A Gardener's Retreat

This weekend, the first full weekend in May, we spent quite a bit of time out at the garden plot, laying out our seed beds, putting in all kinds of soil amendments, and planting some seeds.

In the past we’ve always gone with boring rectangles for our seed beds.  They worked and were simple to lay out, but for some reason I’ve never been satisfied with them.  This year, we decided to shake up our usual four-square arrangement, and lay in some curves and circles.  So except for a square strawberry bed, everything else is curvilinear.  I’m especially proud of the new beet and chard bed, which is an oval island between paths.

A tip:  We found that laying in the new paths with straw helped us to see the seed beds better.

Another new thing this year is flower borders.  I’ve always admired those French and English kitchen gardens with their pretty and useful arrangements of flowers and vegetables.  So this year, I bought a mixed seed packet of “Water Wise” flowers and I’m planting them in borders between beds.  I also planted borage with the beets (who knows if they like each other, but I thought they might look interesting as a pair) and climbing nasturtiums between our pea plants.  Can’t wait for seedlings!

Soil amendments this year include bags of manure from Agway, bins of leaf mold out of our back yard, and some North Country Organics fertilizer mix (from right here in Vermont!).  We also plan to straw mulch as soon as we have some plants going.

Not much else to report except that we discovered (and unfortunately dislodged) a medium sized brown toad from the dead sage plant in the middle of our plot.  We are leaving that area of the plot semi-wild and I left a bunch of dead sage there so he or she can move back in if it wants. In the wildlife department, we’re also going to leave the large healthy cinquefoil and celandine plants which took up residence this spring.  They make pretty flowers and this time, they seem to really want to stay.

Pictures next time!  We forgot the camera….

Here in early May, we’re in a bit of a gardening lull.  We planted lots of seeds a few weeks ago, and now we’re just watching our seedlings grow and waiting  for it to be warm enough to plant the next set of crops.  Meanwhile, the weather has been cooperative and our garden has gotten enough rain to keep  it happy.    

Some things are doing better than others of course.  Our radishes are all up and there are lots of them.  They now have second leaves. 

The peas were a mixed bag (not literally but figuratively).  Some of our Sugar Ann Snap Peas came up and others did not.  In fact, only the ones planted in earliest April came up as they should have.  The others gave us less than 50% germination.  My theory is that the soil got too warm too fast.

Additionally, we planted lettuce a while back and so far, it has done very little.  Too early?  Not true of the spicy mesclun greens which seem to have all sprouted and are almost ready to sample.  The mustards seem also to like it plenty cool.

Of the many sorrel seeds I planted, it appears that only one came up.  That said, I have plenty of wild sorrel if I want it.  But I was kind of hoping for the fancy French kind.  I guess more research is required.

Interestingly, the volunteer arugula is looking much better this year than it did last.  Much larger leafier rosette have come up apparently from the seeds of last year’s plants.  Very spicy and delicious — I’ll have to harvest it soon.

We’re ready to go on our mid May planting and just waiting for the latest cold snap to pass.  Over the weekend, we manured the bed where we plan to put cabbages and kale.  Later this week, we’ll plant it.  We bought our red cabbage starts from Walker’s and will plant kale from seed.  We’ll also put in more arugula to keep the other ones company (the seed package says mid Spring) and replant our sorry lettuces.  It’s not summer without buttercrunch!