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.

A Late Spring Frost

written by Yvonne

The snow, snap, and cow peas are all coming up (foreground).

This weekend I planted three kinds of beans and some crowder peas.

We're going to try this patch next to the house again for melons. No mystery melons that turn out to be squash, but actual melons. I planted four varieties and we'll see what happens. This area gets plenty of sun so that won't be an issue. The soil, however, is pretty dense so if things don't grow here we're going to have to work the soil more.

All the white flowers shown here will turn to blueberries. Wow! Now, if we can get to them before the birds do, we'll be in business.

The blackberries have come back as well.

To show just how fast the berries are growing, the first picture shown below is from last weekend. The next one down is one week later. If they produce as many berries as leaves, man we're gonna be happy campers!

The NC Extension service listed the last frost date as April 15. Guess they know what they're talking about because although it's been in the high 70s for about a week, all of a sudden we had a frost last night with another one tonight! Tom covered the peas, spinach, and lettuce before going to bed so hopefully they'll all survive these next two cold nights.

Spring Garden Well Under Way

written by Yvonne

One day these berry canes were just bare sticks. Next day, poof! They sprouted leaves. Tom chopped them all the way to the ground last fall. We'll see if they produce berries this year or not. Hopefully they will.

Another surprise? The oregano came back in the herb box and it's growing fast too. I cut some for drying because we are all out.

The three types of peas (snow, snap, cow) I planted two weeks ago have ALL sprouted. There are about 15 plants in all that have come up. One set of peas I forgot to plant were crowder peas Dan (Tom's brother) brought us last year. I'll get those planted this weekend or the next.

It's hard to see, but the small rows of green are lettuce. We've gotten some good rain over the last several days which has really made everything spring up.

These carrots were actually planted at the end of last fall. They survived the winter under the hoop houses and are now coming up.

Seeds were started in pots for the following items: cilantro, basil, thyme, chives, dill, two kinds of summer squash, two varieties of cucumbers, six kinds of tomatoes. Seeds were sown directly in the beds for beets and Swiss chard.

The rain really brought on a lot of spinach. Before the current plants bolt, I wanted to harvest as much as possible.

All of the collard plants began to bolt (even though it hasn't been that hot, so I'm not sure what's up with that) so I harvested all I could get from them before pulling them out. The two Russian kale plants still looked good so I left them in the ground but there wasn't enough to harvest this week.

This is the oregano to be dried after getting a quick bath.

This week's harvest produced four bags of spinach and three bags of collards. Guess what we're eating this week? Green, greens and more greens!

First Day of Spring

written by Yvonne

The seeds Tom planted several weeks ago have begun to sprout. So far what's sprouted is broccoli and/or cauliflower (yes, we're trying them both yet again).

The winter winds really made a mess of the hoop houses this year. When we put them up next fall we'll have some repairs to do for sure.

Olive always hates to see the hoop houses taken down because it means no more cats hiding underneath.

Honey did her part to help by eating as much grass as possible.

We have a great cookbook called "Greens, Glorious Greens" and it's all about how to cook all kinds of greens (imagine that).  There's one whole chapter on dandelion greens - yes, those dandelion green. The weeds that grow in your yard (pictured below.)

Bed #2 was chock full of dandelion greens. Tom has been dying to try them out in a dish but I was skeptical. I agreed to give them a try if he agreed to only harvest ones from the garden beds and not any from the yard where any number of dogs may have peed on them.  Ewww!

This is a before of bed #3 - chock full of weeds and possibly spinach.

Sure enough there was some good spinach in there!

On the other half of bed #3, I planted six varieties of lettuce. Hopefully they'll come up before it gets too hot.

Bed #2 wasn't as full of weeds because I'd already weeded half the bed not long ago.

After Tom pulled out all the dandelion greens, he uncovered some great collards, a little bit of kale, and some beets.

At the other end of bed #2 I planted cow peas, snap peas, and snow peas. That might be a bit too much for this small of an area, but we'll see.

 

Now THIS looks much better. The hoop houses are down for the season, three out of four beds have been weeded and planted, and the tall grass around the beds cut back.

The dogs were SO happy to enjoy the day outside, as were we.

Seeds Started!

written by Yvonne

(This was from two weeks ago)

We have a big house re-decorating project in our very near future so we had to get some seeds going if we were to get a jump on Spring.  Tom laid out some left over roofing tiles to block the grass from growing into the green house.

The previous greenhouse cover was torn in several places and one of the zippers broke so we bought a new one.

It was a beautiful day so Tom set up a make-shift workbench outside.

He filled up the pots with dirt and started planting seeds. He got carried away and ended up planting two different types of seeds in each of the pots in Tray 4.

Who knows, maybe we'll get a parsley-cabbage hybrid of some kind. It will be interesting to see what comes up in these pots since each one has two different seeds.

One bag of dirt was chock full of ants so he dumped it into the herb bed.

All seeds got planted and set in the greenhouse.  We started cabbage, 4 different kinds of peppers, parsley, broccoli, onions. We were also supposed to get lettuce, peas, collards, kale, Swiss chard and spinach planted directly in the beds but that didn't happen. It'll have to wait a few weeks before we can get to it.

Honey and Olive enjoyed their day outside.