New England ~ May 2014

llama momma wrote:Yes, potato babies.  I wonder if you could gently lift them from underneath and move them to another location, just a thought.

it would certainly be a fun experiment if I had any other room for them. I wonder if I could plant corn and beans amongst them. They are popping up here and there in the front left bed that was fully planted with them.
Maybe there will be space between them. What do you think?  corn and beans with potatoes?

CC - do you mean do I have any extra asparagus seed? No, I threw the rest of them in a bed outside just to see what would happen but I don't see any so I don't think they did well, it's mulched with hay and maybe the hay was too heavy for the seeds to poke thru. These asparagus seedlings are nothing but tiny frail looking ferny things. Have you ever seen one?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SNi98nRVnS8/UXQ0tc63DsI/AAAAAAAARF0/r0-2Jx6Rnog/s400/Asparagus+seedling+lorna+(1).jpg

Seaweed, ooh! So envious. It's a 45 min. trip each way for seaweed, I have to be really committed to get out there, which is not right now.

Oh, those baby asparagus are adorable. I had no idea they look like that. I hope they didn't drown!

LM, I found this link on companion planting. Apparently I CAN plant the corn and beans in with the potatoes. Excellent!

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/companion-planting-guide-zmaz81mjzraw.aspx#axzz31ylEZgmg

2 inches of rain last night. Woke me out of a sound sleep at 3am it was coming down so hard. Was worried about the garden, but all is well.
Now that the garden is starting to look like one I thought I'd share some photos from this morning. 

First round seeded corn, bush beans, watermelon,  spinach  and radish are doing well.  Second round bush beans started to pop this morning. Strawberries are very happy and covered with flowers. Purchased starts of bok choy and pickling cukes have settled in nicely.

Purchased starts of broccoli,  cauliflower,  Brussels sprouts, kale, red and white onions, little fingers eggplant, cubanelle peppers and swiss chard all settled in. My seedlings of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, carrots, beets, lettuce, turnips and swiss chard look good. Seeded lettuce, beets, carrots, Swiss chard, turnips are all sprouted.

The garden along the driveway is half planted with broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and kale, along with a stubborn seeded popcorn which is refusing to sprout. 

Have a lot of seedlings in the little greenhouse yet. Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, tomatillos and squash, but most of those are going in buckets. 

All of the herbs are in pots this year. 

The strawberry tower is doing well and I added a few pots to the ends and seeded herbs.

I have unplanted squares for my peppers, basil and maybe a few tomatoes and the potatoes and artichokes in the buckets are really looking great.

I'd be careful growing corn and taters together.  Taters take a much lower PH than corn. 
lyndeelou....Love seeing your garden.  Its coming along great.

We got an inch of rain last nite.  I brought in all my seedlings when they said a hard rain during the night.  I keep mine in heavy trays, too, so I can lift the whole kit and caboodle up at one time.  It means I only have to make 5 trips indoors instead of 5 dozen.  The rest of the day should be light showers now and then so I put them all out again for Mother Nature's watering.

After I pick more asparagus today, I'll make roasted asparagus again for supper tonite.

Lyndeeloo, everything looks wonderful!  I really like the pots on the end of the strawberry tower.  Great use of space.

Two inches of rain!!??  I'm really jealous!  Send it my way, will you?

Beautiful use of space, Lyndeeloo! And so neat! I'm impressed. (What are those bars on your boxes? Trellises?)

Looks like I'm going to get about half the amount of strawberries I got last summer, since most of my boxes were eaten over the winter. Thank goodness for the overflow into the aisles. Hmm. Another onion was also upside down in the box this morning. Ha. I'm going to become Elmer Fudd if this keeps up.

Looking at the weather, our rainy forecast seems to have disappeared for several days... 

Rain rain come and stay...

Ate my first spinach and rapini of the year for supper.  

NHGardener wrote:Beautiful use of space, Lyndeeloo! And so neat! I'm impressed. (What are those bars on your boxes? Trellises?)

Thank you NHGardener. I'm going to attach a moth cloth to them to try to keep the little devils off my broccoli and cauliflower. 

Sorry to hear about your strawberries. Hope they make lots of runners for you to replant the bed.

I am currently battling with the squirrels digging into everything. Brazen little monsters aren't even afraid of my dogs.

Nice Camprn. Very envious of your harvest.

I'm envious that you guys get rain!

No improvement there Sanderson?

We've been fairly dry tho, at least I think so, for spring.

NHGardener wrote:No improvement there Sanderson?

We've been fairly dry tho, at least I think so, for spring.

+1

sanderson wrote:I'm envious that you guys get rain!

ditto... And spinach, too.

Lindeelou, nice garden! it'll be great to watch it progress! I seem to remember you had some outstanding harvests last year.

I scored some giant pots on a dumpster dive while on a walk with my pack this morning. It's perfect timing because all my buckets were filled with water yesterday after I watered the SFG and I was wondering what I was going to cover the tomatoes with during tonight low temps. I found six of these along with a nice homemade straight sided wood 4' x 1' window box.

