Salad, Please!

I can tell I'm going to need to weed again already, but it's okay because I enjoy being outside.  I haven't planted anything else because we haven't gotten a rototiller.  We put the ashes from the fireplace in the area that is not yet planted.  I'm told it is good for the soil.  I don't know, but I did it.
I've pulled a few spinach leafs here and there to nibble on, but tonight my son and I harvested enough spinach and lettuce to make a small side salad for 3 of us at dinner.  We added a little feta cheese and a little Parmesan and our favorite dressings and had our first "garden" salad of the year!

Day 35

My largest spinach plant

Everything is looking great so far.  I might add to my garden tomorrow, but I'm not sure we can retill the rest of it so soon.  We need to borrow a rototiller. 
I've been watering every day that it doesn't rain.  I hoed between rows and finally wedded near the plants today.  I accidentally pulled off a few spinach leaves and lettuce leaves while I worked but they tasted good.  My potatoes got fill dirt in the trenches today.  I also thinned out about a dozen green onions.  I brought some to my neighbor but she wasn't home so I'll probably bring them to church to share in the morning.  I checked my chart and everything is right on time including my patio herbs.
My losses are chili peppers and asparagus. 

The garden so far

Day 17

There's not a lot new to post yet.  I did hoe between rows today.  There were a bunch of little weeds so they had to go.  I still don't trust my seedlings' root system enough to weed to close to them.  When I go back to do the thinning of plants, I will weed the rows themselves.  I want a healthy garden.
The low weekend temp of 34 degrees F might have got a few of my black-eyed peas because a few are yellow. We did the hoeing and watering this morning and we continue to wait!

Love the Rain!

My garden has been loving the sun, but it also loves the rain!

It rained just over 1/2 inch last night and we checked our rain guage this morning.  Very pleased to say that it is supposed to rain on and off for the rest of the week.  I don't mind watering, but this kind of water is the best for the plants.

Here is a spinach plant surfacing.  They look different than I had imagined them, but I remember from last years plants this grass-like seedling.





My onions all in a row look pretty good.  The pics are kind of bad, but I'm happy with the true results.




Celery was our experiment.  When I chopped up my celery for eating, I saved the stump of it and cut the tops of it evenly.  I let it soak on the counter while I awaited my garden area to be made ready.  We had to borrow a rototiller.  Ours is a tiny one that we used for little garden boxes and we have a garden space this year.  As soon as the soil was tilled, I put this in at the end of the onion/potato row.  I just covered the bottom of the stump with dirt and left the top and the growth above ground.  The stump part is now withering and the new growth is looking pretty good!






Here are my black-eyed peas.  Coming up nicely in a row.  I think I will be thinning them as early as next week.  I will remove the string that guided my row in the next day or so.  I left the string there so that I could get a feel for where to look for sprouts.




This is my first year for lettuce and this is the Bibb variety.  I didn't know what to look for as they sprouted and my string was a great tool for me.  I now see many similar sprouts along my string.  We were a little careless with these seeds as they were so tiny!  It said to plant the seeds every 2 inches to start, but I had a hard time getting just 1 seed in each hole, so my sprouts are in clusters like this.  I can thin them later.  On the bottom of the picture you can see a weed with a different shade of green.  I will pull these when I thin the lettuce plants out.  I'm afraid to do it too soon and grab seeds and sprouts with the roots.

I plan to hoe between rows to keep the weeds down.  My husband thinks we should use the little rototiller between the rows, but I don't trust myself to go in a straight line.  We'll see!

Day 2

This afternoon I had 2 helpers with the planting but my 6 year old didn't last long.  I planted 2 more rows according to seed pack directions.
In row 2, the East 1/3 is spinach and the same is true for row 3.  Then I planted black-eyed peas or purple cowpeas for the next 2/3 except I put 2 Chile peppers at the west end of that row.  The west end of row 3 is the same.  And between the peppers and spinach is lettuce in the 3rd row. 
Against our white picket fence, I planted peas for about 2 feet.  I'm saving the rest of the fence for climbing green beans.  I may regret the decision to let plants climb my fence.  We'll see.I'm saving space between the row ends and the fence for pumpkins, but they won't go in until the end of May, first of June.
I still plan to plant green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and zucchini as well.

I am anxious to see it grow.

This picture is taken from the opposite end as day 1. The potatoes are to the far right and the next two rows start with spinach. Lettuce was hard to plant because the seeds are so tiny it was hard to just drop in one at a time.

2012 first planting day

I'm thrilled to get started on my garden.  I may be late according to some or early compared to others.  I guess that makes us just right.
We (I) wanted to keep the back yard for playing so I chose to put my garden in our North side yard.  After the tilling, I realize that space is much larger than I expected.  Our previous home only had a couple of small raised box garden beds due to lack of space. 
Today's task was to prepare the ground and plant potatoes and onions.  Since we had to let the first turning of the soil dry out a bit, the rotatilling didn't get done until after 5pm.  I planted 1 sweet potato plant and about a dozen potato plants.  I planted in a trench so there will be room to bury the stems as they get taller. 
In the same row I planted onions and green onions.  I put sticks on either end of where I wanted to plant and stretched a string between them to keep my row fairly straight.  I adapted my method from last year's research.  I used onion sets and planted them crowded together in a row.  1 shallow then 3 deep the 1 shallow and 3 deep and so on for my pattern.  The thought behind that is to have 3 green onions for every 1 large onion.  As I thin out the green onions, it will make room for the onions to grow.  The shallow that will grow are spaced about 5 inches apart.

The pic shows my first row just before watering.  At the near end is the celery that I have been growing on my counter from the base of a store-bought stalk.  Also I have a few green onions that I was growing from roots of a bunch that I had bought from the grocery store and eaten.  They were our kitchen window experiments.
That's all for today.