Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Planting Time!

I am excited and exhausted to say that Jeff and I got our garden planted this past Memorial Day weekend! I woke him up out of a sound sleep Saturday morning around eight by shaking him and announcing that today was finally planting day!!! He was just thrilled, but after two cups of coffee and a reminder of how amazing the produce will be, he got going. We set up all the seedlings from our inside garden on our patio table. This year we started most of our plants by seeds which we kept in a small table top greenhouse in front of a south facing window in our living room. We also had six trays of seedlings which I took in and out everything day before and after work. (Thanks goodness we were finally planting since I was sick of having to do that, and I am sure my neighbors were done with seeing me in my PJs flailing around with seed trays every morning!) We believe in using a slow release fertilizer once for the season so we spread that over the entire garden surface and began digging in all the plants.

Turning the entire garden surface (thank goodness we registered for a pitch fork for our wedding), individually digging all the holes for the plants, and watering for our new 20 by 30 ft garden ended up taking the two of us most of the weekend. However, now that everything is in, the rest of the garden maintenance is not as time consuming until harvest!

I had fears that the lasagna garden (see post explaining lasagna gardening here) wouldn't work somehow, once we started to plant... did I get enough dirt? would the cardboard rip up as we planted? etc. However, it worked out just fine. Towards the outer edges the layer of dirt was a bit thin, but we planted marigolds there (to keep away pesky animals) so we weren't too concerned with making sure those were perfectly transplanted.

This year in our zone 5b garden we have planted:
Two varieties of heirloom corn
Four varieties (two heirlooms) of tomatoes
Tomatillos
Eggplant
Spinach
Cucumbers
Red Onions
Three varieties of peppers
Purple bell peppers
Red bell peppers
Asparagus
Black beans
Green beans
Lemon Balm
Dill
Rosemary
Mint
Stevia
Tarragon
Quinioa
Purple hull-less barley (for chicken feed)
Purple Adirondack potatoes




Command Central- Garden Plan on graph paper and seedlings galore!

Our new "lasagna" garden

The black raspberries!


The garlic we planted last fall

The grape vines