As I sit here anxiously awaiting consistently warmer temperatures outside, I thought I would write up a little recap of my gardening efforts so far this year.
Last year I measured out my plan to expand the garden for 2022. We became overwhelmed with potato bugs towards the end of last summer and I couldn't keep up with picking them off of the plants, so I resorted to spraying them, which seemed to help at least a little. The potato bugs had shown up one other time a couple years prior but I caught them early and was able to pick them all off. I figured they showed up in such aggressive numbers last year because we had planted potatoes in the same spot multiple years in a row. The bugs also made their way to our tomato plants last year. I'm hoping we can avoid the potato bugs this year by planting our potatoes and tomatoes in a brand new patch of garden. I'm also trying out a new mulching technique this year that I hope will keep down pests and weeds.
 |
| The state of the garden as of March 14th. |
 |
| The state of the garden as of March 14th. |
I read up a lot on "no dig gardening" last year as I was struggling to keep the garden weeded and sufficiently watered with our very sandy soil. While we don't have enough compost to truly implement Charles Dowding's methods, I am putting two layers of cardboard over the entire garden to keep down weeds and improve moisture retention. I will simply cut holes through the cardboard to plant seeds and seedlings in the garden. I owe a huge thank you to my mother-in-law for collecting loads of cardboard for me from her place of work. When I began this cardboard project I vastly underestimated how much I would need and she truly saved me from having to abandon the idea.
 |
| A rainy view of the garden on May 6th. |
I have already planted kale, tatsoi, and snow peas this spring. April was so cold and cloudy that my peas took an entire month to sprout. I cut strips out of the cardboard to make rows for my leafy greens, but the cardboard swelled and shifted with the rain and nearly covered my rows. I redid my leafy greens area and planted new seeds in bigger spaces. I can see tiny tatsoi sprouts coming up already.
During a couple of freakishly warm days in March I spent three and a half hours hauling an old pile of manure out of the barn and dumping it in the garden. The next day I put up a much sturdier fence than what I cobbled together last year. I have almost finished two complete layers of cardboard in the garden and I'm planning to put cardboard on both sides of our row of asparagus.
We have tilled up the new garden section once so far but will probably need to do it one more time at least where we are planting the potatoes. Another new thing I'm trying this summer is using cattle panels as a trellis for our tomato plants instead of the traditional tomato cages. Our tomato plants always end up out growing the tomato cages, tipping them over, and then the top branches of the tomato plants are laying on the ground with the tomatoes rotting away and being stepped on. I'm hoping that tying the plants to the cattle panel will work much better than the tomato cages.
In the middle of March I started two trays of seedlings and they have exploded into taking over nearly an entire table. We tried out some old leek seeds in a big round pot but none of them came up, so I stuck some nasturtium seeds in there and have ended up with one seedling. I'm growing yellow pear tomatoes and two varieties of Romas this year. Right now I have over one hundred little tomato plants. I'm also growing luffas, zinnias, lavender, strawflowers, cilantro, and chamomile. I can already see some chamomile sprouts in my landscaping that must have self seeded from the plants I grew last year, but I still started seeds indoors to make sure I had chamomile plants again this year. The seedlings have been hanging out on our enclosed porch for about a week now and yesterday I was actually able to have them outside for maximum sunlight exposure.
 |
| Some of my seedlings. |
 |
| The rest of my seedlings and my mint plant I over-wintered indoors. |
Once our final frost has come and gone I have two varieties of beans to plant this year and plans of where I want to plant gladiolus, hollyhocks, and sunflowers this year. Hopefully my lavender seedlings take off enough I can plant them too, but they're looking pretty tiny right now. I also have moonflowers seeds and a free packet of flox seeds to also plant this year. Basically I'm trying to fill up our property with as many flowers as I can.
In case you're curious, here's everything I'm planting in our vegetable garden this year. We buy our seed potatoes from Menards.
Yellow Potatoes
Red Potatoes
I'm really excited to also plant these moonflowers this year!
 |
| All of my new seeds for this year. |
No comments:
Post a Comment