Growing, Growing, Growing!

written by Yvonne

These beets made it all the way through a very cold winter, now it's time to eat 'em up. These few small beets produced two bags worth of greens. In addition, I harvested another three bags of spinach.

These are the beets still left in the ground. They've started to bolt so they'll be pulled up this week.

I planted bed #4 full of seeds right before winter hit and crossed my fingers that some would "take" but most didn't. Everything you see here is grass/weeds. Tom did a superb job of tilling the soil and getting the bed ready for summer plantings.

Hey look!  A few carrots did grow after all. They got thrown in with the beets and a few red potatoes, some garlic, purple onion, and asparagus for an oven-roasted root veg dinner Sunday night. Yum!

Once he tilled up the bed, he stuck in a couple of cages in and plated the three cucumber plants that were started in pots. At the very end of the bed (where you can see green) there is some Swiss chard coming up. We haven't been able to put hay down around the chard yet because it's hard to tell what is chard and what is weeds. The chard, however, is just now getting big enough that we'll be able to snuff out those weeds soon.

The rest of the photos are general updates on our Spring plantings:

Pole beans and bush beans.

One of these is broccoli and one is cabbage.

Crowder peas.

Lettuce, lettuce, lettuce

Spinach and kale.

Snap peas and snow peas.

BERRIES that are now starting to flower.

This is that one spot where we've attempted several things but had no luck. Tom planted some volunteer tomatoes here last year and they did good for a while, but ultimately the cold got to them so we don't know for a fact that tomatoes would grow here.  This year we're trying out two very hardy vegetables that grow very well in the beds, but take up a lot of space. On the left we planted okra and on the right is one straight-neck squash seedling and some black beauty squash seeds.  It will be great if these do well here because it would save us room in the beds.

And as usual, the dogs enjoyed their day in the garden with us.  :)

If you want to keep up with this year's bee news, be sure to go to www.tsbeeshoney.com. Doesn't look like there will be any honey for sale this year. As "urban farmers" we are at the whims of nature and that means sometimes we'll have success and sometimes not.