I spent a couple of hours in the garden this afternoon weeding, trellising the peas and chatting to passers-by. I also harvested my first three stalks of asparagus and cut some lily of the valley.
Spring
Category: General
Spring Planting and First Harvest
I have not been in the garden for a while because I had COVID for the past three and a half weeks and was not feeling too great. I had managed to sow peas and spring greens in early April and they are sprouting. Today, I did more direct sowing. I sowed red beets (Detroit Dark Red), carrots (Scarlet Nantes and Danvers Half Long), Rainbow Chard and cilantro. I also transplanted a parsley plant I had purchased a few days ago and four kale seedlings I had started indoors a few weeks ago. We still do not have water in the garden. Fingers crossed for some showers in the next few days, so I do not have to schlepp water from home.
I also harvested my first crops today, spring onions. They were so fragrant! And the asparagus is getting ready.
First Direct Sowing
The plot does not like much yet, but things are happening. Today I sowed peas, spring greens (in between the two rows of peas) and spinach and rapini (a first for me). And so it begins …
Garden Plot in Early Spring
Reseeding
This morning I reseeded a few seedlings that did not germinate, mainly peppers. Only one Jalapeno and one Sweet Pickle germinated, none of the others. I also reseeded kale – Blue Curly Scotch this time as the Tuscan kale did not germinate (old seeds).
Start of the Season
All my seed orders are in now. I will write up a detailed post about all the varieties I ordered this year soon. Today, I started the first indoor seedlings, 30 cells in total: basil (2 Thai Basil, 6 Nufar), peppers (2 Hot Thai, 2 Jalapeno, 2 Bulgarian Pimento, 2 Sweet Pickle Peppper), eggplant (3 Nadia, 3 Ping Tung, 3 Green Round Thai – a freebie from Sand Hill Preservation Center) and kale (3 Blue Curled Scotch and 2 Tuscan). So exciting!
Finishing up the Fall Cleanup
The sky this afternoon was beautiful. It was not too cold, so I decided to finish up my fall cleanup. I pulled the last chard and flower stalks, dug up the dahlia tubers and weeded the remaining patch in the back. All that’s left is to cut back the asparagus in a week or two. The only thing still growing is a few kale plants, two rows of fall greens and the walking onions. The garlic is covered nicely in hay. Looks like my plot is ready for winter.
Planting Garlic
I planted about 60 cloves of garlic this afternoon, half and half softnecks and hardnecks. I noticed that some of the hardneck garlic in my pantry was infested with onion flies, I could see the maggots inside the base of the bulbs. So I took all the heads apart to check and tossed the affected ones. Now I have a big wooden bowl with mostly single cloves and some quarter and half-heads. I hope they will not rot prematurely.
I am not sure where the onion flies came from. Probably from the plot. So I picked the farthest spot away from this year’s garlic to plant next year’s crop. I mulched the garlic with salt marsh hay. This will be the only hay I use over the winter into next season as I am still trying to get rid of the pill bug infestation. I had to do much more weeding this year but it did seem to have worked to reduce the pest.
Fall Planting
While I was working in the garden this morning, a fellow gardener told me that today was National Sunflower Day. So, here is my contribution. I love sunflowers. This one is ten feet tall, so I can’t even pick them to bring home. It is all good as now the entire neighborhood gets to enjoy them this way.
I did some weeding and clearing today and transplanted a scraggly looking Kagran Summer head lettuce and some basil seedlings. I also sowed more fall greens, radishes and more pole beans.
The glass gem corn is flowering and looking great. The squash vines are all over the place and there are many flowers, but so far, I have not seen a fruit. The cucumbers are winding down, I pulled the vines from the pickling cukes, there is only the slicer left and I might get a few more fruit from the plant. I harvested a few carrots as well.
The tomatoes are still going very strong. The chard and kale are very short for some reason. Not sure whether they are shaded too much by the corn and tomatoes or whether they just had a slow start. I pulled the parsley as it was dying. Again.
Mid-July
I spent some time in the garden today weeding the spot where I pulled the garlic a few days ago. I planted carrots and beets there and saved some space for fall greens that will go in the ground in a few weeks. I also sowed more pole beans, as some of the plants had been chewed down to their little stems by, I suspect, a rabbit. My harvest: a couple of pickling cucumbers and flowers.
I also cleaned the garlic today and hung it in our back stairwell to cure. In about two to three weeks, I will braid the softnecks and destem the hardnecks and store them for the long-term.
