What started out as four raised beds has grown significantly. Once I started having some measure of success, I wanted to try more and more things. Now we have an area for asparagus, rhubarb, a raised bed with strawberries, an area for beans, tomatoes, squashes and cucumbers, potatoes, onions, okra and pumpkin. I have a raised bed for garlic, one for lettuce and spinach, one for carrots and kale, and one with beets and peppers. I try to rotate things around from year to year. Each growing season I learn something new and I expect this year will be the same. I'm not afraid to ask questions and read books and google everything. I'm much more relaxed about the outcome. Will these carrots grow in my raised beds? Can I grow leeks? Is this the right time to plant cabbage? Now my philosophy is, just plant them and see what happens. What's the worst that can happen? They don't grow and I try something else next time. I love to grow organically and try to steer away from chemicals when I can. I grow a lot of food for two people, but I always want to have enough to share with others and preserve for good winter eating.
I face some obstacles with my gardening. First of all, my gardens are not near my home, so I can't always see what's going on down there. I have too many wild turkeys that enjoy my plants. And this year, we've already seen deer on the property. Raccoons will level my corn, so I don't even bother with that anymore. My biggest challenge is having the energy to keep up with a garden this size. On occasion, I will have a little help, but up to now, this has pretty much been my project. I hope to enlist some helpers this year though, on a regular basis. It will help keep my morale up, which starts declining steadily about the end of June.
I plan to blog once a week about the garden. This is mainly for my benefit, so I can keep good records as to what I've been doing and how things are working out. I'll be sure to show the successes as well as the failures and what I'm learning along the way. So, this week...
The strawberries are ripening and I've been picking! I can hardly believe that I have my own berries. I planted these last year and learned that it was best to pinch off the blossoms the first year so the energy from the plant would go into building a good strong root system. That was hard to do, because I really wanted to have some berries, but this year they are loaded, so I guess it was good advice.
The potato plants are coming along. I have planted La Ratte and Red Thumb fingerlings, Pontiac Red, Yukon Golds and Kennebecs. Ten rows of potatoes, planted on April 18th. My dad was visiting on the day I planted these and he supervised my work. He's a great gardener and I've learned a lot from him.
I harvested what was left of my kale this week. I didn't have a very good crop, as this is one of the delicacies that the wild turkeys seem to enjoy. I've also learned that they love broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. I decided it wasn't worth the fight to plant them this year. But I really wanted some kale.
The carrots didn't come up so well. I planted them on April 1, which is early, but according to the seed packet not too early for my growing zone. This week I went back and reseeded in the bare areas. I'm trying three different varieties this year, because the carrots I grew last year were picture perfect, but the taste just wasn't what I was looking for. This year I hope to be able to taste test Little Fingers, Royal Chantenay and Scarlet Nantes and find a favorite among them.
I planted lettuce and spinach on April 1 and my bed overfloweth. I have Black Seeded Simpson, Baby Red Mix, Gourmet Blend and Big Ruffles Spinach. It's all delicious and I've been eating salad several times a day. I've been trying, but can't give enough away. In a few weeks when the warmer weather sets in for good, the lettuce will be a memory, so I'm really trying to enjoy it while I have it. Notice I have a few basil plants tucked into the end of this bed, for making pesto later on. I have a little herb garden on my deck at the house that I use for daily cooking.
I planted three rhubarb plants last year and they seem to doing just fine. I will cut some this week and make Mark a strawberry rhubarb pie.
Asparagus season is pretty much over, but oh how wonderful it has been. I'm letting the spears go to seed and for the rest of the summer they will reach for the sky and become the prettiest tall fernlike plants you've ever seen. And if you didn't know they were asparagus plants, you would never guess what they were. Growing asparagus has been an real adventure in learning. You can go here to see a post I did when I planted them three years ago.
On Memorial Day, Mark helped me plant the sweet potato plants. This is the third year I've grown Beauregard potatoes. We've been so happy with the results. Last winter we stored them in our garage and ate them weekly, right up to spring. So I was excited to get these in the ground. And then we had rain that evening, which was perfect. Imagine my surprise when I went down to the garden a few days later and every plant was gone!
See all those little holes in the ground. It is a mystery to us what has taken off with our sweet potato plants. My initial reaction was to blame the turkeys, because me and the turkeys, we have a history and it's not a nice one. But then we saw deer and thought maybe they were to blame. Anyway, I'm not happy about this!
See you next week, when I hope to shed some light on this mystery.
