Practical projects and crafts

Category: Gardening (Page 2 of 2)

Welcome to Summer (Almost)

 

We’ve made it to June, which for me is always the start of summer. Even if it’s not official until the end of the month, the pools are open, it’s hot enough for sun dresses and we’ve gotten the bikes and the grill out. Therefore it’s summer.

May was officially the hottest May we’ve ever had, so my spring vegetables are well and truly bolted. The summer ones seem to be enjoying the experience though. I have tiny tomatoes that are almost egg sized, and the corn is already knee-high (I think it’ll be plenty tall by July 4). I don’t know if we’ll get corn, but I’m enjoying the experiment.

The strawberries also did great this year. I got a year’s supply of jam (which doesn’t take much for us!) and some to freeze too, so I’m happy. I think Patrick’s also happy to escape lots of trips to the pick-your-own place. Maybe I’ll save that for pumpkins or Christmas trees this year… I think I’ll get a few currants and raspberries, but next time I try planting those I think I will do a more careful job with the prep work which should make things easier.

I’m also looking forward to a day where I can put a big (read: deer proof) fence around the yard and have nice spaces between my garden beds, picking the strawberries requires some interesting balancing and while that builds muscles, it doesn’t make for good motivation to go out and take care of the garden properly.

Overall though I’m doing pretty well this year. Having a careful (and rigorously followed) plan has kept things a lot more organized this year. And that’s even with the early swap out of the spring vegetables. This weekend I’m going to finish cleaning things up since I still need to do the cress that’s gone to seed and train the tiny cucumber plants and morning glories so they climb nicely. I’ll put in some more lettuce. So far the second round of cut-and-come-again lettuce looks to be getting to a good size. And the stumps of the lettuce that I cut the whole head from (it was ready to bolt) are actually putting out new leaves. Score one for an internet rumor!

I want to get everything set up real well so it can survive on it’s own for a week. We’re actually going on a vacation, for an entire week at the ocean.  It’ll be the first time we’ve done this, and I’m looking forward to it.  I have finished almost all of my seersucker sewing projects and I’m going to bring along a couple of relaxing knitting projects, so I’m really looking forward to it.

 

Summer Produce

It’s summer!  Or at least it really feels like it given that we’ve apparently had the warmest May on record.  The garden appears to be enjoying it overall though.  My squash and beans are growing really fast, and my potatoes are taller than I am in their grow bags.  Unfortunately it means an early end to some of my spring plants.  My cress bolted first, followed by the radishes (Note to self: easter egg radishes bolt super fast, I should stick to the little round red ones, they’re the only ones that worked out.) and even the broccoli gave up this week.  Amusingly enough it was the “heat tolerant” broccoli that bolted first…  It last long enough for me to get a decent head from each plant, and we’ll eat the stalks and greens in stir fry next week.  I’m planning to plant more Waltham broccoli in fall, so I have another shot at it.  And I can use the bed to grow more zucchini and yellow beans.  I already have row covers up I can use for the zucchini.  The radishes and cress will be replaced with more lettuce.

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I usually feel a little anxious about planting things, since I know I don’t always space things correctly.  So far I’m doing pretty well this year, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep that up.

I’ve also been productive with my indoor projects.  I made lots of burger buns for Memorial Day and froze a whole bunch of them.  And I’ve made Patrick two shirts.  With any luck I will also finish a dress and PJs and another Patrick shirt this weekend (it’s an AWS weekend so I’ve got an extra day!).

These are all using my Kaufmann Cape Cod seersucker.  I hope they make more, it’s great fabric, comfortable, light weight and in decent colors…

Oh, and we got our first big batch of strawberries.  The first round became jam (using the classic recipe this time) and a strawberry-rhubarb pie (using our first rhubarb harvest!).  The next round is getting frozen this weekend.  I stuck to a more reasonable volume of strawberry jam this year.

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Summer Storms

It looks like we’re really heading into summer this week. On the upside I won’t have to water the garden!  Summer is usually like that here.  It will be hot and humid and then thunderstorms will roll in during the afternoon.  I’m fine with this as long as there’s no hail or crazy wind!   And weird though it sounds I’m also ok with it being warmer.  It got cold again at the end of last week, and for whatever reason this year I’m looking forward to hot weather.  Maybe it’s because of how intense this year has been?

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So far I’m pretty happy with the garden.  I picked lots of strawberries yesterday.  I think I might try making scones with the alpine strawberries, or maybe pancakes…  For the big ones they’re either going to be pie or jam, depending on how much I have.  I really look forward to being able to say I made jam from my own fruit.  It will feel like I got all the check boxes or a full score or something.  We’ll see…

I’ve also gotten to eat a whole bunch of lettuce and cress from the garden.  The cress is bolting sadly, but I plant to fill that space with more lettuce and plant more cress again in fall.  These are two more garden success stories, starting lettuce inside worked amazingly well, my Ice Queens are even making heads this year!  And my buttercrunch is huge and beautiful.  (I love buttercrunch, it’s my favorite!)  The cress was also really good.  I mostly used it in sandwiches and sometimes a little mixed into salads, but I really liked the flavor, so it’s going into regular rotation, at least whenever the weather will cooperate.

For the rest of the salad bed, the radishes are ready to harvest (and are starting to bolt…) and there are a few carrots, but as usual, carrots remain a challenge.  Maybe I’ll just plant more lettuce?  And the cucumbers have germinated (or rather 4 out of 5 have, slot 5 refuses to cooperate even after 2 tries, so I guess cucumbers aren’t meant to grow there?).  Also given the recent comprehensive demise of the chard (and I was so looking forward to trying it!!!)  I’ve planted bush cucumbers in that spot because I really love pickles, and this year I’m going to get a decent amount.

