Abundant greens and vibrant sedums

raised beds in the mountains

It's been such a busy spring that I haven't been able to get up to my vegetable beds in the mountains in over a month, until last weekend.

They've been producing greens, greens, and more greens (my gardening companion kept bringing quite a bit back down the hill -- aka the Blue Ridge Escarpment).

vegetable beds and sedum

But finally, having a day to harvest most of the winter greens, and plant tomatoes and peppers, was welcome.  I was tired, but happy.  What fun to get quite a bit planted.

And in our Clemson garden, the potatoes, garlic, and onions are doing well, although there's definitely some herbivore sneaking up to snag the pea shoots.  At least s/he doesn't like tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, or onions!

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Turning over beds

In spite of a very rainy day, the evening respite (from the rain) allowed me to get out and seed flats with arugula, mesclun mix, spinach, and cilantro. 

I've got more seeds to sow tomorrow, but first I wanted to turn over my vegetable bed blocks in the main vegetable garden and the satellite garden. 

freshly turned beds in the main vegetable garden (with Mocha)

I managed almost all of them, and they await amendment with compost, before planting. 

Hand-turning beds is a satisfyingly physical activity;  it made up for not having time to walk this morning before our butterfly garden tour at the botanical garden!

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Preparing garden beds

Now there are lots of camellia flowers out the kitchen window.

A couple of years ago, I set up what I call the 'satellite' garden.

Originally meant as an experimental (uh, I'm not really expanding my beds, I said to myself) sort of plot, I decided to incorporate them into permanent beds to expand my (rudimentary) rotation scheme. Also, as the holly hedge near my main vegetable garden has gotten larger, my main vegetable garden is even more shaded in the winter than it used to be. It's a great summer plot, OK in fall, but only gets several hours of sun in the late afternoon, even now, in early March.

So, to have a sunnier space for late winter and early spring crops, my satellite garden is great. Last spring, a hungry young woodchuck was a nemesis, and was relocated, but a relative has now appeared, and I'm determined to find a better place for him/her (the Havahart trap is set).

The unseasonably mild weather has made preparing beds for carrots, beets, chard, and potatoes (as well as preparing warm-season beds) a joy. What fun to be able to be out there digging in early March!

Since this is the second year of serious cultivation for most of these beds, they still have lots of clayey soil, so more compost, composted manure, and mushroom compost is needed. I'd limed all the beds in the fall (our soil is quite acidic), so hopefully, that will help, too. I'm afraid this is all very unscientific (not recommended) and I DO need to do a soil test.

But the beds are looking quite nice, and are ready to plant.

And seedlings are popping up in my flats and containers. Hooray!

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New gardeners & growing your own vegetables

There's such a resurgent interest in growing vegetables here in the U.S.. Hooray! Even non-vegetable gardeners (based on our Garden's volunteer appreciation lunch today) have heard of the Eat the View campaign to encourage transforming part of the White House lawn to an organic vegetable garden.

In Victory Garden days, apparently 41% of the vegetables consumed in the U.S. came from home gardens.

I know from my experiences with my (relatively small) vegetable garden areas that we have vegetables/greens to eat from April to October/November, enough that I don't need to buy much fresh produce at the grocery store during that time. I haven't focused yet at growing enough to can, freeze, or otherwise preserve, but perhaps that's the next step.

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A good soaking

All of the plants in our garden looked so much better this morning; we ended up with about 8/10 of an inch with more rain overnight.

It makes a huge difference to parched soil.

The vegetable garden beds are like sponges, rich with organic matter, and I think the bean plants in the satellite garden took advantage of the moisture to grow an inch or two.

Yard-long bean seedlings
The basil seedlings seemed much more robust, and the squash plants are thriving, too.

I've gotten more summer squash (yellow and scalloped) this year than I ever normally do -- maybe having the rough-stemmed C. moschata plants surrounding them is good.

This scallop squash was larger than I like to harvest them, but they're still wonderful. Fresh young squash hardly seems related to grocery store yellow squash and zucchini.

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More spaces to plant

I harvested almost the last of the garlic, along with all of the remaining bulb onions yesterday. The garlic (a German porcelain type) was smaller than the June-harvested ones, probably because the hot, dry weather limited clove growth, in spite of watering.

But I've been quite pleased with my harvest and have LOTS of garlic for the coming months, enough even for devoted garlic lovers.
There are also quite a few harvested new potatoes that will stretch for a month or two, along with fresh onions.

I'm not quite sure how to properly store onions and potatoes for a long time, and they're so tasty fresh, it's hard to get motivated to do the research.

