Chives, seeding, and other vegetable gardening activities

It's so heartening to see buds swelling on the blueberries, oaks, and buckeyes.  Not to mention the spiky clumps of chives.  I was thrilled to see an asparagus tip poking up in the small asparagus bed, and happily mulched that bed and my onion & garlic beds with partially broken-down straw (it had served as a Mocha barrier from compost through the winter).

Additional tomato and pepper seeds came on Saturday, so I went ahead and sowed an assortment in trays on a germination mat.  I'm following Renee's Garden methods this year, and will transplant the small seedlings to larger pots as needed (rather than allocating valuable germination space to more pots!)

I dug up a new bed for potatoes, cut them up for sprouting, and am ready with more straw (I'm planning to cover them with straw this year, rather than soil).

I hopefully sowed a few more vegetable seeds in pots (chard on the germination mat, spinach and mustard spinach in containers) and called it a good day in the garden.

Read more...

Isn't it (almost) time to plant warm-season vegetables?

I'm anxious to get going, but the weather is still unsettled. In the mountains of North Carolina (Zone 6), where my main summer garden will be this year, it's going to be close to freezing tonight.

NOT weather for tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant, nor time to plant beans, squash, or cucumbers.

In our main Piedmont vegetable garden (the satellite garden), I've put in asparagus crowns and artichokes (nice perennial vegetables) to accompany the onions, garlic, and leeks already planted.

But it should be excellent weather to finish the last two raised beds (in the mountains) and fill them with soil, and hopefully plant some hardy herbs in the corners of the beds above the house.

I'm also planning to sow beets, turnips, 'small' carrots, an Asian green mix, summer-mix lettuce, and late spinach, too, as an experiment -- you never know, it might be a long cool spring!

Read more...

Sowing seeds

Woo, hoo - I quickly put seeds of ruby chard, regular chard, Siberian kale, red Russian kale, Oriental giant spinach, bulbing fennel, and some various Asian greens in my cowpots late this afternoon. The heating pad felt warm; maybe the pots will warm up too and the seeds will germinate....

This is all very unscientific and hardly precise (hmm, I don't actually sound like I was trained as a scientist), but this is a celebration of February 1, and spring to come.

But it was lovely to actually poke a finger in some nice potting soil and contemplate what's to come.

Read more...