Weekly Garden Update: 4/17

Buttercrunch

This week’s harvests included:  lettuces (in quantity), kale & mustard, carrots, spinach, and radishes.  Also cilantro, parsley, and oregano.

Carrots

Spinach / Radishes

Kale

Mustard

The asparagus bed we planted as described last week.  7 days later we have 9-10 inch high asparagus.  You can see the difference in height in plants between breakfast and dinner on any given day.  It’s just amazing to watch and every day we go out and say “oh wow” all over again.

Asparagus!

Day of the Invasion of the Spears, Part II

We put in seven more boxes in an arc across the front yard, each of them is 2’ x 2’ and designed for 1-4 plants.  We transplanted our winter squash to them today, and will adding the melons to their boxes in a week or so when we are absolutely certain that soil temperatures will stay up where we want them.  We are experimenting with not only putting landscaping fabric across the bottoms, but stapling the fabric across the tops as well, at least for the winter squash.  We hope this will improve the survivability of our squash plants.  Any feedback from anyone who has attempted this will be appreciated.

New box 1

New box 2

Arc o Boxes

We had 1.25 inches of rain in one hour yesterday.  We were lucky, several other places in North Carolina got hit by tornados.  I called my dad this morning and he confirms my memories that we didn’t have tornadoes in NC when I was a kid.   While I’m at it, Winter happened earlier then too.  Winter started in earnest by Thanksgiving, and faded out by the first of March.  Now we’re lucky if winter hits by Christmas and is out by April.  Ok, so I’m an old fogey now.

Some kale and mustard seedlings were dug up and transplanted, because they were growing too thickly.

Due to prolonged seasons of some items in the garden it has become necessary re-evaluate the planting plan (our planting plan has little diagrams of the boxes and what is in them over what time period, pretty much to the end of year already).  Some boxes will not be ready due to things still growing and we are having to shuffle stuff about.

We cleaned out half of the worm farm and spread the compost.  The cleared-out part will now be where we dump stuff while the other half decomposes, and we give the earth machine (which we use primarily in the winter) a rest.

Potted onions were transplanted to boxes where onions had not made it.  We’re now down to just 2 pots of onions.

Celery!

Haricot vert (2 types) and cucumbers (2 types) were seeded this week, our Celery was transplanted (one full box and 2 partial boxes), summer squash plants were transplanted to boxes, and a lot of peppers and other stuff are being “up-potted” inside.   We love our new shelving/lighting arrangement.

Iris 1

Iris 2

Azaleas

Flowers!  Not only are we having tulips and azaleas and wild flowers of various types bustin’ out all over, but the Irises are blooming.

Potatoes 1

Potatoes 2

Potatoes 3

It’s shocking how fast the potatoes are growing, and the peas seem to be in competition with them as to which can grow faster.

Other shots of the garden include:

Carrot Box

Lettuce Box

Onion Patch

Mustard Fore, Kale Back

Oregano

Cabbage

Cabbage slips

Parsley

Railing Radishes

On the Porch

Peas Gone Wild

Tags: Garden, Gardening, Kitchen Garden, North Carolina, raised boxes, Seedlings, Spring, Victory Garden