Feels good to be planting!

It is still too early to plant much - but after a full week of rain it was nice to be able to get out in the garden and plant something.  I only planted 3 things - but all 3 can take a little cold.  As you can see, I planted carrots (scarlet nantes) snow peas (mammoth melting sugar) and Beauty Heart Radishes. 

I can't wait for them to grow and to be able to eat them!  My mouth is watering just looking at these pictures. 

Have you planted anything yet?  Leave me a comment and let me know what you are planting.

Today's Harvest

The radishes are still small, but I wanted to thin them out - they will taste great in my dinner salad!

These strawberries are quite a bit smaller than the ones from California that are in the grocery stores right now, but wow - they pack some taste! These will be part of my breakfast tomorrow.

It's looking like it may be a good gardening year after all!

We had a late start and now it is just hot but the garden seems to be weathering it all. And after all, isn't there always something about the weather to complain about? Every year it is too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry or too something.

Mostly my garden is doing great. I had spotty germination on the parsnips and some of my carrots and Andy's sunflower fort has seen better years - but overall it is doing well. We have been eating lettuce and radishes from the garden for some time.

The strawberries were great this year. The currants and raspberries are loaded. The apple tree doesn't have any fruit this year and it looks like I have lost the peach tree - the green that was there has shriveled up and died. But I keep watering the tree hoping beyond hope that there is some life left in there somewhere! LOL! My plum tree has plums for the first time - I can only find 3 - so not a huge harvest but I'll take what I can get and it is still a very young tree.

I snapped a few pics of the garden this morning -



2 views of my raised bed from opposite angles.


Wayahead Tomato


The dead peach tree.

Pushing myself to Garden

What is wrong with me? I love to garden but this year I am just not doing it. I pushed myself to get out today for a little while. I don't know if it is just that I have so much else going on or if it is the weather.

But I did have a good gardening day today.

I planted:
Carrots - Scarlet Nantes, Tendersweet, Nelson Hybrid, & Atomic Red
Radishes - Easter Egg Mix
Leaf Lettuce - Lettuce Blend
Parsnips - Hollow Crown
Beets - Red Ace Hybrid

I also set my tomatoes out for a few hours today to get them used to the weather and wind so I can plant them out soon. They have grown so tall that they are touching the lights - the weather needs to cooperate so I can get them out in the ground!

I also took a couple of pictures -


The plum tree is blooming. I am hoping for plums this year - it would be the first year - last year we had a couple of blooms, but no plums.


And strawberry blossoms.

Sunday's Harvest

I got kind of busy yesterday and didn't get around to posting these pictures. I also dug a few new potatoes and cooked them for dinner. Nothing like the taste of new potatoes. I love the fresh taste of everything from my garden.


A basket full of lettuce and beet leaves for my salads this week.


Radishes from the third planting of radishes. I love the different colors. Whenever I have the choice to plant more than one color of something I do.


And another bucket of currants. This will be a good year for currant jelly.

In my garden today 5/29/07

The apple tree is loaded with little apples

I transplanted the pepper plants today - now everything is in the ground

Strawberries are ripening

The black raspberries I transplanted in the spring are flowering so maybe I'll get some fruit from them this year - I thought I might lose a year with a transplant.

The pole beans are all up. The green beans on the right came up before the yellow beans on the left even though they were planted at the same time.

I don't know how well you can see with my cheap camera (my nice one died), but the carrots are all up in nice little rows.

The potatoes are looking good

The currant bushes are loaded.

The sunflower fort has been planted, but this year we put mulch in the middle so prickly weeds don't grow - the boys didn't like playing in there much last year because of the weeds!

7 quarts of rhubarb ready for the freezer. Rhubarb is real easy to freeze - just cut up and put in bags and stick in the freezer - nothing to it!

I have some flowers blooming as well. I don't pay attention to the names of the flowers as I do to the veggies - so I can't even think of what kind of flowers they are right now.

The Minnesota peaches are growing bigger. I just hope I can keep the boys from picking them green. Andy and Vinny (the neighbor) picked quite a few green apples over the weekend - I have told them not to touch the peaches, but they don't always listen.

The tomatoes are bouncing back from transplant shock.

