Our last frost dates for our area are supposed to be between April 15th and April 30th, but the consensus is that it's common to have late frosts up until Mothers Day (and even later according to some sources). We had gone to Farmington Gardens with Jeanne at the end of April to buy all our tomato, pepper and cucumber plants. She has expressed interest in sharing the bounty of our garden this year, and wanted to have a hand in picking out some of the plants. We also had a coupon to use before the end of the month, and even though I knew it was a little too early to be planting these kinds of veggies, I couldn't let a perfectly good coupon go to waste! So for the last 2.5 weeks I have been moving our box of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers outside during the day, and inside at night to keep them safe. I am glad we ended up waiting to get them in the ground, we had a hard frost a few days into May that surely would have killed our our sensitive plants.
On Sunday we decided that the coast was clear and spent the afternoon working in the garden getting those plants into the ground. Its starting to come alive out in the garden, and seeing the green go in makes me really happy!
Along the trellis we have two cherry tomatoes, and two hills of cucumbers. We always trellis the cucumbers and find that goes a long way in keeping up with the harvesting. Our cherry tomatoes totally got out of hand last year (see pictures of them here) so we are trying something new and trellising them. Time will tell if that helps to keep them manageable!
We also planted two types of beans along the trellis; Bingo which is a dry shelling bean, and Malibu which is a green pole bean. Since there isn't much to see in regards to beans, here is a picture of our super sugar snap peas:
The ones on the left are the ones we started about a month ago, the ones on the right less than two weeks ago. The warmer weather is really helping them grow fast, and I am sure the second planting will catch up with the first in no time!
We got our long row of tomatoes in, I believe we have 13 tomato plants in this row, 10 of them different varieties of slicing, and 3 Roma sauce type tomatoes.
Killian did a bunch of the tomatoes on his own:
If you click on this picture, you can see the sticks that are marking the shelling peas. Most of them seem to be doing really well, but there are a few runty ones out there. I planted another patch of them this weekend that is more in a block instead of individual plants. It will be interesting to see which planting method produces more peas!
Our next big project was getting the potatoes planted. We had bought a bag of Yukon golds, and then my friend Linda had bought us some Russets, and given us a huge bucket of Blues that she had saved from her harvest last year. I was sad that we didn't have enough room to fit all of them in the garden! We did manage to get quite a few in, we spaced them about 12 inches apart and I am hoping that's enough room. I found many varying opinions online as far as how much space to give them, everything between 9 inches to 18 inches. I guess we will see how it works out!
The sticks mark where a new variety starts. This is about 35 feet of potatoes:
We planted our store bought peppers as well, a little closer than last year to *hopefully* avoid sun scald problems, if we get another scorching heat wave that rolls through. Boy did those high temps (107!!) do a number on our garden last year. It was great for the tomatoes though! So here is our pepper row, we will be finishing out the row with the red and yellow mini bell peppers that we started from seed, I just haven't hardened them off yet.
We have more carrots coming up! There are three different varieties out here, in two succession plantings. I should get another couple of rows in this coming weekend. These are kind of hard to see, but they are coming up nicely!
The cabbage, romanesco and broccoli are all doing well, and the radishes, spinach and collard seeds are growing fast. I got a bunch of bush beans planted, another row of spinach, and more green onion seeds put in. I am STILL having problems getting lettuce seeds going! I tried twice in the new bed by the playground, and the seedlings will sprout, but then disappear a few days later. The compost we got delivered seemed to come with an ant hill, because we have ants like crazy all over the garden. Ants are probably my least favorite insect, so you can imagine my delight to see hoards of them roaming the garden. I don't know if they are eating the seeds, or if its slugs, or maybe even birds. The seeds we started just a few feet away seem to be thriving. So I am giving up planting seeds by the playground, and have lined what will be my pumpkin bed with lettuce seeds, since the pumpkin wont be planted for another month, and by the time it gets big enough we will have eaten all the lettuce anyways. I am really trying to make the most of the space we have this year!
So here is another picture of the garden area - a little more green, but nothing like last years garden....yet!
