Healthy Growth

Wow, it is amazing what a little bit of water and some warm sunshine will do for a garden.  I know this should not be a surprise but, at our last house, we did not have a full sun location for our small garden and we only saw moderate growth and crops.   All of the raised beds we are putting in here are full sun and it is amazing to watch the plants respond with some regular water and long hours of sunlight.

The berries that we got from Indiana Berry continue to do well.  I did not have any previous experience with bare root plants but both the strawberries and raspberries we planted are growing well.  Once we got the blueberries into the sun, they greened right up as well.  I still need to get after the soil on those, but they are off to a good start.

It is looking like our first crop of radishes is getting close to harvest.  It would probably serve me well to figure out exactly when to pick them, but that is a minor detail.  I was able to get a couple more beds built and managed to get winter squash, green beans, bunching onions, cucumbers, beets, and pumpkins planted.  The ever supportive Web-Mistress was quick to comment that the pumpkin bed looks as though it needs a bra.

The most important crop we have planted, though, were the sunflower seeds our four year old had picked out when we got our seed packets.  It is killing him that he has to wait to see them sprout.  Hopefully, his patience will be rewarded.  And just maybe, it will keep him out of my garden beds.

Andy

Cold Crops

With the frost on the ground the last couple of days I am certainly glad we have waited to put most of our vegetables in until Mother’s Day.  We did, however, get a raised bed going for some cold hearty plants.  The snap peas and radishes are up and doing well.  The carrots, lettuce, kale and broccoli are all showing signs they want to grow.  The carrots and snap peas each got their own 4x2 section of the bed, while the other 4x4 section was divided into triangular plots for the rest of the plants.

I built the bed using untreated 2x6x8s.  This gave me a nice 4x8 bed, the frame of which was then treated using boiled linseed oil.  The linseed oil helps to preserve the wood but is nontoxic, a must when working on projects which are going to be part of your food supply. 

We sowed all of the plants in this bed directly in the soil.  I do have a ton of plants started and under grow lights, more on those a bit later.  The radishes are from Ferry-Morse and the rest are heirloom seeds from Mountain Valley which I purchased at Costco.  So I will see how these brands do and let you know.

My only real worry so far has been rabbits.  I haven’t seen any signs of damage to the plants but have a trusty .22 at the ready.  One can only hope the Web-Mistress is a steely-eyed killer in the event Peter Rabbit shows himself while I’m not home.  Eventually I hope to get some fencing up when all of my raised beds are built.  Until then I can only hope that I get to share a recipe for rabbit stew in a future post.

Did you plant any cold tolerant vegetables?  How are they doing?  Send me some pictures and let me know what brand of seeds you used.

Andy