March 28, 2014 - A New Season for an Old Garden

Yesterday my son-in-law, "Bigfoot Bryan", came over to help me by rebuilding the box in "The Kennel Garden".  It's the one with the frame that gets covered with netting to keep the leaf miners off of the beets, chard and spinach.  The box has always been larger than the framework, and difficult to keep covered.  It's fixed!  I picked up a few yards of netting, and had planned on getting the remaining spinach, chard and lettuce planted and covered today, but it's raining.  That's OK, we really needed the rain.

The garden looks quite bare.  I do have a bed of lettuce, 4 beds of onions, 2 beds of potatoes, a wide row of snap peas and a row of sweet peas planted on this side, as well as a garlic bed that was planted last fall and is looking great. .  There is also another bed of spinach on the other side of the garden, next to the shed, that may end up being transplanted into the kennel if I don't have enough netting to protect it where it is now.  I haven't picked any of my overwintered spinach yet.  I'm not that fond of the tough winter growth that it's showing right now.

There are just a few seedlings ready to set out.  They are perfectly happy living on the patio for now.  The large container is my own personal little salad garden, where I hope to be able to nip off a few leaves to add to my meals.  I put a few sweet onions in it for a bit of extra flavor.

 Inside, the plant window is getting full!  I hope I don't have to pinch those tomato tops, but there's not a lot of room left for them to go up.

 I have tomatoes.  Green, but they're at least setting fruit.

 The overwintered Happy Yummy Sweet is loaded with at least a dozen full sized peppers.

 Sweet peppers have all germinated and are just getting their first true leaves.  I was late with the tomatoes, but I pre-sprouted the seeds before planting, so I have 100% germination.  Well, close...one plant has failed to show so far.  Those KFC Go Cups are fantastic for growing the seedlings, two plants per cup! They are extremely strong, unlike the flimsy plastic 4/6 cells.  Leeks are growing in the background.

I'm just planting a few (6) broccoli this year, as I'm the only one who really likes it.  Everyone wants cabbage though, so this is just the first round of 12 cabbage seedlings.  Germination was 100%, and I think I planted them about 4 days ago.

And so begins a "New Season for an Old Garden"