Oh, and I haven't updated about my seedlings in a long time! I cant believe how big they have grown. All the doubts and worries I had about them turned out to be for nothing because they are thriving and doing so well! Here are the mini bell peppers that need to be hardened off for planting next weekend:
And our celery, more bell peppers, and a sad looking brussel sprout. I am actually not sure why that's inside instead of in the garden. Hmmmmm.
Next weekend all of this will go outside, and our growing lights will be retired until mid summer when its time to start our fall crops! I am so hopeful for our garden this year, I think its going to be our best yet!
On Sunday we decided that the coast was clear and spent the afternoon working in the garden getting those plants into the ground. Its starting to come alive out in the garden, and seeing the green go in makes me really happy!
Along the trellis we have two cherry tomatoes, and two hills of cucumbers. We always trellis the cucumbers and find that goes a long way in keeping up with the harvesting. Our cherry tomatoes totally got out of hand last year (see pictures of them here) so we are trying something new and trellising them. Time will tell if that helps to keep them manageable!
We also planted two types of beans along the trellis; Bingo which is a dry shelling bean, and Malibu which is a green pole bean. Since there isn't much to see in regards to beans, here is a picture of our super sugar snap peas:
The ones on the left are the ones we started about a month ago, the ones on the right less than two weeks ago. The warmer weather is really helping them grow fast, and I am sure the second planting will catch up with the first in no time!
We got our long row of tomatoes in, I believe we have 13 tomato plants in this row, 10 of them different varieties of slicing, and 3 Roma sauce type tomatoes.
Killian did a bunch of the tomatoes on his own:
If you click on this picture, you can see the sticks that are marking the shelling peas. Most of them seem to be doing really well, but there are a few runty ones out there. I planted another patch of them this weekend that is more in a block instead of individual plants. It will be interesting to see which planting method produces more peas!
Our next big project was getting the potatoes planted. We had bought a bag of Yukon golds, and then my friend Linda had bought us some Russets, and given us a huge bucket of Blues that she had saved from her harvest last year. I was sad that we didn't have enough room to fit all of them in the garden! We did manage to get quite a few in, we spaced them about 12 inches apart and I am hoping that's enough room. I found many varying opinions online as far as how much space to give them, everything between 9 inches to 18 inches. I guess we will see how it works out!
The sticks mark where a new variety starts. This is about 35 feet of potatoes:
We planted our store bought peppers as well, a little closer than last year to *hopefully* avoid sun scald problems, if we get another scorching heat wave that rolls through. Boy did those high temps (107!!) do a number on our garden last year. It was great for the tomatoes though! So here is our pepper row, we will be finishing out the row with the red and yellow mini bell peppers that we started from seed, I just haven't hardened them off yet.
We have more carrots coming up! There are three different varieties out here, in two succession plantings. I should get another couple of rows in this coming weekend. These are kind of hard to see, but they are coming up nicely!
The cabbage, romanesco and broccoli are all doing well, and the radishes, spinach and collard seeds are growing fast. I got a bunch of bush beans planted, another row of spinach, and more green onion seeds put in. I am STILL having problems getting lettuce seeds going! I tried twice in the new bed by the playground, and the seedlings will sprout, but then disappear a few days later. The compost we got delivered seemed to come with an ant hill, because we have ants like crazy all over the garden. Ants are probably my least favorite insect, so you can imagine my delight to see hoards of them roaming the garden. I don't know if they are eating the seeds, or if its slugs, or maybe even birds. The seeds we started just a few feet away seem to be thriving. So I am giving up planting seeds by the playground, and have lined what will be my pumpkin bed with lettuce seeds, since the pumpkin wont be planted for another month, and by the time it gets big enough we will have eaten all the lettuce anyways. I am really trying to make the most of the space we have this year!
So here is another picture of the garden area - a little more green, but nothing like last years garden....yet!
Oh, and I haven't updated about my seedlings in a long time! I cant believe how big they have grown. All the doubts and worries I had about them turned out to be for nothing because they are thriving and doing so well! Here are the mini bell peppers that need to be hardened off for planting next weekend:
And our celery, more bell peppers, and a sad looking brussel sprout. I am actually not sure why that's inside instead of in the garden. Hmmmmm.
Next weekend all of this will go outside, and our growing lights will be retired until mid summer when its time to start our fall crops! I am so hopeful for our garden this year, I think its going to be our best yet!