A Little Hay Surely Works Wonders

written by Yvonne

We are SO excited to discover veggies will grow on either side of our driveway - it's now our garden annex!  Look, look!  The beans we planted from seeds are growing!

The day after I took these pictures, there was a really good rain followed by strong sun and these grew even more.

And the melons we started in pots are doing well here too; although the melons planted direct from seed are not. We'll throw some more melon seeds in the ground this weekend and try again.

The volunteer melons/squash/cucumbers/whatever are holding on strong along the driveway as well.

The raspberries are coming in. Even though the bushes have taken off and are spreading down the fence line (just as we'd hoped), there aren't as many berries per cane as there are....

on the black berry plants which have TONS of berries per cane. Being novices at the berry thing, we really weren't sure if we'd get more this year of if we'd killed them or what. Tom pruned most of them but not others. We couldn't be more thrilled to have these come in again. I gotta tell ya, of all the things we plant and eat, and of all my favorite things we grow in out garden, having berries is probably my favorite. Much of that has to do with the fact that you plant them and don't have to do anything else to them and they produce. And the other thing that's great is they are filling in a space in our yard that had weeds and odd growth which makes me like them even better.

Pre-weed wacking Down Dog by Tom.

It's finally time to harvest some lettuce! None too soon either because we started a lifestyle change about four weeks ago which includes eating a VERY large salad as part of our dinner every night. To date, Tom has lost 13 lbs and I've lost 17.  (There have been other changes too, least you think that by just adding a big salad at dinner gave us these results.)

This set of tomatoes is doing well, but not as good as the transplants Tom moved a week prior. It looks like there's hay around them, but it's not enough.

So I hayed it up and really packed the tomatoes in.

Tom harvested beet greens a week ago and they were delicious! and what was left doubled in size in about two days time (left). I started to put hay around the carrots (center) but they're just too small to distinguish from the grass. We'll have to do some weeding in order to get to the carrots. The spinach (right) got a second harvest this weekend.

Cucumbers aren't taking off by any means, but they are still growing. Once Mother Nature is done with this gorgeous, but chilly, spring weather, they will likely take off.

This bed of kale, chard and broccoli was all started in pots. Now that they've grown some, it's time to get the hay around them.

And here's the same kale, chard, broccoli bed with the hay added.  And just as the beans doubled up in size after a bout of rain and sun, these grew too.

Got a good harvest done on the collards.

The peas are doing well...

and are flowering. The peas seem to be hiding from me, but Tom finds them just fine. Every time I want to pick a few, I can't find any. Tom finds a hand full every time he goes out. Gotta start looking a litter harder I guess.

Figgy is coming back after the winter. Maybe we'll get him planted in the ground this year.

Today's harvest, from left to right: Breakfast (spinach), lettuce (lunch), and dinner (collards).

If you'll recall, several weeks ago, Tom disbanded the worm composting. He put all the worms and the casting from the worm box directly into the beds. We still compost all our food and lawn scraps, but just in binds rather than worms. It's a lot less work to dump everything into the compost bins and with Tom's time being used on tending the bees, he just couldn't keep up with the worms anymore.

He moved the worm box up close to the house and we're now using it for herbs. He got a load of dirt and filled it up, then I got some seeds started. The parsley you see in the middle was started in bed #4. At the time I started those seeds, we didn't know we'd have a new, separate space for herbs. So once we got the herb box ready, I transplanted the parsley seedlings.

I made a map of what I planted where so I'd know what's what once they come up.

All in all, a good days work in TYs Veggie Patch!