Unsettled Weather

It's been way too long since my last post so here's a few words to let y'all know we're still kicking.  It was a very busy time last October harvesting and putting up all the produce from the garden and finishing getting all the wood in and ready for the winter heating season.  More and more, it seems, I hunker down and hibernate during the winter, staying up late and sleeping in in the morning, which I did a lot of, but the winter was our most mild yet so lots of little things got done over the winter.

We expanded our garden area with another plot 50 ft. x 60 ft. for planting small blocks of sweet corn and some watermelons, cantaloupes, and sweet potatoes. I'm interested to see how our new plot produces.  I tilled the patch which was mixed fescue/clover pasture, but really only scratched it up, not completely turning over the soil and grass.  Next we laid down heavy weight weed blocking biodegradable organic paper and covered the entire plot with several inches of aged hardwood mulch.  We let that set over the winter and was ready to plant in this spring.

As I said, the winter was very mild overall with a very dry January and March with way below normal rainfall or snow, sandwiching a very warm February with lots of tropical rain, severe thunderstorms and an episode of tornado warnings.  We were well prepared for all this and were well ahead of last year in having the garden prepared and ready for spring planting.  Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and onion seedlings all went in in mid March but needed lots of irrigation to thrive through the dry weather and get well established.  Direct sown spinach, beets and peas, did not do well with the dry weather, despite lots of irrigation and had to be replanted once conditions improved.  Direct sown carrots were a 50/50 proposition.  We planted two varieties side by side in 100 ft. long rows 1 ft. apart on the same raised ridge.  Both were newly purchased seed and one variety germinated well and is growing nicely and the other variety totally failed.  Bad seed ??

Kale seedlings were planted out in early April along with lettuce seedlings and finally tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings were planted out at the end of April.  Lately it has been raining very frequently with lots of cloudy days.  Perfect for the broccoli and it's cousins..

So here we are in mid May and the garden is in full swing.  We are harvesting broccoli and the kale is ready to start picking.  The cabbages are heading up and the cauliflower is just beginning to head up too.  The 600 onions we planted (two 100 ft rows) are very well established and many have 7 leaves already, the tomatoes have nearly tripled in size since planting, the peppers are getting established nicely and the eggplants seem to be fairing OK against the usual onslaught of flea beetles.

The peas just don't seem to be roaring along as they did last year.... I don't know what's up with that.  I'm not expecting good yields and the spinach may run out of steam and not yield much either if the weather turns hot (which it will eventually).

We are attempting to grow three varieties of sweet corn with staggered planting dates so they don't cross pollinate.  When it was time to plant the first variety on May 1st the ground was so wet I had to plant in propagation trays and now need to transplant them into the garden plot now.  The second variety was also planted in propagation trays and are now germinating.  I need to plant the third variety in the propagation trays today.

Two varieties of watermelon and a variety of cantaloupe have sprouted in biodegradable paper pots I made from the weed block paper.  They will transplant well without disturbing the roots when they develop a couple of true leaves.  I "planted" a few sweet potatoes on their sides in a 10x20 tray, half covered with soil and watered liberally for a week weeks.  We now have dozens of large healthy sprouts that are ready to be cut and put into jars of water.  When they sprout roots from the stems in a few days the slips will be ready to plant out in the garden.  There are many different methods of growing sweet potato slips, but I like the method I use the best.

Our only real set back this winter/spring was the complete and utter failure of the hard drive in my Mac laptop.  Lost almost everything.  Not good about backing up.  I have a new PC laptop now.  I used to download images from my digital camera to the laptop with the memory card from the camera plugged into the SDHC card slot on the Mac.  No card slot on the PC laptop and I can't find the mini USB patch cord for the camera anywhere.  It will turn up immediately after I buy a new patch cord, of course, but meanwhile - no pictures with the blog posts.... sorry.  Too bad really because the garden looks awesome.