Vegetable Gardening

[spokewench]

Well- finally a gorgeous warm sunny day- Spring has fully arrived!

I chose one of the three long beds in my vegetable garden and dug it deep with a fork, pulled out old roots and dead stubs, and raked out debris. Will save the other beds for another day so I don't kill myself. I guess it's about 3' by 30 feet.
There is something so inspiring and beautiful about a bed of freshly dug bare earth.
Ok, I can't stand it....going down to town to pick up a few packets of early seed! The rest I'll order online to get some special types I like.
I can definitely sow some spinach!

That's what I thought a week ago - 70 degrees beautiful; today over 1 foot of snow; just spent about an hour outside digging out the driveway and back deck to the hot tub. One of these days, I WILL GET INTO THE GARDEN!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Yikes, poor Spokewench!

I wound up getting a bunch of seedlings as well as various standard seeds.
I got seedlings of cabbage, bok choy, 3 kinds of onions, red lettuce, and red kale.
I planted several seed rows of spinach and French breakfast radish. More seed to plant over the next few days- romaine, buttercrunch, Swiss chard, and kohlrabi. Do carrot seeds do well in the cool early Spring?
Good to be back in the garden again! We should get some rain by Monday, so the timing is good.

[spokewench]

Yikes, poor Spokewench!

I wound up getting a bunch of seedlings as well as various standard seeds.
I got seedlings of cabbage, bok choy, 3 kinds of onions, red lettuce, and red kale.
I planted several seed rows of spinach and French breakfast radish. More seed to plant over the next few days- romaine, buttercrunch, Swiss chard, and kohlrabi. Do carrot seeds do well in the cool early Spring?
Good to be back in the garden again! We should get some rain by Monday, so the timing is good.

I'm soooo jealous; but we are supposed to warm up all week - hopefully, next weekend will be nice and I can go to town in the garden. If it warms like they said, the snow will melt quickly. That's the good thing about spring snow

[smilingcat]

We are still moving from California to Portland area. I been here for the past week and its been balmy 50F and nights been dropping into 30-something I think. Tomatoes can tolerate 40F but not 30-something.

Soil is spongy wet and its raining again today. Forecast is rain for next 10 days. ughhhh!!! I want to till over the grass and plant.

Going to plant some blueberry bushes to create wind break. it will also act as a natural fence to keep our geriatric dogs from falling over a 5 foot drop on our property.

We are going to take a chance with some of our favorite tomato varieties but to be safe, I think I will plant some Russian and German varieties. Early to mature.

Definitely planting spinach, swiss chard, broccoli, turnip, parsnips. Cold weather plants.

On a side note, one of our chicken made a jail break. She dug a tunnel just big enough to escape out of her "chicken run" The other two were too big to wiggle through the hole. My partner found her pecking around our two dogs in the yard. Oui!!!

[spokewench]

Walls of Water are wonderful for getting a longer season with your tomato plants. The will allow you to plant earlier and protect your tomatoes from 30 degree weather at night.

[Kitsune06]

Got the garden started this past weekend, still at work sprouting some seeds and fine-tuning the setup, but our balcony necessitated some 'creative' use of space. We have a vertical plot with kale, a couple types of lettuces, spinach and a couple types of peas, and an upside-down cherry tomato.

Along the rail, we've got the beans and carrots, now with the lavender and rosemary in between bean containers. The catnip has its own box, and another box will house our pak choi and fennel.

Here are some early pics from last week... more as the garden develops...

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Kit that is very cool.
looking forward to more updates and pix!

[Xrayted]

So what Kit didn't mention is she used a linen shoe rack, an unused lean-against-the-wall type of bike rack, a small piece of pvc, a few U bolts, a small 1x3 board, duct tape (cuz there had to be some duct tape in there somewhere, right?) and made a vertical garden. Then she took a 2 liter pop bottle and made an upside down cherry tomato holder. A "recycled garden". Even the water run off gets recycled.

