We finally got some garden time in this weekend, between having an available day and also not having constant rain… It was kinda a “make or break” day for us to get things in, so we went by Orscheln to get some tomatoes, pepper plants, and some flowers for the front porch. This was after we visited the Birds & Bees festival in Arrow Rock to see some…er….birds and bees….but also to pick up some native plants and herbs. More on that later…
Regardless, the radishes and spinach are doing quite well! We’ve had about 3 rounds of radishes in the quantity pictured below. The spinach pulled is our first official harvest, but as you can see in the image above, there’s plenty more where that came from. Also, the open part of the plot pictured above is currently housing volunteer tomatoes, but is destined for cucumbers once we get around to planting them.
Otherwise, we also planted about 8 pepper plants (mostly green, one yellow), and a pumpkin plant that Calvin wanted (I said “no,” but was overruled…). Next to that set of peppers, we will be planting green beans, probably mid-week when the ground dries out a bit more.
The carrots are doing dramatically better than last year (which is to say, we have more than one carrot plant). They’re pretty small and took forever to pop up, but so long as it continues along this vein, we should end up with a decent number of carrots…er…eventually…
Again, the tomatoes end up doing well for us usually, but this year, we didn’t end up with freebies from the Botany class on campus. We grabbed mostly “beef-type” slicers and some Italian roma varieties. We didn’t plant many (any?) cherry tomato varieties because we always get volunteers, and lo and behold, we totally do.
We spent a decent amount of time cleaning out the herb garden, as there were tons of weeds and waaaaaaay too much mint growing. We think we left the flowers that have been growing from year to year, and also bought a few milkweed plants from the Birds & Bees festival to help the butterflies and bees. The kids also scored a free shining blue star that should do well in that spot in the coming years. Regardless, the mint, lemon balm, and oregano (that I forgot was even in there…) are all doing crazy well. I’ll probably need to pare those back a bit as the summer continues…
Lastly, the lettuce is finally getting to the point where we may be able to pick some of it. Brooke moved the chives to the raised bed, and also planted some sage and basil. Brooke dug in the raised bed a bit and we can’t say we are particularly impressed with the dirt we laid down awhile back, as it’s become kinda compacted and “layered” in the bed. It sure seems like the dirt in the garden is far blacker and healthier than what the raised bed has, so we’ll have to see what ends up happening in the next few years.
And last, but certainly not least, we’ve got some peaches and apples growing in our trees, which is in keeping with what we got last year (minus the Japanese beetles…), so that part isn’t all that surprising. What is exciting is that we’ve got about 6 pears growing finally! Our first crop of them! Woo hoo!!
That’ll do for now!