It’s been a crazy spring here, and I must get better about updating here.  After all, this is my garden journal, and keeping notes in my head is NOT the ideal way to remember year after year.

Warning: This WILL be a picture-heavy and long post.  I hope you don’t mind.

We had our early spring warm up in March this year.  I promptly tucked seed into the ground.  I sowed radishes, lettuces, spinach, chard, peas, broccoli raab, and carrots.  Then it got chilly, we had freezing nights, frost, etc, but my seedlings soldiered on.  At the end of April I was feeling like sowing seed early hadn’t really been worth it.  Now I’m singing a different tune!  We enjoyed radishes in salads in early May!  We’ve been eating salads with homegrown lettuces and spinach for weeks now.  They’ve been delicious, varied, and free from the ground.  The shelling peas did poorly- I must need new seed.  The snap peas we will be harvesting this week, as the plants are suddenly loaded with burgeoning peas.  The Broccoli Raab I missed once again.  You really have to keep an eye on that one, because one day it’s ready to harvest, and the next it is in full flower.  I may try a fall harvest of that one, since it grows so fast.

Here is a picture of Garden Bed #1:

Look at those lettuces! We’ll be munching it a lot this week, as this past weekend’s heat seems to have rendered many of them pretty dang close to bolting.   The carrots are mixed in with the lettuces and look like they’re doing great based on the tops.  At the back you can see my bamboo poles sticking up.  Last week I pulled the last of the spinach and the two shelling pea plants as they were already finished.  In this space I sowed some pole beans and more romaine lettuce. No sprouts yet- any day now.

Bed #2:

At the back of the bed you can see the wall of snap peas.  The kids are SO excited about these ones.  The red you see in the middle is actually a trellis.  On either side of it I have planted slicing cucumbers along the trellis, and then bush beans to the right and the left.  The four feet of bed closest to us are the sweet pepper plants.  This bed is doing well, although I did lose one pepper plant to a squirrel digging.  After the peas have been harvested, that wall of plant will be removed, and I will attempt growing a watermelon and a cantaloupe on the pea trellis.  The kids wanted the plants from the garden center, and who was I to say no? Maybe this will be the year we have juicy melon from our own garden.

Bed #3 has been converted to a tomato and eggplant bed:

It’s doing really well.  I planted my tomatoes a few weeks early this year- I’d barely hardened them off even, but they’ve been thriving ever since.  I only had a few casualties after planting- and those were really sickly as it was.  This week Andy will be installing poles so that I can use the Florida Weave as support for this bed.  The eggplants are doing okay… I had a pretty awful aphid infestation and they went to town on the eggplants.  I actually sprayed a pesticide, which seems to have taken care of the problem, thankfully.  I’m usually against such things, but by golly, I want my vegetables.  Plus, by the time these are actually fruiting there shouldn’t be a trace of pesticide anywhere.

Here is a close-up of my Malakite Box tomato plant.  It’s massive.  I’ve never had a main stem as fat as the one on this plant- easily the diameter of a quarter. The blossoms on it are massive.  I am drooling just thinking about these tomatoes!  As of right now, I have never had tomato plants so healthy and vibrant looking.  I’ll get a better photo later- I was dodging the sprinkler.

Here is Bed #4:

This is the hot pepper bed, which you can see closest to us. At the back I have pole beans planted at the red trellises.  I also did one side of cucumbers- we’ll see how those do.  Between the trellises and peppers on the right is a brassica patch.  I sowed broccoli, two types of kale and brussels sprouts from seed.  The kales are looking great, we’ll see how the others do.  On the left I have a good six feet of additional carrot seed sown.  In between the bean trellises I sowed extra chard seeds and lettuce seeds- and those seem to be taking off too.  I wanted to maximize my growing space this year.

On to the Potato Patch!

This is brand new to me.  I have half of this space planted with Kennebec, and half with Fingerlings.  It’s a cinder-block bed, which I’m rather liking the look of.  Andy literally threw this together- and you’ll have to forgive the debris laying about, as gardening has been done on the fly this year.  I think I would like to see this patch raised up one more level of block, but then Andy will probably have to re-do it after the potatoes are done.  I also want to plant the actual holes of cinder-block with chives.  Both garlic and regular- I think that would be the perfect thing to utilize those small squares for.

On to some new additions to the garden this year!  Andy built me two new raised beds just for tomatoes.  This is the sunniest part of the yard, so we wanted to see how tomatoes would fare here.

This first bed is where I have planted cherry tomatoes and determinates.   I’ll get into more details about tomato varieties in another post, but if all goes well, I will literally have a rainbow of cherry tomatoes.  I have red, yellow, green, orange and white cherry tomatoes planted, as well as some yellow pears.  The determinates are doing great- one of my Earlinorth plants is already loaded with blossoms.  Here’s a picture of him:

This next bed is also just for tomatoes.

In this bed I have some dwarfs planted, and then a real variety of heirlooms.  In  both of these tomato beds, Andy has installed soaker hoses, and that seems to be working really well to water these plants.  It took a bit of configuring to make sure the hoses hit all the plants, but it looks good right now.  Both of these beds will also be altered this week for utilizing the Florida Weave.   All told I have over 70 tomato plants that are alive and healthy.

In front of the tomatoes is the Garlic Patch, also a first for me:

This bed is loaded with weeds, but I was afraid to pull them out, for fear that they would disturb the growing garlic.  I never saw any scapes, and the stalks have just started turning brown.  I guess I’m supposed to wait for them to turn brown about 2/3 of the way, and then I can check a bulb to see if it’s ready for harvest.  I anticipate that will be in July.

Continuing around the yard, here are my Ghost Peppers in pots:

I also have two of those in the garden proper.   I wanted one for sure in the pot so that if they’re not ready before fall freeze, I can bring a pot inside.

Here are the Tomatillos and a rogue raspberry plant:

The large tomatillo I started from seed, but I only had one take off.  Tomatillos need a partner to produce, so I bought a second plant from the garden center.  It’s so much smaller, but already pushing blossoms, so hopefully we’ll start seeing some pollination soon.  The rogue raspberry we’ll see about.  I think it’s a black raspberry, actually, but it appeared out of nowhere.

Here are my Zucchini plants:

I started them with the ice cream pails to keep the rabbits from eating them.  They’re just too big for my raised beds.  They’re doing well enough that I’m already nervous about having so many zucchini.  Also on Andy’s agenda this week is building me a cage so I can take the buckets off.  As you can see from the one on the right,  they are ready to have the buckets off- though the buckets did work great at keeping the rabbits away from the tender sprouts.  I’m unsure at what point my plants would be considered safe from harm, so Andy will cage them.

And lastly today, here is one photo of some of the herbs:

What you can see here left to right is some Green Onions from last year,  Lovage, Sage and Lemon Thyme.  The Lovage is absolutely massive.  These all came back from last year.  I also have regular Thyme and some basil, as well as parsley in the lettuce bed, as the rabbits are too fond of that one.  I need to pick up more basil plants yet and make a note to start more basil plants next year.

Note: Start more basil plants next year.

So the garden is looking well.  We sure could use some rain, but the sprinkler and soaker hoses do seem to be doing a good job keeping everything going.   I’ll get into more detail about a few things soon- especially the tomatoes.