[spokewench]

I finally got into my backyard yesterday, 5 hours later, my garden beds are all cleaned out and I raked a bunch of pine needles and bagged them to be picked up by bulk pickup. My aching back!

Now, manure, compost and I'll be ready to plant soon.

Last week, my front beds all cleaned out, planted some pansies for color; and got lucky at the nursery. They had overwintered gallon plants (perennials) mostly all around $20 plants, for $5. Of course, most of them had not sprouted yet, but that's okay. I planted a bunch of bleeding hearts and a thing called rodgerisia in my shade garden; a campanula bellflower and some type of ground cover in a sunny spot; and a couple of nice alaskan burdette (that's not right) supposed to be cold hardy. ANyway, i'll look up hte name again for you, but it has beautiful foliage. What a find!

[FlyingScot]

Do any of you have a Mantis tiller? I'm thinking of getting one because I can't really hand-turn my Ohio clay due to my left-sided weakness. They have an electric one which intrigues me as I hate doing the gas oil mixture thing and I suck at pull-starting anything. I've rented tillers before but who wants to put a filthy, oily think inside their car...definitely not me.

[tulip]

Do any of you have a Mantis tiller? I'm thinking of getting one because I can't really hand-turn my Ohio clay due to my left-sided weakness. They have an electric one which intrigues me as I hate doing the gas oil mixture thing and I suck at pull-starting anything. I've rented tillers before but who wants to put a filthy, oily think inside their car...definitely not me.

Yes. It's great, but you cannot till with one finger like in the ads. It takes some doing, but it's much easier than the huge tillers. I find it very useful for planting perennial plants and shrubs. Digging the hole with the tiller is much easier and than with a shovel. I also plant my bulbs with an auger bit on my electric drill. I can plant about 100 bulbs in about 15 minutes that way.

But the best way that I've found is to build up, not down. Lay down newspaper--lots--and pile on soil and compost--lots. I add a few wheelbarrowsful of compost to each bed every season, and things grow wonderfully. I've found that adding a cup or two of dehydrated chicken manure really kickstarts the plants.

Kitsune, I love your vertical garden!! That would be a great way to do herbs near the kitchen.

I've taken some photos of my garden, but I'll have to download the photos and that ain't happening tonight.

[FlyingScot]

Thanks for the info Tulip. I think I'm going to go ahead and get one. As for the newspapers. I have stacks of them just waiting for the purpose you described. In fact, I used them this winter/spring to kill the grass where I'm planning to garden. Worked like a charm! Now I just have to dig the area out deep enough to add some good soil and compost.

[Kitsune06]

These folks are my heroes... but a farm like that would probably be a full-time job in and of itself.
http://urbanhomestead.org/urban-homestead

As it is, we've only got a balcony, so I grow household herbs (mint and catnip) and a few select veggies.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Last weekend I planted cabbage, bok choy, 3 kinds of onions, red oakleaf lettuce, red kale, spinach, French breakfast radish, buttercrunch lettuce, carrots, Swiss chard, and kohlrabi.

Today I ordered the seeds I can't get at my local Agway. My personal favorites:
pickling cucumbers, Indigo radicchio, Fukagawa Japanese bunching onions, and these lettuces:
Merveille des Quatre Saisons, Divina Butterhead, Flashy Troutback, Outredgeous Romaine, and Jericho Romaine.

Cucumbers, tomatoes, and string beans will be planted later when it's warmer.

This year I've opted to not grow turnips, beets, and leeks- that gives me more room for onions and cabbage which I will use more.

HERE was a photo I took last Fall of the beautiful things I brought in one afternoon from the garden:
Romaine and butterhead lettuce, purple kohlrabi, and the Japanese bunching onions. I still remember that perfect salad, it was so sweet and crunchy and lovely!

[skhill]

Yesterday I got to eat from the garden for the first time this spring-- just some spinach that needed to be thinned out. It didn't even make it inside; I was popping it in my mouth as I went. Yum!

Between our incessant rain and being allergic to the pollen my maple tree is spreading everywhere, it's tough right now to get much done in the garden. But the spinach and mustard greens are doing great.