What's Up in the Garden?

LOTS!! We've learned a lot these past couple weeks. I killed my first 15 broccoli plants putting them out too early, so I've started more. I also killed almost all my lettuce and spinach that I had started early inside by putting it out too early. A cold spell did them both in.

Even though I failed with these two plantings other's have started beautifully! We have a full bed each of turnips, rutabegas, and beets, 2 beds of shelling peas, 1 ½ of snow peas, ½ a bed of garlic, and ½ a bed of lettuce, spinach, and green onion mix that have sprouted!! Each bed is approximately 20' X 3'All these beginning crops look promising! It is so cool seeing neat little rows of plants springing up through the earth! The strawberry plants are also doing GREAT!! We were given another 120 plants that I transplanted, a five hour job, a couple weeks ago. Our strawberry patch is 80' X 5'.We already need to spend some time weeding out the crack grass in the snow pea and strawberry beds.

Our big pressure project right now is getting the potato beds ready. We will be planting blue potatoes, red through potatoes, red skinned potatoes, and storage potatoes. The potatoes are supposed to go in the back garden which has only about 1/8 ready for planting. I've been told they can go in the ground the 1st of May.

I need to get raspberry plants in some of the area that is ready and must get an 80' X 20' ish area ready to get the potatoes in the ground. Hopefully we'll be able to finish up that much by Saturday so we can plant early next week. The rest of the 84 X 84 plot will be finished over the next couple weeks Lord willing. It looks as if a section that is about 20 X 20 might not be usable due to some very LARGE boulders. This will cause some major planting modification in the back plot. I don't think it will effect too much though since I have decided not to do cherry bushes, huckle berries, and choke cherries.

The other crop I'd like to get in very soon is carrots. I'd like to do 2 beds early next week. I also need to harden up the rest of my storage onions and leeks so I can add them to the beds we've already started for them.

Hopefully by the end of next week I will also have the cabbage, cauliflower, and celery in their beds. It will depend on the weather. I will probably have to protect these if I get them out next week because I'm sure we'll still have some cold nights that they won't be able to handle. I have 100's of canning jars that will do the job nicely, so we'll be fine if we need to protect them.

About half of the tomatoes that I started back in March are already over a foot tall. The other half that were started in the soil packed inside toilet paper rolls are only about 4 inches tall. HUGE difference between dirt and the peat pellets!!! The pepper plants are all a few inches tall and are establishing some nice leaves. Last year I noticed that my pepper plants grew much slower than the tomatoes, I'm not sure why, but it must be normal because this year the same thing is happening. The tomato plants smell WONDERFUL!! I can imagine how yummy the tomatoes will taste by just smelling the plants.

For those that are wondering we did manage to make just over 6 gallons of Syrup in March and early April. It was a great syrup harvest for our first year!