Garden update

Last month has been a roller coaster for my garden. We went from very cold spring to 97 and then back to 48 which is really not good for plants. But then it settled down and it really picked up and was doing great for a while. These were my daily harvests. Until our local groundhog found a way to get inside. Witness the power of his destruction - what he didn't eat he trampled and contaminated so all my green lettuces, peas, broccoli, spinach and swiss chard has to be pulled and tossed out. But thankfully not all is lost. Beans started to regrow leaves and since he didn't eat blooms we'll have green beans next week. Onions and garlic are not on his menu and they are doing fabulous. I picked few of each just to try it out. From front to back - red onion, white sweet and yellow onions and 3 heads of garlic. Yummy!

Love warmer weather!

Finally weather is cooperating and is warm enough for my garden to start producing some greens. I know I'm being impatient but it's just so much better to eat your own veggies so that if I had a choice I'd grow them year round. But alas, with heavy winter it's not possible. However now that it's finally warm everything started to grow faster. Bleeding Heart was planted last year and it makes very lovely and colorful border for my garden.

Potatoes also awake and had to be tilled for the first time this weekend. I also came up to an agreement with local CSA that I'll help them with weeding/picking during spring and in summer in exchange for letting me plant some of my own potatoes and squashes. Works for both of us!

Broccoli is starting to form so in about 3 or 4 weeks we'll have our own to pick and for my honey to eat. He loves his broccoli! Plus I already have new round of seedlings going as replacement.

and just look at all those strawberries blooming! we'll be swimming in them this summer. But at least I know my honey will enjoy picking them and eating right on the spot :)

There are of course plenty more growing but it would take whole lot more pictures to show everything. In a word of two syllables - LOVE IT!

Spring Garden

Ah, finally spring is in the air and my garden started to really take shape. It's really running behind the schedule but I guess better late than never. So here we go.

Asparagus is awake eventhough it's only 2nd year for it it's doing pretty good. Wish I had more space for it. Next to it is spinach and in between some arugula sprinkled. Two types of lettuces are also peaking through - red on the back and green in front. Unfortunately all those spiky greens in between are dill that went into bloom last year and contaminated my entire garden so I'll be "weeding" dill all spring long to make sure that it doesn't suffocate my other greens. Here we have broccoli, swiss chard, spinach and some tulips. Some of the seeds from salads last year decided to grow this year - go figure. I guess I'll have extra salad. Also some of the last year's parsley came through and really took off too! Garlic is doing fantastic! I forgot to dig it out last year and it really took off this year so I'll be planting quite a bit of it in the fall.

Believe it or not these gorgeous Morels grow in our back yard! The only problem are that all deers LOVE them and unfortunately having much more sensitive snouts they get to them first. Oh well. Can't win them all.

And guess what we have to add to dinner tonight? First harvest - asparagus and parsley.

Hydroponic growth week 2

This is Bok Choy that was seeded two weeks ago - doing pretty good! much better than the ones outside.
I also had to replace some of the seeds because not all came up so instead I put some letuce and sweet and purple basil. We'll see how they're doing in the new system.

Container garden

Have you started your containers yet? I've placed my containers inside the enclosed porch because it's so cold outside and seeded some of them with beans and squashes. Will see how well they'll do in containers but counting that anything planted outside becomes food for deer I'd rather take chances with containers. I did transplant 3 of my tomato plants - Brandywines into containers so I can have early tomatoes. Sadly many of my seedlings caught some kind of a bug that's killing them so not sure if I'll have good tomato crops this year. I did do a trade with someone who runs CSA - gave her about two dozens of my sorrel plants and she'll give me her tomato seedlings in couple of weeks when it's ready to be planted outside.

Update on Hydroponic

Seeds started to wake up! The first to wake up are Bok Choy seeds so hopefully we'll see something come out soon on others as well. Really can't wait to see how it all works out. If these seeds grow properly then we'll add more rows and try other goodies as well for comparison.

Personal Hydroponics

Two weeks ago we went to the county fair show where we looked at different ideas of landscaping, local plants and ideas for gardening. One of the items really caught our eye - hydroponic system to grow greens like lettuce, arugula, swiss chard etc in the water solution instead of soil. This is actually something we were thinking already because I really like my greens but at growing it take lots of space in my garden. So if this really going to work then we'll have home grown greens year round and I'll have more space in my garden beds for root veggies, squashes and tomatoes etc. So my honey took some time to look on the Internet for various systems available and decided to build me one himself. Last week he ordered some supplies and was putting it all together this weekend. It's all connected with flexible tubing, on the bottom is a tub with nutrient liquid and a pump that brings it up to the top and then it runs down through all 4 levels. One side of each level is slightly raised so gravity takes over. So now we need to wait until we get some holding materials and start planting seeds. This is all experimental of course until we learn how to balance nutrients, what to plant and what works best. But in the meanwhile I'm really looking forward to seeing some results :)