Garden Journal

Hello,

I am going to record my gardening efforts in this thread.  My garden is raised beds in a small backyard each 3'x12'.  I also have a bed of berry bushes 3'x40' containing haskaps, saskatoons, and sea buckthorn.

My intention is to plant regularly all the way to mid August.  I also intend to frost seed some plants in the fall.

Last fall I gathered leaves and put them on my garden beds.  This year the soil underneath was soft and crumbly.  Other years the soil is hard after the winter freeze, so I am counting this as a win.

Many of the strawberry runners did not take last fall, and they are dry and crumbly.

Congratulations, Randy, on your garden adventure. We’d love to see pics!

Here are a couple of pictures of the garden.  Peas were planted on May 2.  I have had trouble in the past with birds eating all the peas out of the ground, so I have covered the bed with fabric.  The peas have sprouted underneath and are about an inch tall right now.

Last August I planted lettuce in my garden when it was hot and dry.  Even with watering, I didn't get any lettuce plants.

This spring, I have lettuce plants growing!  I guess this shows that seeds are willing to wait until conditions look good.

I didn't take any pictures of them yet.  I will try and remember tonight.

Randy, thank you for uploading the photos. Your grow beds look great! How amazing about your lettuce. That’s so cool.

Good thinking on covering your pea sprouts from the birds. James Prigioni, a permaculture gardener on YouTube keeps his peas covered the whole season because of bird pressure. Look at 3:38 on the timeline.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CEPVoVgDIYE

Angela Wilcox wrote:Randy, thank you for uploading the photos. Your grow beds look great! How amazing about your lettuce. That’s so cool.

Good thinking on covering your pea sprouts from the birds. James Prigioni, a permaculture gardener on YouTube keeps his peas covered the whole season because of bird pressure. Look at 3:38 on the timeline.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CEPVoVgDIYE

Thanks for sharing this.  He has quite a shade house.  I might need to consider this for my garden.

I have attached a picture of the lettuce that sprouted this spring.  They seem to have attracted some birds lately.  The tips of the lettuce are gone.

I planted my tomato and cucumbers last night.   I bought them at a local greenhouse as I was out of town in late winter and couldn't start my own.  The varieties of tomato are champion and sungold. The cucumber is a straight eight.  

The tomatoes are indeterminate so I am using a trellis that is a 2x4 suspended above the bed, with ropes extending into the soil.  At the soil end I tie on a toggle such as a nail or a piece of pipe.  This gets buried underneath the plant, so the plant grows overtop and doesn't pull the stake out as it grows.

The days are warm and long.  We had rain on May 22 along with some showers since then.  The carrots and swiss chard is up.  still no sign of the onion seeds I put down.

The lawn is growing like mad.  2 inches this past week.

The cucumber looks sad.  I think it is cold, so I put some blood meal down to try and perk it up.

The lovage went to seed last fall, now there are lovage seedlings in the strawberry beds.

Back for a quick update.

What started out as a dry season has turned to a wet season.  The strawberry bed has some holes where runners died over the winter.  I have added radishes to the holes.  I am also trying to capture strawberry runners in flats of potting soil.  I hope by doing this that I am able to transplant the new strawberries more successfully.

One of my sea buckthorns has taken off in it's third year, I pruned it away from the saskatoon.  I put the cuttings in a rooting bed and put the rest of the trimmings under the mulch in the berry bed.

The new radish seedlings are growing well.

I had flowers on my cucumbers for about more than a week when I went out to the plant to see I could get a cucumber for dinner.  Even though it was bushy and green and blooming there were no cucumbers.  I made the decision to prune the vine to just a couple of stems and accept the lost time of growing leaves.  In about a week, I now have many cucumbers growing