We’re finally starting to see things come together in the garden.  A few weeks ago The Hubby took advantage of some beautiful weather and started finishing up cleaning out the garden and getting my beds built.  When he hauled a load of brush to the city dumping site, he discovered a full pile of ready-to-use compost.  Hooray for me!  He quickly hurried home, hooked up the trailer and went and picked up a load.  It was a ton of work on his part, but two trailer loads later, I have six full garden beds.  I was really stressing about how we were going to find the funds to fill these beds this year.  Free city compost?  I’ll take it!  Here you can see four of the six beds.

I promptly took out my tray of WAY past needing to be planted leeks, broccoli, and celery and stuck them in the dirt.  They’re not doing very well, and I’m debating pulling them out.  I took time right away to sow seed for a bunch of lettuces, carrots, snap peas, scallions, turnips, beets, chard and radishes.  I left plenty of room for cucumbers, beans and another sowing of lettuce.   I’ve pretty much decided that all of my cole crops- the broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and kale are going to go in my community garden plot.  I’m hoping that the critters will leave them alone over there.   I still need to get over there and assess how much work I need to put in to get it ready for planting.  The road it is on is under construction and closed to thru traffic, so I’m not sure how best to get there.

My garlic is doing great!

I was worried that the cold winter was going to doom my garlic crop this year, but it seems that all is well.  I am having troubles with squirrels digging in here though.  The newly planted garden beds are covered with bird netting to keep the squirrels out, but I can’t put that on here without making a cage for it of sorts.   I’m seriously considering getting some of my hot fatalii peppers out of the freezer, blending some up and making a squirrel repellant spray.   Other than that, my only issue with the garlic is that I am very afraid that I may have lost my map.  I have ten different varieties in here… I would really like to know what is what when I harvest it.  I would say I have about 100% germination here- that is roughly 100 bulbs of garlic.  That may actually be enough for me for a year of garlic eating.  Maybe.

Cold weather is still in the area- there is a frost advisory tonight, I believe, so still to early to consider planting out the peppers and tomatoes.   They’re thriving in their sunny window though!  Perhaps next week I’ll start the process of hardening them off.