I decided to keep notes and pictures of how our garden progresses and grows this year, and this is the first installment. We planted most of our plants and seeds 2.5 weeks ago on May 10th, and the remaining plants and seeds 1.5 weeks ago on May 17th. This is a breakdown of what we are growing, bed by bed.
Bed #1
This is all salad lettuces; 6 butter crunch, 6 green leaf and 6 mixed lettuces.
Bed #2
All cruciferous veggies here! We have alternating rows of Cassius Cauliflower, Premium crop broccoli, and Romanesco Broccoli (its actually a cauliflower, but for some reason its called a broccoli). We also have a patch of Little finger carrots at the end.
Bed #3
More Broccoli, Cauliflower and Romanesco here (we have 6 of each plant for a total of 18). At the end of the bed is a Cilantro plant and a Jalapeno pepper plant.
Bed #4
We have 40 Walla Walla onions in one half of the bed, nothing in the other half...yet!
Bed #5
We have 6 bell pepper plants here; Red Pimento, Orange Mandarin, Red/Green Beauty, Valencia Orange, Golden Yellow and Purple Beauty. There are 6 Olympia spinach plants at the end, and Rainbow Carrots in the middle. Should make for a very colorful bed!
Bed #6
We have a Sugar Baby watermelon plant at one end, and a Honeydew Melon at the other. In between we have 1 row of Early Scarlett Globe radishes and one of Easter Egg 2 radishes.
Bed #7
All Tomatoes in this narrow bed, along with a few Marigolds to deter aphids. We have from the front; Champion Star, Early Girl, Valencia (orange), Roma, Old German Heirloom (striped inside and out) and Oregon Star.
Bed #8
Cherry tomatoes here. We had originally planted them at the end of the trellis, but realized they didn't get nearly enough sun there. So we transplanted them to the end of what should have been the potato row, which is in front of the trellis. It didn't dawn on us until we had already transplanted them that they will probably end up blocking sun to the trellis when they mature. Live and learn...we are going to be doing a lot of that this year with the garden! I already see changes we will make next year, and we haven't even started growing anything yet! Anyways, back to the tomatoes. In this row we have; Sweet Million, Husky Cherry Red and Jelly Bean Grape. We all LOVE cherry tomatoes, so I hope they do good in this new spot!
Bed #9
This is the trellis bed. We have about 6 feet planted with Sugar snap peas, we started these from seed and I saw a seedling about to break through the soil today, so hopefully they will start growing rapidly.
The other half of the trellis is cucumbers; 2 pickling, 2 lemon and one Sweet Success (a regular slicing cuc).
Bed #10 I don't have a picture of, its at the end of the trellis and its our corn area. We planted 5 or 6 rows in a block pattern of Northern Xtra Sweet Corn. In a few weeks we will plant our other corn seeds, you have to space different varieties by two weeks so they don't cross pollinate. I hope these do well, we had corn on the cob for dinner the other night and it was good...but nowhere near as good as fresh picked corn is!
So that's the garden! We have a few blank spots, and I am not sure what else we will be planting. Probably more carrots and radishes, but we would still have a lot of blank space left over. Its too late to plant potatoes which I am super bummed about. I guess we could order some online, but seems like most online places are sold out for the season. We will get a sooner start next year!
The class I was supposed to take last weekend about preserving your harvest got cancelled, and I was really looking forward to it. They said they will try to reschedule it for later in the summer though, so I am going to keep looking for it. I did sign up with some other classes this week, and best of all, they are free...and close to my house. I am going to a class in August called "Eating Seasonally from your garden" which talks about which seeds and starts to plant to keep my garden productive through the fall and winter. Then Aimee is going to go with me in June to a "Composting 101 class", to a "Preserving your harvest" class in September and to a "Putting your garden to bed for the winter" class in October. Its really fun to have a friend who is into the same stuff I am, we get to go to cool classes together and learn new things which is always fun. I am excited to be learning so much about gardening, I cant wait for stuff to start growing and filling up the space. I was telling Aimee this morning over coffee that I remember when we first planted the garden at Donnas; it was so bare looking. And then by the end of summer, it was full and so lush! I went looking for pictures of it to show you what I mean!