After tonight it looks like the Cape nights stay above 50 so on Wednesday I'll be planting all the summer veggies out even though the days won't get out of the 60's. They should be fine.

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you about my best score today. The house across the street is getting completely refurbished and  nearing the end. At the beginning I told the contractor that if he had any left over 10 by 12 foot plank scraps I would be happy to take them off his hands. Today he called me over and there are about four of them at least 8 to 10 feet long. He said, let me know your measurements and I'll cut them for you this afternoon. He's also giving me a few long strips of lath  made of some kind of composite material that will last forever. Looks like new box making is in my near future! Does it ever end?    Maybe I can put up some real grids, too.

Then, since it was overcast cold and windy this morning, I started spring cleaning and got so much done. Now the Sun is out so it's time to head back outside. What a day!   It'll be good to go back to work tomorrow and sit down.

Yay CC! I'm not planning on making any more boxes, BUT I would like to put a second story on pretty much all of them since many are sinking half way into the ground as it is, and potatoes and carrots and onions could really use more depth. So no, I don't think it ever does end.

 

NICE, CC!

The garden is coming along nicely. The peas are trellised and the tender veggie beds are ready for cover tonight.

camprn wrote:The garden is coming along nicely....photos to follow.  

An-ti-ca-pay-yay-tion is making me wait...keepin' me waay-yay-yay-yay-yaiting...

CapeCoddess wrote:

camprn wrote:The garden is coming along nicely....photos to follow.  

An-ti-ca-pay-yay-tion is making me wait...keepin' me waay-yay-yay-yay-yaiting...

LOL, the photos are now posted above.

Nice!  It amazes me how you all catch up and surpass the Cape once the weather turns.  Both our bleeding hearts are in bloom so we're at the turning point where I start to lag.

Camp, you sure must like tying knots with all the stringing you do!  What's in the side by side twin boxes in the center of the last photo?

Speaking of Cape weather, I checked this afternoon and tonight's forecast has  climbed to a low of 50! Nothing lower for the next 7 days. So I planted out 9 more tomatoes after digging their trenches and letting them sun warm.  Only 4 left. 
Lay me down, of course.

All the other earlier planted toms are looking great!  I'll still wait to plant out peppers, cukes & ground cherries, probably til Memorial Day weekend.

Total exhaustion is setting in...the good happy kind...
 

The side by side boxes have boc choy on the left and rapini on the right. I will get better pics tomorrow. I waited to late to take pics and lost the good light.

I call photoshop!!! There's no way your veggies are that far along! You're colder than me!

NHGardener wrote:I call photoshop!!! There's no way your veggies are that far along! You're colder than me!

LOL, nope, photo what? I cannot even retrieve the pics from my phone. I have to send them to Facebook to post here. Most of those plants are cold hardy. the summer tender veggies got covered up for tonight, calling for 35F.

Here are the beds all bundled up for the night.

Just kidding you camprn, crossed with a megadose of envy.

My peas are starting to come up tho, and I even saw a couple beans starting to sprout.

No covering for my guys. They're tough. (My forecast is saying 44 for tonight)

Phew!  It seems as though we were all busy outside today! 

I got alot done, though not in the SFG.  I had to go through another round of "purge the spurge".  The dastardly spurge had snuck in and invaded my non-SFG asparagus bed.     

On the surface, there were maybe two dozen plants, at most 2" tall...but as I dug them out. those innocent-looking little spurgelings were hiding legion after legion of their bretheren all along the length of their roots just waiting to break the soil surface.  I also found about a half-dozen plants here & there  that somehow evaded my last summer's purge campaign.  Ugh. 

BUT I also went to my local organic nursery & got some flowering pretties to put in pots by the steps to the garden.  Those are all transplanted.  Of course, they're all tender annuals and it feels like we might get a frost tonight, so they're in the 3-season porch for the night.   It's a good thing I didn't put them in the ground like I had originally planned.

What I didn't get to was the trellis for my peas.  I'm growing three varieties:  Amish Snap, Thomas Laxton and Snowbird.  They're starting to need support, especially the  Amish Snap.  I hope I can get some up before long.

Which reminds me to ask: has anyone grown this variety (Amish Snap)?  Is it true that they'll reach 6' tall?  The others are a more manageable 3' (Thomas Laxton) and the Snowbird is supposedly not needing of support, being a dwarf 18" "bush".  I need to figure out if I need to make a very tall trellis for the Amish Snaps.

On another note,  my local "Chippy" has developed a taste for sunflower sprouts and has decapitated all the seeds I transplanted from a forgotten squirrel-cache of seeds I found germinating in one of my SFG squares.        Turns out he's got a "run" that goes along the foundation wall which is a mere 6 feet away from my SFG.  I had planted some dozen or so seeds all along that wall because I thought they'd look pretty as a backdrop to some daylillies & ornamental plants I've got in a foundation planting at the base of that wall.  Silly me.  What I did was create a little line of snacks all along his route from one side of the house to the other.      

I don't really care about those sunflowers, but it does worry me to think that anything else I plant along that wall needs to be unpalatable to him...I just hope he stays out of my strawberry beds...