Mega Garden May Tour



Garlic- Planted November 2010

This gardener has been a busy busy bee. Since my last blog post I've been so busy working outside that I've barely touched a keyboard. I'm back to the routine of working outside until sundown and can't see anymore, because its so dark and then go inside to shower/eat/collapse in arms of the sandman. Thankfully I have much to show for all my hard work from the past months. As a follow up on all that spinach I planted and wrote about in the previous post... it ended up being an epic fail. Next to zero seeds germinated. I'm still trying to understand what went wrong with the suspicion that perhaps my seeds were too old. I may never know.

Today's focus is a mini tour of my mega garden, an obscenely large 35 x 90 foot vegetable garden. I have been pretty on top of the game as far as planting things on time or earlier. In fact many things this year I've challenged myself to plant earlier (by 2 to 3 weeks) and so far its been working out great.

My main motivation for planting earlier is to fight off pest damage. In my backyard garden I have a particular issue with ravenous slugs. These slimy demons have really irked me in the past few years by chewing up seedlings almost as soon as they germinated and emerged from the soil- a few munch munches and the whole plants potential as a future meal for me has vanished. For large established plants slugs are not as much of a problem. My thought was that by planting earlier I could have more well developed healthy plants established before the slugs are fully activated by the warmer weather. 

My slug defensive seems to be working so far and weather has been on my side too. Its been a very cold and damp spring overall, so many of the early spring vegetables (who don't care that its not warm out) have been growing just fine in the climatic conditions even though more sunshine would be ideal. We recently experienced a week stretch of very warm (70's and up), sunny and rainless days. This also worked towards the slug defensive in that slugs abhor dry soil, so wherever they were during this week it wasn't in my garden munching on my seedlings. I watered my plants every evening during this heat wave in a strategic way so that water didn't spray much past its vegetable target- minimizing any wet pathways that slugs might try transverse to get to my veggies. The warmer weather also ignited a growth spurt in all my plants, which was exactly what I was hoping for. The bigger they are the harder they will fall victim to the slugs.

Snap peas. The most delicious pea I've ever planted and boy did I plant some peas this year. I had two huge seed packets of snap peas I soaked overnight and sowed over a month ago. I ended up having more seeds to plant than expected, so they are kind of here and there throughout the garden. Its just as well, in the past hardly a pod has left the garden uneaten, so that might indicate I may have wanted to plant more than I had been anyways. After a month the peas are exploding with growth. They are already in need of additional twine to help support their vertical growth. 

Roma tomato. Transplanted out on 5/8/11, seeds sown indoors on 3/6/11 (maybe a little too early). They're alive!! These are the first tomato seedlings I've been able to grow from seed and get them to survive to plant out in the garden. I've been trying to grow my own tomato seedlings for years without success, and the saying 'if at first you don't succeed- try again' is definitely ringing true. Even my boyfriend admitted that my seedlings successes this year seem to show that all my garden research and experience seems to be adding up.

Buttercrunch Lettuce. Direct sown on exactly the same day as the ill fated spinach. Its growing strong and has hardly been bothered at all by slugs- amazing!

Red Cabbage. Started indoors on 3/7/11. Transplanted outdoors on 5/2/11. I decided that since I have more use for red cabbage- I omitted growing any green cabbage this year.

Tomatillo. Sown indoors and transplanted outside the same dates as the tomatoes. Tomatillos are so easy to grow- this is my second year- that they are to thank for my renewed interest in growing my own tomato seedlings (tomato and tomatillos are NOT related in any way, but do share similar growing needs).

More lettuce in an experimental mini-green house made out of a plastic juice container with its bottom cut off. My idea was that the green-house effect would give the lettuce a head start with growth with the additional bonus of protecting it from marauding slugs and other pests. Planted at the same time as the row of lettuce pictured above, its easy to see that it has indeed grown at a faster rate.

Royal Burgundy beans. Direct sown on 5/2/11. Essentially purple string beans. I love them so much, because they are tolerant of colder temperatures than other beans and this allows me to have an early planting of beans weeks ahead of other beans. These beans are especially close to my heart in that they were the first vegetable that I was able to grow successfully from seeds I saved myself. These are second generation beans grown from saved seeds... seeds I collect in the fall when their pods dry up- I have so many seeds saved in a jar from last year I could probably plant half my garden with them. The germination rate of these saved bean seeds is also amazingly high and is the reason why I became encouraged to try saving other seeds.

Red Kale. Something new I'm trying this year. I grow a lot of greens in the garden and wanted to try growing a different variety of kale. Plus its really pretty. Sown and transplanted on the same dates as the red cabbage.

Collards. Sown in 2010. Such an awesome green to grow. Maybe better than kale! Its hard to decide. The collards are going to seed and as I mentioned above, I am trying to save more of my own seeds, so I'll try my hand at collards next.

If you look up the definition of 'resilience', you might find these collards there. Of all the plants that were continuously targeted by pests (namely slugs) its amazing that any survived into maturity at all. We've eaten several meals of collards from these plants last year by harvesting individual leaves instead of the whole plant. Then to make it even more amazing, they are so cold tolerant that you can eat them well into November, when they actually taste a bit better thanks to the frost. And even more amazing... they SURVIVED winter! Though they looked like dead things in early spring (indeed some didn't survive) they resurrected themselves. Meals of fresh garden greens from fully mature plants in spring! These collards have grown quite tall now and to make room for this years plants that are scheduled for this row, we better get eatin'!

Leeks! The first seeds I sown every year (indoors) are leeks. Transplanted out on 4/29/11. They are doing great.

Beets. Direct sown on 4/10/11 after soaking the seeds for a few hours. What you see above is a cluster of beet seedlings. This happens all the time with beets, because the beet 'seed' is actually a tiny 'fruit' with multiple seeds. Thinning is absolutely essential early on.

Jalapeno pepper. My pepper plants across the board are all looking a bit sad. These are some of the peppers I had a chance to plant, though definitely a bit early to transplant out I think, but they were looking pretty pathetic in their seed trays and I was growing concerned I might loose them. I may still loose them as they do not seem to be thriving as well as I had hoped once they got planted out in the garden.

Parsley. Another plant that bounced back from 2010. I had an awesome parsley harvest last year. I was cultivating the soil of one row to prepare it for planting when I found this parsley root still alive and growing small leaves. I let it be and worked around it. Now its so big and healthy looking. It will probably go to seed soon just like the collards from 2010 are already doing.

Collards. Baby 2011 collards.

Carrots. Sown 4/10/11 in the same bed on the same day as the collards pictured previously. Carrots were one of those seedlings the slugs enjoyed decimating once they first peaked out of the soil. Already with true leaves, with a little thinning these carrots are more promising than last years in the slug defensive.