Garden Catch-Up

It’s a busy time of year for the garden. Also a tricky one. Western Washington has a tendency to draw spring out, somewhat unnecessarily, as it seems to us who grew up elsewhere. In Upstate NY, spring is a couple of weeks of mud, followed by summer. Average air temps and soil temps go up quickly, and then stay up.

45 degrees at germination depth in the regular bed.

48 degrees under the cold frame. This is good to know, and may be important in a couple weeks. Important to note, however, this only increases daytime temps when there is some sunshine. At night, the cold frame has very little insulation capacity. It may prevent seedlings from freezing if we get an unexpected frost. Otherwise, from experiments we did last year, it doesn’t really seem to accelerate soil temperatures all that much.

Tomatoes are getting too big for their boots, time to pot them up.

Also time to start the cucurbits. These are some of my favorite plants, and we have had great luck with winter squash and pumpkin especially.

It is a little frustrating, however, that the seed packets come with 20-30 seeds, but I only want 1-2 plants of each variety. When I start the seeds, if there is a seed left in the packet, I want to put it in the ground, doggone it!

We took the tray of bok choy out and planted it. 20 plants. They are a little leggy because of insufficient grow lighting right at the start. We’ll fix that next year. Also, separating the crowded plants was a bit of a hassle. The leaves stick to each other, it turns out, and it’s easy to rip a leaf off, or even break a stem, with overly aggressive handling.

Under the cold frame, for now.

Then we planted about half of the brussells sprouts, 10 plants. That’s all that will fit under the cold frame. Making gardening decisions based on limited planting or seeding space is just a reality for where we are right now. Someday, God willing, we will have a greenhouse and potting shed, and it will be glorious.

That wheat stand is starting to take off. I need to get 12 more t-posts to place along both sides at 10′ intervals so when the wheat gets top-heavy I can trellis it up.

Taters in the muck bed! Remember, about two months ago we covered this bed with a dozen or so wheelbarrow loads of muck from the steers?

Now we are planting yukon gold and german butterball potatoes into it.

Notice that what was 12-18 inches of muck in January, is now just a few inches in March, and underneath that is the blackest, moistest, crumbliest loam imaginable, courtesy of our good friends, the earth worms.

None of the December planted potatoes have showed their sprouts yet, and I wouldn’t expect them too. That experiment won’t really show results until harvest time.

If only I had time to putter around here all day.