures be a blessing!

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Genesis 8:22

Potatoes Are Up!!

I noticed the other day that the potato bed had little stems poking up through the soil. Today I went to examine how they were doing.

New Potato Plant

It has been raining so much that I haven't had to water the bed, so I really haven't paid any attention to it. Not only did it have potato plants but also a lot of weeds.

Potato Bed In Need Of Being Weeded

It's always so much fun to see the potatoes popping up because according to all the gardening books, I plant potatoes wrong. Lol. According to the experts, when you plant potatoes you are supposed to dig a trench and cover the seed potatoes a little at a time until you have covered a mound over them. I honestly don't have time to babysit potatoes. I need to be able to plant them deep and forget about them. (See post and video here) Amazingly enough, you actually can dig a deep hole, pop in a cut potato with at least one or two eyes, cover it up, and it will grow. The last time I planted potatoes this way, in a 6' by 4' bed, we harvested five 5 gallon buckets. I can't wait to see what we are blessed with this year.

Potatoes In The Raised Bed Kitchen Garden

I took a garden rake and upset the soil in the bed. That did a job on most of the short rooted weeds and didn't bother the stout potato shoots at all.

Potato Plants In The Raised Bed Kitchen Garden

Not bad for a few minutes work in the garden. I can't wait until all the little shoots are up and we have a mass of large green potato leaves in this bed. Then our only worries will be from potato bugs, burrowing mice, and deer who like to eat potato plants down to the ground. These are the main reasons that we put up bird netting around this bed.

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Finally Planted Tomatoes

It has been so chilly here that I haven't wanted to transplant to tomatoes into the garden. I have been putting them on the back porch to harden them off. Today they finally went in.

Heirloom Brandywine Tomato Plants

I try to use regional heirlooms as much as possible in my garden. These are Brandywine tomatoes and are a wonderful, large, soft skinned, fleshy variety. I've also grown the yellow, orange, and black Brandywines and saved seeds from each. This year I didn't get anything started inside so I just hopped over to the local garden supply center and picked up a six pack. I actually got the smallest plants that they had because I knew that the weather wouldn't be right for planting for weeks. By that time, they would be all sold out and I would have missed my chance to have some this year. Living on the mountain puts me 2 weeks behind those that live in the valley. My season also ends 2 weeks before theirs.

The State Of My Raised Bed Kitchen Garden

My poor kitchen garden has been so neglected this year. Here is the state of the bed when I went out to plant my tomatoes this morning. What a mess!! The children had been dumping grass clippings into this bed instead of taking to the chicken run. I'm not sure if it was hurting or helping things here. It was definitely 100 times easier to turn over than the bed that had pine shavings in it. When I turned the soil over it was the beautiful black dirt that I have grown to love. Weeding this bed turned out to be no problem because the soil was so loose.

Raised Kitchen Garden Bed After Weeding and Turning the Soil

Happy Brandywine Tomato Plant in It's New Bed

The box that I chose to put my tomatoes in this year is 6' by 4'. That gave me exactly the space I needed for the entire 6 pack of plants. This is a very stocky plant that bears heavy fruit in abundance, so I will need to add supports as the plants get bigger. For now they just need watered..... and for the chickens to stay out of them. 

Raised Bed Kitchen Garden Planted With Heirloom, Brandywine Tomatoes

I'm very pleased with how this bed has turned out. Now to tame the jungle that's growing in the other beds.

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Fighting Pine Bedding Today

Today's excitement was anything but enjoyable. For years we have been using spent bedding from our rabbits. We usually use rye straw over newspaper for bedding but last year we added pine bedding. This seems to be a major hindrance in the garden.

If you go back and look at the video of how beautiful the first bed turned over this year you will see what I am accustomed to working with. Spent rye straw and rabbit manure compost very quickly into beautiful, spungy garden soil, teaming with worms and is just generally a blessing to work with. We also usually use grass clippings as mulch to keep the weeds down and by the end of the season, the grass has composted down as well.

Last year we started using pine bedding under the rye straw to soak up urine in the rabbit cages. We use solid flooring in our hutches and we don't want our bunnies to be walking on wet bedding. Also the pine bedding was good because it cut down on mites and worked as a much cooler bedding than the straw. Straw is great in winter and we did use it over the shavings. Our bunnies love to burrow in the straw as well as dig around, searching for the rye seeds.

Weekly cleaning of these hutches results in a great deal of spent bedding that we historically use to fill the garden beds. That tradition continued over this past winter and early spring. Unfortunately, we didn't count on how long it would take for the pine bedding to compost down or exactly how much would accumulate. Apparently the rabbit manure and straw compost away leaving my bed half full of slightly composted pine shavings. Not what I was counting on at all.

Pine bedding is terribly hard, next to impossible to shovel. Even raking it didn't do a lot of good. After a great deal of time wasted in trying to turn my bed, I opted to just weed around the edges and use some soil from an old compost area. The 2' by 8' bed had to be amended with two wheelbarrow fulls of soil.

Old Compost Pile

I was finally able to plant lettuce, spinach, and carrot seeds. I also used the rest of the Walking Onions that I harvested earlier in the week. They were pretty sad looking so I trimmed the roots and stems before using them as a dividing row of sorts.

We will probably have to make an order of mushroom soil for my other beds. I'm not really happy about that.

May all your endeavors be profitable,
Jess

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Planting Blueberry Bushes and Walking Onions

I was able to pick up some blueberry plants from our local garden center. They have such nice plants. However, I think these plants were leftovers from last year. They aren't looking as hot as the other, newer varieties that they just got in stock. Also, there were only 3 plants, in the varieties that I wanted, available. Last year the entire section was full of them.

