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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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!

Connect

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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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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!

Connect

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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

** This Is Not A Sponsored Post **