Sunday, April 10, 2011

Getting started...

We've got seedlings started. I finally got outside last night(by force, when my bareroot rhubarb and horseradish came in the mail...). I have been loathe to step out and get things going. My beds are all overgrown with grass. After getting my hands dirty planting the rhubarb and horseradish, I set to work cleaning out the beds--carcasses of calendula flowers, iris leaves, some leeks left to be frozen. I turned the soil in one bed in order to pull out grass and grass roots. This is not normal lovely lawn grass, but stuff that will force its way up from underneath the beds until it makes its way up two feet to daylight. I don't much like it.

Today, temps rose to near 80 degrees, and I turned another raised bed, planted 6 rows of purple haze carrots interplanted with radishes and crimson red bunching onions around the perimeter of the bed. The kids pulled out their swimsuits and played in the water.

I started on my biggest bed, not raised. It is quite overgrown with grass, and it is going to take me a good, long time to get it all turned. But it is started, and I feel a little more motivated to keep going than I did when I started, so this is good.

Oh, I also planted some French thyme in another bed that won't require turning this year. Thank goodness not all of them do!

Friday, March 25, 2011

Reflections on 2011 Season

Before planning this year's garden, it is critical to review what went well and what did not last year.

Disease:
We seem to have a lot of disease issues with tomatoes and cukes, so we intend to be quite careful about the tomato and cuke varieties we plant. Right now, I don't have cukes planned, but have chosen a few short season disease resistant tomato varieties. We will also be planting a few sunsugar (yellow cherry) tomato plants, as they are, quite possibly, the best cherry tomato ever.;)

We have very limited garden space for the, as I didn't plan very well for rotation last year. It's going to be best not to plant tomatoes, cukes, or melons anywhere where any of these were planted before (which pretty much accounts for all of our garden beds).

Pests:
Also to be addressed: massive rodent problem (voles? ground squirrels? ground hog? All of the above or some combination thereof?) Two plantings of green beans, half a dozen runner bean plants, numerous cucumbers, most of our melons, every bit of lettuce planted[,] and even a few tomatoes[,] all shared with a well-fed rodent population in our backyard last summer (all without us even catching a glimpse of them for the most part).

Failed Attempts/Good stuff:
The potatoes in a barrel produced about half a dozen potatoes. The plants did not send out roots as I filled the barrel with soil and compost, just kept growing up. I don't know if I did something wrong.

Our tomatoes managed to produce fairly well, despite the blight. The end of the season was dry, so it didn't spread. We ran out of our stash of frozen tomatoes in early March.

Our lipstick strawberries appear to be spreading nicely out front.

We harvested some Jerusalem Artichokes last weekend and roasted them in olive oil. They were quite good.

The peonies I planted last spring never came up. I'm hoping by some miracle they'll show themselves this spring.

The astible I planted out front turned to dust by the end of the season, so I'm curious to see whether it will return.

The Mexican Gherkins were fun and resistant to whatever took hold of the cukes.


Labels:
We had some major labeling issues, LOL. Things got shuffled about, and thereby, mislabeled, as seedlings. I thought our brandywine tomatoes were Chinese Lanterns. The brandywines grew nicely, as they were off in areas away from the rest of the tomatoes, but also not in the sunniest areas, so they didn't produce until the very, very end of the season. I also thought the Chinese lanterns were peppers. Peppers were mislabeled, as well, and, as a result, I still am not sure what was what. A couple of varieties did very well, and the rest did not. I didn't even get jalepenos in the ground, as they were the smallest of the seedlings, and what I thought were the strongest of the jalepeno seedlings were actually another variety. We will definitely be sure to avoid repeating this error as we start seeds this weekend.

Containers:
Not much did very well in containers, except some peppers and basil. I presume this is due to soil quality.

Amendment:
Planning on another wheelbarrow of composted cow manure from the farm where we own a cow share (I am entitled to it as part of the cow's production) and composted/fresh rabbit manure from the neighbors' rabbits.

Beds:
Considering another raised bed with fresh soil, probably digging up another small bed along the fence on the top of our hill, and possibly digging up some beds along the fence on the outside.

Wants:
Add to our herb garden with a few medicinal and cooking herbs (perennials). Split and move some flowers (day lilies, daisies) from back yard to front. Encourage starts from lavender. Get ahold of a hardy rosemary, as my efforts to overwinter plants indoors have had limited success.

Garden 2011!

Prep:
spread 32 gallon trash can filled with composted manure from cow share ;) (early March). Intended to do this in the fall, but never did.

I'm hoping to get some more of this in the next month (still largely frozen here at the moment). Also plan to get my wheelbarrow over to the neighbor's house. They have pet rabbits and no garden. :)

Seed orders:
Pine Tree Seeds:
Royal Burgundy Beans
Cosmic Purple Carrots
Redbor Kale
Summertime lettuce
Red iceburg lettuce
super sugar snap pea
purple cayenne pepper
Dill's Atlantic Giant Pumpkin
Watermelon Radish
Golden Girl Tomato
Sweet Million Tomato
Sun Sugar Tomato
Peach Blow Sutton Tomato
Tip Off Romanesco Cauliflower
BasilicoFinnissimo Verde A Pal Basil
Italian Pepperoncini
Soloist Cabbage
Evergreen Bunching onions
Bunching Crimson Forest onions
Early Jalepeno hot pepper
ancho hot pepper
Scarlet Runner Bean
Ophelia Eggplant
Red Skin Pepper
Mini-Colored Popcorn
Dukat Dill
Stevia
French Thyme
Caribbean Cocktail Nasturtiums
Black Velvet Nasturtiums
Indian Summer Rudbeckia
German chamomile
Perser Mix Aster
Prime Time Mixture Petunias
Dolce Flambe Petunias
Purple Wave Petunias

Gurneys:
Candy onion plants
Candy apple (red) onion plants
horseradish
rhubarb