May roundup: Wester Mountains and High plains

It's the end of the month, and I think more of us in the Western Mountains and High plains region should have some gardens going by now. Let's compare notes and see how were doing.

I'll spare you more pictures of the snow, but we got it again last Monday. Fortunately it melted by the end of the day. The cold weather crops are doing great.

• We've harvested a lot of spinach, and now we're letting one spinach square go to seed just to see it.
  
• We've harvested a few radishes. Since we got the Easter Egg blend we never know what kind of taste the next one will have.
  
• The Romaine lettuce is growing well. None of it is full size yet, but I just took a leaf off because I had to taste it and it was tasty!
  
• The peas are growing, and I'm making them find the trellis.
  

It's time here for the summer plants, so yesterday I finished a new box and we planted peppers and tomatoes. We planted 4 Romas, and 1 Mr. Stripy tomato (I just had to get one to try.) We also planted 4 bell pepper plants: 2 red, 1 orange and 1 purple.

I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow, but in the mean time I'd like to hear what the others here are seeing.

In general, the weather here has been cooler than normal so things have been slow to grow (at least that's what I'm blaming it on).

The peas have been in for just over a month. The corn and beans for a couple of weeks. The second planting of corn will probably be within the next two weeks. The watermelon and cantaloupe are transplants from the local nursery and have only been in a week or less.



The carrots have been in 3-4 weeks and are very slow but are still alive. The onions starts are doing great and the tomatoes and pepper (just put in) are from the nursery and will hopefully take off when the weather warms up.



Other than that, not much going on in the garden besides spraying the bind weed and trying to kill it off but it's stubborn. The forecast is for mid-80s the next week so I'm excited to see if it takes off growing. If it doesn't I'll have to blame something else besides the weather...

You can always blame it on the Thyme, that's a fun one. You know it just takes thyme for things to grow.

I know, I know, bad joke but I just haven't been able to use the thyme joke for a while.

I finally have everything planted, all from seed, some seeds started indoors, but no garden plants bought at the store. I still have some tomato plants inside as potential replacements for hail damaged outdoor ones, but the outdoor ones are still in their Wall-o-waters, so...

now that it's just a waiting and watering game outside I have to get back to work on the inside of the house. ugh. I would so much rather be playing in the dirt...

I got a late start on the garden this year, but just had my first salad of spinach, mixed greens (mesculin) and radishes. It was AMAZING! This is my first year gardening so I have to admit that this is the first time ever having garden fresh organic veggies! It was GREAT! Too bad there wasn't enough for the rest of the family...

The weather is FINALLY starting to warm up here in Idaho (much later than average) but lots of rain and overcast days. My zucchini is finally starting to take off. The radishes and mixed greens are doing great, the bush peas (Little Marvel) that I planted from seed are doing great and seem to be thriving, but no harvest yet and they are still fairly small plants, as are my sugar snap peas (I bought those as plants at local nursery. Again, I got a bit of a late start. My peppers haven't seemed to do much since I transplanted them in the garden, but I'm hoping that as the weather warms up they'll get busy growing. Carrots from seed are still very small but alive and growing each day. My sweet onions are doing great and my herbs (basil, thyme, oregano, and chives) are doing great, too! My cucumber plant died. I think I just put it out before it was warm enough. The tomato plant is doing well and my green beans (pole varieties) are doing VERY well! They are growing so much daily it just amazes me. I love going out there the morning after we have a warm day and seeing such a huge difference in my plants!

How do you guys handle waiting...I mean, I can just sit for HOURS out in the garden just examining things, pulling little tiny weeds, checking every detail of each plant....but eventually I have to tell myself to get a LIFE! Lol. I just cannot wait to really start seeing the fruits of my labor for the first time!

These are from last weekend - there has been progress since then, but the only things ready to harvest are the lettuces and green onions (I'm pulling some from each square and letting some grow bigger).

AliSmith13 wrote:How do you guys handle waiting...I mean, I can just sit for HOURS out in the garden just examining things, pulling little tiny weeds, checking every detail of each plant....but eventually I have to tell myself to get a LIFE! Lol. I just cannot wait to really start seeing the fruits of my labor for the first time!

When I first planted my garden I'd go out there every day after work and check each square looking for sprouts, I'd count the one by one while they were coming up. Now that most everything has sprouted I still go to the garden after work before I even go inside.

So funny! I thought I was the only one that was so crazy like that. I sadly have to travel to get to my garden as it is at a community garden and the rain has been so bad that it has tempered my obsession and I haven't gone every day, but when it's nice I can spend hours there. To make it look like I'm being productive, I started making a rock path around my boxes, lol! Anything to not look too crazy.

Haha...yeah, my husband says I need to put some kind of stone path around my beds or something because I'm wearing out the grass around them.

I like that idea, I'll have to put that on my list.

Right now my we just have bare dirt around the boxes. I want to grow grass from seed, but my wife says it gets too much traffic to give them a chance.