7/18/08:
8/17/08:
Its amazing what a difference a month makes!
Bed #1
This is all salad lettuces; 6 butter crunch, 6 green leaf and 6 mixed lettuces.
Bed #2
All cruciferous veggies here! We have alternating rows of Cassius Cauliflower, Premium crop broccoli, and Romanesco Broccoli (its actually a cauliflower, but for some reason its called a broccoli). We also have a patch of Little finger carrots at the end.
Bed #3
More Broccoli, Cauliflower and Romanesco here (we have 6 of each plant for a total of 18). At the end of the bed is a Cilantro plant and a Jalapeno pepper plant.
Bed #4
We have 40 Walla Walla onions in one half of the bed, nothing in the other half...yet!
Bed #5
We have 6 bell pepper plants here; Red Pimento, Orange Mandarin, Red/Green Beauty, Valencia Orange, Golden Yellow and Purple Beauty. There are 6 Olympia spinach plants at the end, and Rainbow Carrots in the middle. Should make for a very colorful bed!
Bed #6
We have a Sugar Baby watermelon plant at one end, and a Honeydew Melon at the other. In between we have 1 row of Early Scarlett Globe radishes and one of Easter Egg 2 radishes.
Bed #7
All Tomatoes in this narrow bed, along with a few Marigolds to deter aphids. We have from the front; Champion Star, Early Girl, Valencia (orange), Roma, Old German Heirloom (striped inside and out) and Oregon Star.
Bed #8
Cherry tomatoes here. We had originally planted them at the end of the trellis, but realized they didn't get nearly enough sun there. So we transplanted them to the end of what should have been the potato row, which is in front of the trellis. It didn't dawn on us until we had already transplanted them that they will probably end up blocking sun to the trellis when they mature. Live and learn...we are going to be doing a lot of that this year with the garden! I already see changes we will make next year, and we haven't even started growing anything yet! Anyways, back to the tomatoes. In this row we have; Sweet Million, Husky Cherry Red and Jelly Bean Grape. We all LOVE cherry tomatoes, so I hope they do good in this new spot!
Bed #9
This is the trellis bed. We have about 6 feet planted with Sugar snap peas, we started these from seed and I saw a seedling about to break through the soil today, so hopefully they will start growing rapidly.
The other half of the trellis is cucumbers; 2 pickling, 2 lemon and one Sweet Success (a regular slicing cuc).
Bed #10 I don't have a picture of, its at the end of the trellis and its our corn area. We planted 5 or 6 rows in a block pattern of Northern Xtra Sweet Corn. In a few weeks we will plant our other corn seeds, you have to space different varieties by two weeks so they don't cross pollinate. I hope these do well, we had corn on the cob for dinner the other night and it was good...but nowhere near as good as fresh picked corn is!
So that's the garden! We have a few blank spots, and I am not sure what else we will be planting. Probably more carrots and radishes, but we would still have a lot of blank space left over. Its too late to plant potatoes which I am super bummed about. I guess we could order some online, but seems like most online places are sold out for the season. We will get a sooner start next year!
The class I was supposed to take last weekend about preserving your harvest got cancelled, and I was really looking forward to it. They said they will try to reschedule it for later in the summer though, so I am going to keep looking for it. I did sign up with some other classes this week, and best of all, they are free...and close to my house. I am going to a class in August called "Eating Seasonally from your garden" which talks about which seeds and starts to plant to keep my garden productive through the fall and winter. Then Aimee is going to go with me in June to a "Composting 101 class", to a "Preserving your harvest" class in September and to a "Putting your garden to bed for the winter" class in October. Its really fun to have a friend who is into the same stuff I am, we get to go to cool classes together and learn new things which is always fun. I am excited to be learning so much about gardening, I cant wait for stuff to start growing and filling up the space. I was telling Aimee this morning over coffee that I remember when we first planted the garden at Donnas; it was so bare looking. And then by the end of summer, it was full and so lush! I went looking for pictures of it to show you what I mean!
7/18/08:
8/17/08:
Its amazing what a difference a month makes!