spring retrospective -- part 1

Well, school is finally over and the grades are in. Unfortunately, spring is just about over, too. We did get a fair amount of spring gardening done, but not enough for my liking! A little bit more every year...I hope.

It seems that we spent more time this spring building cages to protect the gardens than we did actually putting in the gardens themselves. Hopefully this is work that won't have to be repeated each year. This is the biggest cage, built by James out of PVC and heavy plastic netting. It's where we planted the peas -- has to be tall to let the peas climb and also covered to keep out the birds. Pole beans will go here when the peas are done.

We planted about 250 peas in here -- 125 sugar snap and 125 garden peas. We harvested about 2.5 pounds of each so far. Not really enough for freezing -- they're so good raw, so who cares -- but it's a start.

The square foot garden had a lot of cole veggies during the spring. We got one tiny broccoli (head was the size of a ping-pong ball). It looked beautiful one day, but so tiny, so I decided to leave it. Then, when we went back a few days later, it had started to turn yellow. So hard to garden when you're not there every day! Plus, we left it in the car when we got home, so no one got to try it. The chickens liked the two green caterpillars on it, though.

The pak chois were the prettiest, imo. Can't wait for fall so I can grow more. They looked so beautiful one weekend but had bolted by the next. Now I know how big they'll get (not very big) and will harvest them sooner. And plant more of them. We needed three plants to make enough for one dinner. (One from my garden, one from Julia's, and one from Xing Hua's.)

Still in the gardens are collards (supposedly heat tolerant, thus their popularity in the South) and kale. Hope the kale doesn't bolt on us.

The onions are doing well. We pulled one a week or so ago to see how they were growing. The bulb was about the size of the broccoli. Bigger than a scallion, but not quite an onion bulb.


I think I got the lettuce and spinach in a bit too late. All the spinach bolted with just 4 leaves on the stalk. Lettuce is iffy. We did get one butterhead. Very spotty, though, and not good eating. And a bunch of radishes. But who likes radishes if there's no lettuce?

My friend, Lisa, gave me gobs of lettuce from her garden. She did it right -- plant early and often! I ate salad for lunch every day for a week. Salad with her lettuce, my radishes and garden peas. And some left-over roast chicken (from Julia's 4H bird, of course.) Now that's living!

spring is coming!

The snow is almost melted, and I am getting started on the garden.

Two weeks ago, my first box of seeds arrived -- from Rohrer's Seeds. It took only 2 days from the time I placed my order! At that time, the ground was still covered with snow. Since then, we have had several days of mild weather (highs in the 50s and 60s). Today, the ground is visible, and the small raised bed where I garden in Broomall is actually workable. (Yesterday, I actually saw crocuses blooming here!)

So this afternoon, I cleared out the dead tomato and pole-bean vines, stirred up the soil (mixing in the chicken poop from last fall), and planted 240 peas -- 120 garden peas (Early Freezer) and 120 Sugar Snap peas. I have barely made a dent in the half-pound packets I bought. Perhaps I was a bit over ambitious. I'm hoping to get out to the farmhouse and plant a bunch more before it gets warm. We'll see if that happens.

end of season

Went back out to the farmhouse yesterday to get the last 107 bulbs planted. I know, what an odd number... I had 100 of my little shade bulbs left, and the guys just could not get those last 7 daffodils bulbs planted last week. "We were just so tired!" I learned that they are both very different from me: I don't care how tired I might be or how dark it is...I would never stop with only 7 out of 200 bulbs left!

Total bulbs planted this fall: 454. We've barely left summer and I cannot wait until spring!

We also decided to pick everything that was left in the garden, since we'll probably get a killing frost before our next trip out. We cut off all the fall lettuce plants, picked all the green peppers, dug up all the carrots, and snipped a bunch of herbs -- parsley, cilantro, and dill (left some of the herbs in case they can go to seed for us). Oh, also pulled the scallion. Yes, I said scallion. We got one. And it's thinner than a pencil. sigh. The only things left are a few turnips.

We were pleasantly surprised to find 3 watermelons hiding in the tall grass! Haven't tasted them yet, but I'm hopeful.

More things to remember for next year:

• If I decide to plant cucumbers again (which I do plan on), I will start my dill very early. It's kind of a drag that the dill came in after the cucumber plants had finished.
• I need to plant way more cilantro.
• I'd like to plant more carrots, too. Wish it weren't so much work to prepare the soil for carrots. Maybe we'll try raised beds next year.
  
• Lettuce is a very easy fall crop.
• Watermelons need to be started much, much earlier. And probably fed a lot, too.
• Sweet potatoes need to be covered with chicken wire. It seems that bunnies like sweet potato leaves almost as much as bean plants. (Didn't get any sweet potatoes this year.) I've never grown sweet potatoes before...I guess technically I still haven't.