I was able to pick up Top Hat. It's a low bush variety that does really well here in the north. It only grows to 1-2 feet tall and wide. The fruit are supposed to have a tart, wild flavor that mature mid season. They need full sun and lots of water in well draining soil. Hopefully I have provided all of that and am greatly anticipating the harvest.

The second plant that I got was Patriot. It's a high bush variety. It's supposed to have large berries that ripen in June. The bush is supposed to grow from 3-5 feet with red and orange leaves in the fall. It's also supposed to do very well here and is resistant to root rot. Sounds great to me.

Planting was easy once I collected compost from an old compost area and filled in the bed. I like to double dig my beds to get really good, loose soil. The plants didn't seem to be root bound at all so just a little "tickling" of the roots before planting was all that I felt was necessary. The garden center gave me a very nice paper on the importance of watering so I followed their instructions and made a trench around the plants and watered them in well. I went back a few hours later and watered again.

After the blueberries were in I started on adding Walking Onions around the outside of the raised bed. I add them to every bed in my kitchen garden. These plants can stand a lot of hardship. When I processed them yesterday I found a lot that were too small and put them aside to replant. I still have some left so they will be planted tomorrow in a different bed.

May all your endeavors be profitable,
Jess

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Processing Walking Onions

Today was a very long day in the kitchen garden!! Then it was even longer in the kitchen. Thankfully I have a wonderful, and very helpful, family. They helped cut and chop and bag the onions that I brought in.

Washed and dried and ready to bag and freeze

All of the work of cutting off the roots, extra limp parts and turbans I did in the garden. That way I don't bring all the mess, dirt, and bugs into the house. Once inside, the onion bulb, in this case it's more of a shallot, gets a good wash. The stems do as well.

Walking onion stems to be used as leeks and chives

 I generally don't harvest more onions than I will use at a time but I really wanted to plant that raised bed with something else. Today's work will make me think twice before I harvest so many at a time.

My children and husband were all such a great help in processing the onions.

 Each part of the plant can be used. The bulb of course is used for onions or shallots. The lower part of the stem I use for leeks. The green, hollow tops I slice thin and use for chives. We had a lot of everything today.

We had more than we needed for a very large pot of Cream of Alum Soup. I'll try and share the recipe with you when I have a chance.

Bagged onion bulbs

Bagged and ready for the freezer

My books on canning, freezing and preserving say that onions don't have to be blanched ahead of time. So after cutting and sorting all the parts of the plants, and using a lot for our soup, the rest were bagged and popped in the freezer.


May all your endeavors be profitable,
Jess

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 "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land" Isaiah 1:19

Putting Up Bird Netting In The Kitchen Garden

I'm so glad to have a bit of help in the garden today. Playing with bird netting is always a lot of fun if you have help. If you don't, it could be a recipe for disaster.

We have issues with chickens, deer, geese, and neighborhood dogs getting into our raised bed kitchen garden. It's very upsetting when you have just sewn seeds and went to get the hose or watering can and come back to find miscellaneous animals digging where you just planted. In years past I have also found young children, with shovels, but now they are more grown up and aware. So I generally only have to guard against wild creatures now.

The process of putting up the posts and hanging the bird netting from the old nails that were already there, took a bit of time. It didn't take all of my time, thanks to my lovely and very helpful daughter. Therefor I was able to also harvest an entire 2' by 8' bed of Walking Onions. The onion sets were planted there last year and could have been harvested weeks ago as spring onions.

That's one of the things that I like most about these plants. You can harvest Walking Onions almost all year long, at almost any stage of growth. They are currently at the turban stage. Generally at this point you either snip the turbans off to encourage more root development or leave them on to use later as pearl onions or to replant. Since I wanted this bed to use for planting something else, I just harvested them instead. I didn't have time to process them so they will spend the night, safe and sound, in the garden.

May all your endeavors be profitable,
Jess

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"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Genesis 8:22

First Day In The Raised Bed Kitchen Garden ~ Planting Potatoes

It's the first day in the garden. I'm a few weeks behind but everything will be fine; slow and steady wins the race. I only really have about 30 minutes each day to spend working in the raised beds but I'm hoping to be rewarded more than 10 fold.

My rewards were evident today. The weather was beautiful; nice and warm with a cooling breeze. When I directed my attention to the kitchen garden and turned the soil in my first bed I was greeted with beautiful, living soil. 

It was teaming with beneficial bugs and rich with composted rabbit manure and straw. The texture was spongy and it smelled fresh and earthy. I forget every winter how wonderful our garden system is. 

Today was potato planting day. I always manage to forget to order potatoes for planting so instead I grabbed a couple of bags of organic potatoes that I picked up at the grocery store. They had been growing roots in the pantry for a while. It doesn't take very many potatoes to plant a 4' by 6' raised bed. Especially since you only need a few eyes from each potato.

Using an old shovel handle to create holes was especially helpful in planting today. I know all the gardening books say to dig trenches for planting and to fill them in to mounds as the potatoes grow However, I don't have time to babysit these plants. They will come up fine and give us buckets of potatoes by the end of the year. At least, that's the plan and what has worked in years past.

Watering in after planting is essential. I'll have to make sure and water deeply every day. It's much easier to water with a hose but our collapsible, long hose sprung a leak last fall and we haven't replaced it yet.

30 minutes goes by quickly. Turning that first bed and planting some potatoes were the accomplishments for today. 

Here's hoping you have success in all your endeavors,
Jess

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"I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase." 1 Corinthians 3:6