Garden status update

Considering that it's the end of May, all of my gardens are way behind what I expected at this point. The weather has been very uncooperative. Crops that were planted early either did not germinate, or took so long to germinate that there was no point in planting early. Cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, peas, and onions were all planted on May 1st and 2nd. Onions are finally now coming up, 27 days later. Peas came up quickly, but growth has been very slow due to very little sun. The ground is waterlogged thanks to cool temps and 1/2 inch of rain every other day on average.

But, I can finally say that everything is planted, even if some of it still hasn't come up.

Roll call for the main garden, the one I converted to raised beds in April.

Snap peas
carrots (3 different varieties)
beets
radishes
Spinach
Various types of leaf lettuce
Romain lettuce
Cabbage (two varieties)
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Eggplant
Anaheim pepper
Green Bell pepper
Orange Bell pepper
Chocolate Bell pepper
Jalapeno pepper
Ancho chile pepper
An unnamed heirloom red bell that I got from a friend of my Mom's
Dr. Walter tomato
Brandywine tomato
Marglobe tomato
Amish Paste tomato
unnamed cherry tomato
Zucchini
Cucumber
Three varieties of onions from seed
One red onion from transplants started indoors about a month earlier
A generic white onion from sets
A generic red onion from sets
Radiccio
Celery
Contender green bean


That garden totals about 600 sq feet, after it was all said and done.  It's planted very densely, but I carefully spaced every seed just where I wanted the plants, so I will have to do zero thinning. Any seeds that didn't germinate are replaced. This guarantees that I'll have a staggered harvest of most crops. Not intentionally, but I don't see it as a bad thing either. As soon as the plants are visible above ground, I start mulching with grass clippings from the lawn. As the plants get taller, I build up the mulch. This guarantees that I'll do little or no weeding and water way less than I would otherwise as the mulch holds moisture in the ground. The grass clippings also add nice organic matter to the soil as it breaks down and is hand tilled into the garden in the fall. Just make sure that your grass clippings come from a lawn that hasn't been sprayed with any chemicals. I stopped using chemicals years ago, now I just pick the dandelions and clover and feed it to the chickens. It's a much better use of those nutrients.

Other than that garden, there is a sweet corn patch planted in a freshly tilled garden. I can't use it for much of anything else until the 2nd year because of all the grass that will germinate in it, so it's a good place for that. That garden is about 1000 sq feet, but only about 700 of that is in corn. The rest is planted in a large growing variety of pumpkin.

The third and largest garden is a bit of a family garden. Last I measured it, it was about 6,000 square feet. My father grows sweet corn in about 1/3 of it. A portion is set aside for tomatoes for his house, and the rest I plant into pumpkins, squash, canteloupe, and several varieties of watermelon. Overall, I planted about 2,500 sq feet into those crops. This garden is by far the most work, because it's too large to mulch. We do use a garden tractor to cultivate it until the vines get too long. After that, I chop and drop weeds before they go to seed, and if necessary I get out the machete and a well sharpened hoe to take care of the big stuff. It will end up with more weeds that I'd ever tolerate elsewhere, but there's only so much that can be done about that, and most of the big weeds are dynamic accumulators anyway so they're good for the soil because they grow deep taproots and draw nutrients up from the subsoil.

Last, but not least, is 1/3 of an acre of several varieties of potatoes. Good Friday? Not a chance. More like May 10th. The ground was way too wet to get into before that. There was actually still snow on that ground until May 1 about. These are planted with an antique John Deere tractor pulling a 90 year old potato planter, and harvested with the same tractor and an antique potato digger. This harvest is split up amongst the family, and if there's any left after that 2000 pounds or so is handed out, the rest will be sold at the farmer's market. I primarily plant Yukon Gold, Kennebec, and Norland Red potatoes.

This ended up being a pretty long and sort of pointless entry, I realize now. However, one of my purposes with this blog is to document for my own purposes. If it's of any use to anyone else, that much the better.

Happy Gardening!