The cabbage and brussels sprouts are loving this cool weather.

My first picking of lettuce and radishes

I picked lettuce and pulled a few radishes yesterday morning. There is nothing like the taste of lettuce fresh from the garden - it tastes so alive - not like the stuff you buy in the store that has been sitting there for a week. I am so glad I start my lettuce seeds early indoors under lights. Being able to start harvesting before Memorial Day is just so great.

In my garden this morning

Lots to see in my garden this morning.

The tomatoes are starting to bounce back from transplant shock. I do think I lost one or two - but most look like this one. Next week they will be looking good.

The Red Cabbage is loving the cool weather and doing good.

The Brussels Sprouts are also doing good.

The cauliflower was planted out this past weekend the same as the tomatoes and they haven't fully recovered from transplant shock yet either - but give them a week and they'll be looking fine!

The onions are looking great. I could start pulling some for green onions now if I needed to.

The last lettuce that I planted out is recovering mostly from transplant shock (this was the third planting) - but I think I may have lost the red one on the right.

The first lettuce I planted out is looking good. I will start picking the outer leaves for my evening salad in the next few days. I can't wait - nothing tastes better than lettuce you grow yourself!

The lettuce I direct seeded in the garden is also up and doing good. To the right you can see the radishes are also up.

The carrots are up - well, not the Nelson hybrid, but all of the other varieties I planted are up.

You can see baby beets here.

And the potatoes are starting to peek through the ground as well.

So far I am pretty pleased with how the garden is shaping up this year.

So many wonderful things to look at!

The lilacs are starting to bloom

The radishes are up

The lettuce is looking great

I planted onions and potatoes on Saturday. These onion plants may not look like much right now, but give them a week - they bounce back from shipping very quickly.

Apple Blossoms

And Peach Blossoms!

It was a good gardening weekend

I transplanted some of my lettuce plants, sowed some lettuce seeds directly into the garden for later lettuce, and planted radishes.

The rhubarb is up - I can't wait for the first taste of spring in a rhubarb crisp or pie!

Another Good Gardening Day

Sunday was another beautiful day. We have a built in gardening box by the front door and Andy (with really very little assistance) planted Pansies there.

He wanted to help me plant seeds in the garden, but Jack was outside and he wanted to play with Jack instead so I started planting alone while the boys played in Andy's climber which is right by the garden. Jack's mom called him home after just a half hour and Andy helped me finish planting.

We planted radishes, 3 kinds of carrots including a new variety that is yellow in color instead of orange - we can't wait to see if it tastes any different, parsnips and beets. We put the bean towers in place in the garden, although I did not put the string on them yet or plant the beans - Andy is pretty obssesed with string (part of his autism) and he always gets upset every year when I string the string on them and he can't help (he is way too short) so I prefer to do the stringing when he is not around so I don't have to deal with the whinning. I buy a new ball of string every year and I placate him at the end by giving him the left over string. Sometimes I think I should get one of those wooden bean towers that are all in one piece, but I like that the ones I have come apart for easy storage over winter - and they are still in good working order, so why should I replace them? It is a pain to cut the string off in the fall and untangle the vines from them since the string does not compost very well, but not so much of a pain to consider replacing them.

I still have pepper plants and tomato plants in the basement along with brussels sprouts. I think I will probably put the tomatoes out next weekend, which is still a little early (and I may change my mind), but it has been pretty warm this year. I bought some red plastic film to put down under the tomatoes as a mulch - the red is supposed to boost production. The peppers probably won't go out for two more weeks or even later - they really like it hot. The Brussels Sprouts could go out now, but they are still pretty little since they were late germinating and not all of them did germinate, I think I ended up with just 4 plants. I may put them out sometime this week.

The garden is coming along nicely. We will see how it actually turns out. The rhubarb is up and ready for a first harvest (I never did use all of it from the freezer - I guess that will go in the compost now), the lilacs are in full bloom, the peach blossoms have fallen off and the currant bushes are loaded with what will be currant blossoms. But the Apple Tree that should be in full bloom has none. The strawberries are blooming as well as the Blackberries. The Raspberries are coming up as are all of my perennials. And my seasonal allergies are also in full bloom, but I don't care - I love being able to be outdoors more and in my garden!