End-of-Spring Push

written by Yvonne

The weather is still nice so this week and weekend will be our big end-of-Spring push to get everything in the ground before the weather becomes too hot.

Last weekend Tom took care of the potatoes. He started by tilling up the potato patch. There were signs of onions growing, but when he pulled them up, there were hardly any bulbs to them.  We're finding that this patch is really only good for potatoes, so that's what we'll stick to for this mostly-shady spot.

During the tilling process, he found a few potatoes left over from last fall.

He created rows and dropped the potatoes in.

He covered the whole area with straw that he'd used as a wind block for the bees over the winter.

"I see wabbits!" Our neighbor bought his daughters a bunny for Easter.  They keep it in a cage between our house and theirs. Olive is a border terrier; bread to hunt small, animals.. ya know, like bunnies. She keeps a close eye on the wabbit every time we're outside.  (Next time I'll get a picture with the wabbit in it.)

The raspberries are coming in a hand-full or so at a time.

Raspberry-licious!

This is probably a two cups or so. Hee hee!

Blackberries taking their time ripening. Trying to be patient but COME ON BERRIES; HURRY UP AND RIPEN! I got jam, cobblers, and crisps to make!

Blueberries moving from green to green-blue.

I started flower seeds a month or so ago. The two on the outsides are sunflowers, the one in the middle (which you really can't see) are wildflowers.

Because it appeared that the cold snap killed the basil, I started some more in pots.  I was going to restrain from over doing the basil this year but I think I'm going to end up with an abundance once again.  It's hard to see but right in the middle of this photos are a bunch of very small seeds that sprouted.  I went ahead and planted them all.

And as luck would have it, the basil (front) that I thought had been killed off is doing FANTASTIC.  The oregano (back) was a cutting from a student of mine, and it's doing well too.

Yesterday I did a LOT of weeding - something we haven't kept up with very well this Spring.  After weeding all of bed #1 and parts of the other three, I set to getting all the seedling planted.

Longtime followers of TYs VeggiePatch will no doubt recognize this flower because we've taken a similar picture every year. Squash blossoms have arrived.

This is the other squash plant. Both of these are the crookneck variety we've grown every year. The other two squash plants (not shown) are a new variety and not nearly as far along as these.

This is bed #2 where the buttercruch lettuce and radishes were. We'd eaten all the radishes, except for one that went to seed. I harvested all the buttercrunch that was left because it was showing signs of bolting. After pulling them out (along with about 10 pounds of weeds), I put up stakes, and planted the bean seedlings.  These are the borlotto beans...

and these are the burgundy beans.

It's nice to look at your garden when it isn't overrun with weeds, don't you think?  In addition to planting the beans, I trimmed back the dill and cilantro, planted additional cilantro seedlings, and pulled out the unsuccessful broccoli and cauliflower. (Shhh... don't tell Tom. He has a hard time pulling up plants that are still alive, but these hadn't produced any broccoli or cauliflower and they certainly won't as it gets hotter). The mesculin (sp?) lettuce didn't look close to bolting so I kept it in.

In place of the broccoli and cauliflower I planted the golden and banana peppers.

I didn't end up picking the scapes off the tops of the garlic. I did notice they were getting bigger and kind of bumpy so I went in for a closer look....

Seems as though when the scapes grow, they produce the seed pods and will soon turn into a puffy flower. Looking forward to seeing what this looks like when it opens up all the way. Stay tuned.

After several days of good rain, I knew there'd be lots of peas ready to harvest. And boy was I right. Just pulling off the largest ones gave me about four cups worth.

Look at how huge this one is!

This is one area I didn't weed yet so it's hard to distinguish what's what. But what you're mainly looking at is the cowpeas that struggled to come up. Once they did come up, it looked like they got killed by the cold. Then they came back. They are officially doing well. Now... if I can just remove enough of the weeds to really see what I've got.

Again with the plethora of weeds... but the pant in the foreground is okra. This must be a dwarf variety because the plant is very small but...

it already has okra forming! I'll be happy if this thing doesn't become a 10' tall tree like the ones in past years.

The amount of rain we got caused everything to quadruple in size. This kale had a few leaves at best the last time I looked. Now, it's over taking the beets!

The parsley is basically a hedge at this point. Around the kale, beets and parsley, I did some trimming, harvesting and weeding and...

this is the result. I harvested a lot of the kale (now shown to the left of the beets) and made kale chips (YUM!).  Didn't do anything with the beets at the moment but this weekend I'll harvest several and roast them up for Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad.  I also trimmed the parsley "hedge" on all four sides as well as the top.  Now it no longer hangs over the bed.  This allowed room for a few more tomoato plants. These tomato plants will likely get way too big to be here, but by that time the beets and kale will be gone so we'll encourage it to grow towards where the beets currently are.

I couldn't seem to get rosemary started from seed so I asked around for anyone who might be able to spare a clipping from an established plant. I put this cutting in the bed where we can't seem to get anything (but more weeds) to grow. We'll check back in a week or so to see if it's taken root.

Fig tree still doing well. Hopefully it will make it out of the pot and into the ground sometime this year.

Whew!  I worked hard to get as many of the seedlings planted as possible and seeing how little is left in the mini-greenhouse, I'd say I did a good job. What's left are onions, chives, and a mystery plant.

A reward for a hard day's work in the garden. A glass of champagne and a bowl of raspberries, bananas and a dollop of vanilla yogurt.

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