Strawberries!

A little over one month after planting strawberry plants, we harvested our first two fruits this weekend.  On Friday, Anne and I shared the very first strawberry from our plot.  Steve and I split the second one on Sunday.  Someday soon, I hope to get a whole strawberry to myself!

I’m a seed starting FAILURE

So the seed tapes that I planted about a month ago are pretty much a failure all around.  But it might not be the fault of the tapes.  I’ve seen a ton of insects in the plot and I never did get my rows covered with remay, so my tiny tender sprouts may be getting eaten before they can grow up.  Blerg.

My rhubarb is doing well and the strawberries have a few green fruits on them! Today we picked our first harvest for the year: kale, chard, spinach, and some bitter lettuces.

We purchased a few herb tomato plants at the Farmer’s Market Store and at Home Depot. I put the herbs in my backyard herb plot and the tomatoes will go out to the garden this evening.

Ladybugs are here

I saw a few ladybugs in my plot yesterday. Ladybugs eat aphids, so I guess that means that aphids are also present already, though I didn’t see any.  Also, I keep seeing some sort of cricket in my plot. I’m guessing that those are what munched on my radish seedlings.

Why do seeds take so loooonnng to sprout? I don’t have the patience for seeds.  Ashley told me that carrot seeds have to go to hell and back before they sprout.  I wonder where my carrot seeds are on their journey.

I weeded a bit yesterday and planted some horseradish root and a couple  more rhubarb roots.

Early spring weather means lots of insects

The radish seeds that I planted a couple of weeks ago have sprouted and the leaves are all chewed on already! Some of my Swiss chard and Brussels sprouts have insect damage too. I dug out my organic insecticidal soap and started spraying.  I’ll probably have to get out the row cover and cover everything again. The spinach, kale, and strawberries look fine.   I may have seen a carrot sprout and a couple of broccoli sprouts. Hard to tell, they could be weeds.

I planted three varieties of carrot seeds today as well as bok choy, salsify, and celeriac.  I have no idea what I’ll do with those last two if they grow. I’ve never grown or eaten them before.

I had good luck with the way I planted carrots last fall, so I’m trying that method again.  We have hilled up soil to create rows in the plot.  I took a large square shovel and plunged it into the center of the row. I wiggled it back and forth to make a narrow trench, a good 8 inches deep, all down the center of the row.  I filled the trench with top soil, watered it, laid down the seed tapes that I made, covered with a small amount of top soil, and watered again.   The purpose of the top soil-filled trench is to give the carrots a light medium in which to grow that won’t impede the development of the root.  Carrots like the soil nice and loose. Fred’s has 1 cubic foot bags of top soil on sale, 3 for $5.

The End of Plot 26, the Beginning of Plot 32

There has been a lot of activity at the garden lately with many gardeners anxious to get their plots into shape and start spring planting.  The Community Harvest group was out in force yesterday to weed their plots and they look great.

The biggest news for us is that we are moving from a 10 x 16 plot to the largest size, 16 x 16.  We are taking over plot 32, the one that Trey and Amelia used to have.  Our old plot 26 is being taken over by a new garden member, Oxford’s Mayor Pat Patterson!  Pat has graciously allowed us to keep our garlic in plot 26 until it is ready to harvest in late spring.

We have weeded plot 32, put in a border of 2 x 4s, hilled up a few rows, spread our compost, and started planting.  We have now put in plants for strawberries, chard, kale, spinach, Brussels sprouts, and rhubarb.  Today I’m going to put out just a few seeds for broccolini, radishes, lettuces, and carrots.

I’m experimenting with making my own seed tapes.  One of the problems I have with planting seeds is that they seem to get washed out from where they were planted.  I cut the folded edges off of some newspaper pages, applied a slurry of cornstarch and water inside the fold, placed my seeds on the paper, then folded the newspaper over the seeds.  I applied more cornstarch mixture to seal the paper over the seeds and then let the strips dry.  I’ll let you know how well this works!

The end of plot 26

The beginning of plot 32

 

Fall Carrots

Carrots seem to take a while to develop to maturity.  We planted seeds about 10 weeks ago.  The green tops of the carrots are now 5-6 inches tall.  They were getting crowded, so I pulled some to thin them out.   The carrots I  pulled were still small, but big enough to eat! They were really good and sweet. I can’t wait until I’ve got some full size carrots to try.  They didn’t seem to be bothered in the least by the freezing temperatures we had last week.  Carrots are definitely going to be planted again next fall.

My one Brussels sprouts plant has produced a few sprouts.  We picked a handful that were about half the size of the sprouts you get at the grocery store. I roasted them with olive oil and topped with a little parmesan cheese. Wow, they were good. This was another plant that seemed unfazed by the freeze.

The broccoli, kale, and spinach are all doing well though growth seems to have slowed a bit with the colder temperatures.  The chard leaves died with the freeze, but new ones seem to be sprouting.  Garlic is growing along.  For some reason, the garlic had a ton of small weeds growing with it.  Weeding was very aromatic!

Broccoli Harvest

We had our first broccoli harvest yesterday, eight weeks after setting out plants.  We had just enough for two servings, steamed and tossed with butter. Wow, it was good.  I will definitely grow broccoli again. It’s been so easy and relatively pest-free.

We continue to harvest greens like crazy. I am really looking forward to carrots. I thinned some yesterday and ate one that was about half the diameter of a pencil in size. Very carrot-y.

First fall harvest

Two and a half weeks after planting, we removed the row cover and harvested some greens. I picked and sauteed some bok choy, kale, and broccoli leaves.  Yep, you can cook and eat the leaves from broccoli. It was so good. I think I had been craving leafy greens.  We are also seeing some more sprouts of carrots and beets. No sign of garlic shoots yet. Everything else is looking great. No broccoli flowers, but those will come.  The lack of rain means that we are having to go out to the garden and water every couple of days.  It’s nice to see that a lot of plots have been planted for fall.

Sprouting

We planted seeds 9 days ago and we now have sprouts! Radishes are nice to plant because you are basically guaranteed that they will grow.  I think I saw some nearly microscopic carrot sprouts. Or maybe those were weeds. And I definitely saw 1 beet sprout.

But my chard plants were pretty wilted in spite of the straw mulch that we put down.  I don’t think I like hilling up my rows; they seem to dry out much too quickly.

Here’s a tip I learned from an experienced gardener. Save those plastic containers with lids that berries come in at the supermarket.  Put some good potting soil or garden soil in them and plant seeds.  Put the lid on and put them out in the garden.  Voila, mini-greenhouses for starting seeds.

Forget starting from seed. I bought plants.

Steve and I have been hard at work getting the garden ready for fall.  We cleared out everything except for a couple of flowers.  We added some garden lime, our worm compost and our regular backyard compost. We turned up the soil and mounded up some new rows.  We bought kale, spinach, broccoli, and lettuce plants from the Farmers’ Market store and bok choy, Brussels sprouts, and Swiss chard from the Garden Center.  Yesterday we put it all in the ground.

This morning I went out and planted two varieties of garlic.  If this stuff grows well, I will have ridiculous amounts of garlic next year.  One is a rocambole variety.  This has a hard central stem and should produce yummy garlic scapes in the spring.  The other is a soft neck, “artichoke” variety.  I received 4 pages of instructions on how to grow garlic/onions with my mail order.  This makes me think that it might not be so easy to grow.  But, like everything else, we’ll see.  Coming up, I should have some carrot and beet seeds arriving soon.  They will go in the ground as soon as I can get them out there.

There are lots of other plot holders who are working on their fall gardens too.  It should be a great fall!

Fall planting