I think I'll add a second trellis of yard-long beans, for fall production, and another set of cherry tomatoes & roma tomatoes to the vacated space, after adding lots more compost. I'm also going to put kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, and broccoli (oops, and parsnips, too) in beds that I won't need for rotation in fall. Hmmm, maybe I need more beds. That's a slippery slope!

This large red cabbage in a container is ready to harvest.

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Vegetable change-outs

It's a good thing that we're not totally dependent on my potato harvest for sustenance, although South Carolina is hardly a prime potato growing location. 'Caribe' potatoes seem to do the best, although I've had harvests from all the varieties I've tried. I'm still learning about potatoes - in my second year of growing them, my ecological instincts (about native plants) don't necessarily serve me well with nutrient and water-hungry crops. And, certainly, dry weather doesn't help.

But we had some delicious fresh potatoes (along with new garlic and onions) for dinner, so I'm happy with that.

But, I'm enjoying thinking about rotations, and what to put in the potato beds after they're done. (They still have small developing potatoes at the end of underground stems -- do I water and side-dress with compost and hope for more potatoes -- or do I dig up everything and plant beans, or wait until mid-July and plant fall-maturing cole crops, or seed in basil, or transplant tomatoes, oh my...)

The red cabbages in pots have been an unexpected element, as has the redbor (I think) kale, transplanted from a salad mix, and now handsome in one of the vegetable garden blocks. There haven't been many cabbage butterflies, yet, or maybe tough older kale and cabbage leaves aren't preferred to the younger ones that were chewed up.

And there are young squashes to harvest soon.


And this is the first broccoli plant I've managed to get a head from (although quite small).

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Hoping for rain, again

The main vegetable garden is looking nice, thanks to water still available from the faucet.

But I'm worrying about the summer to come. It's been exceptionally hot for June (pushing 100°F) - yuck - and not a drop of rain for the last couple of weeks. Not 'normal' at all, and the midwestern U.S. has been deluged with rain.

I've got spots ready to swap out for new plantings, for beans, more tomatoes, and peppers, and basil. It looks like the potatoes are ready to be harvested, too, and something put in their place.

I'm hoping for thunderstorms this week!

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Back in my garden

I arrived home this morning to find a sleepy, but then very excited Mocha to welcome me. (My gardening companion was coming home at lunchtime).

Wandering around first thing to check on plants, I was glad to be home in our garden. The vegetable garden is flourishing, in spite of the dry weather, the garlic is almost mature, and the squash vines are starting to ramble. Several variegated fritillaries were flying around, and the garden is lively with birds.

The snap peas are still producing, the nasturtiums have started to flower, and the butterfly weed is trying to expand its spot next to the tomatoes and bean trellis.

I had moved quite a bit of it via root cuttings last year, but clearly it's enjoying the extra nutrients and water...

It's wonderful to travel, but also good to be at home.

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A warm spring day

It was close to 80°F (~27° C), pretty warm for late April. We've had, what seems to me, more windy days than usual for spring, but maybe I'm mis-remembering. What it does mean, with low humidity, warmth, and windy conditions, is that it's seeming pretty dry again. The first graders in our garden program rotations this morning were wilting by the second program; they were hot, thirsty, hungry, and tired. We're not used to warmth quite this early, even in the Southeastern US.

I was hopeful in February and March (and the official drought projections had improved), that maybe we'd spring back into something more like "normal" rainfall, and maybe we still will.

But I needed to water the vegetable garden this evening, even the sturdy garlic, shallot, onion, and potato beds, since it hasn't rained much for a couple of weeks (but for about a 1/4 inch last weekend).

My deep-rooted 'Italian dandelion' is perfectly happy, however, as is the equally deep-rooted butterfly weed that I heeled in (not very smartly) in the vegetable garden a few years back. I've tried to dig it up (and have successfully transplanted root cuttings), but the original plant keeps re-emerging.

My gardening companion took some lovely photos of the dandelion being visited by bees, and a striking photo of the fruits ready to be dispersed.

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Changing out vegetable beds for fall

After pulling out spent beans & tomatoes a few days ago, I started readying those spots for fall plants. I like to add more compost, a bit of organic fertilizer, and lime, depending on how each block looks (not very scientific or orderly), but some vegetables are more demanding than others, and almost all vegetables are much more fussy than the tough perennials, shrubs, and trees that we like to grow in our garden.

Spinach (along with beets and chard) prefer a much more neutral soil (almost 6.5-7.0) than ours tend to be here in the SE, so adding more lime is helpful, at least over the long run, although it would have been best to have added it some months ago! Pelletized lime is the easiest to use in the garden.

In fact, one of the harder things I've had to learn about vegetable-growing is that vegetables tend to be nutrient and water 'hogs' -- and have generally been selected to grow tasty fruits and leaves for us to consume, and take up plenty of nutrients and water in the process.

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