As for the rest of that bed, the broccoli is coming along nicely, though I’m really hoping it will make nice big heads before the heat gets to them.  The Pacman broccoli plants are maybe 1/3 or 1/4 bigger than the Sun King ones, but both have heads about the same size.  Unfortunately I’ve been having to make a daily squishing of cabbage loopers (my mortal enemies).  I used to pick them up and throw them, but that took extra time and there’s always the chance they’d make it back, so now I squish them and wash my hands after.  I figure 90% of what ends up on my hands is liquified broccoli leaves…  (Note to self: pick up Bt at Johnsons today, put it on the broccoli and then actually put up row covers like a responsible person).  The eggplants are still there too.  They’re holding out with the recent cold weather, and flea beetles that have covered their leaves in tiny holes.  (Second note to self: see if Johnson’s has an organic gardening solution to flea beetles and cover the eggplants like a responsible person!).  Yeah, so as is obvious my major failing with that bed was not putting up row covers like I had planned.  Also there’s whatever killed the chard, which suddenly wilted.  It couldn’t have been cold since the eggplants next to them were fine, and I don’t know of any chard diseases, and there was no insect damage…  Some morning doves did ‘decorate’ them right before they wilted so maybe morning dove droppings are deadly to chard?

I also need to do some thinning.  My bush beans are all up and growing nicely, so I need to go out and clip one for where they all came up.  Putting in two seeds was the right choice given that they were older seeds and in a lot of places only 1 came up, but now I need to thin them.  Their neighbors the slicing tomatoes are doing ok, they aren’t as happy as the cherry tomatoes in the grow bags, but I think that has to do with the extra shade from the neighbor’s oak tree and the fact that the ones in the grow bags have the best soil ever (yay gardener’s gold!).  The Early Girl in the grow bag (my back up in case of another tomato apocalypse like last year) is also doing reasonably well, but I need to get another bag of soil to finish filling up the bag.  (Note to self #3….)  The only big gardening fail here is that I broke the growing tip on the Hartman’s Yellow trying to adjust it to keep it in the cage.  It has a big offshoot right next to it, so hopefully it will be ok?  But yeah, that was a major fail, and I was trying to be really gentle!  New rule for me: don’t touch the tomatoes!  Unless it’s a major issue, leave them alone!  Or if absolutely necessary move it incredibly slowly.

Hm…who else…the garlic is doing well.  We even had scapes for breakfast yesterday.  Getting scapes is almost better than the actual garlic.  They’re so good!  And my marigolds are blooming.  They’re more a creme than a pure white, but I still think they’re pretty.  My catnip or rather the cats’ catnip also appears to be getting established, which is a good thing.  And the potatoes are huge, they also have pretty white flowers, which I think is a good sign.  The bad part is I caught a squash vine borer on them.  So Note to Self #4, cover up the squash seedlings.  Hopefully none of them are infected, especially since they’re so small right now, but we’ll see how it goes.  Worst case scenario I’m going to be replanting in July.

On the upside, it looks like most of the basil, and more peas than I expected survived the cut worms.  And the pole beans are starting to climb too.  So I have high hopes for pesto, at least 1 meal of peas, and a summer of beans.  Oh and my container corn is growing, I lost one seedling that got shadowed by the potatoes, but the rest seem to be doing well.  I really need to thin them too.

Other than that, the peppers are doing good.  It looks like they might like a little extra fertilizer, but they look happy and are producing some nice wax peppers.  The other berries are mixed.  My currants are actually doing really well, except for the fact the deer has pruned them again for me.  The raspberries are mixed.  But I didn’t do a great job planting or weeding them so that’s probably why.  I have rhubarb, but even though I thought I got a red cultivar most of the stalks are green which weirds me out.  I should just be brave and ignore that…

So I’d say so far I’ve got more successes than not!

Ready to Go

All the plants are officially in the garden now.  Which is a nice feeling!  Actually, everything is even bigger now than in this picture which I took a little over a week ago.  The potatoes have been all hilled up and are huge.  Still no garlic scapes, hopefully soon?

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Here you can see all my nice neat rows.  This will be a fond memory during the jungles of August!

 

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May Day

Welcome to May! It’s a nice feeling, very much spring, and not quite summer yet. It’s also an excellent time of the year for projects.  Just being outside feels nice, whether it’s working in the garden, knitting outside with a good book in the sun or sewing and enjoying a breeze through the window.  It makes working on things very pleasant.

Which is good since I’ve got a long list of projects to work on!  The biggest one of course is planting the garden.  We are now officially past the last frost date (50/50 day is April 16, 90/10 day is April 29) so it’s time to get all the plants outside.  This even includes the eggplant and basil seedlings since it’s supposed to stay above 50 degrees for the next 10 days.  By the end of next week we’re even looking at highs in the 80’s and lows in the 60’s so I should enjoy the feeling of spring while it lasts.

As such, everything is going out this weekend: tomatoes and peppers (the important producers!), the ground cherry (experiment year 2!), basil (purple and green pesto this year!), zinnias (since direct seeding was hard…), eggplants (the new experiment!) and lots of seeds (bush and pole beans, zucchini, acorn squash, butternut squash, buttercup squash, cucumbers, corn and maybe some nasturtiums).  So that’s going to be my morning tomorrow.  In all likelihood Patrick will wake up and everything will be planted.  Hopefully it all goes well, I’ve been trying very hard to do everything properly and not put in more than I can handle.

I will have to wait and see how it turns out in a couple weeks when things start to get going.

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I also have some sewing and knitting projects to sort out.  I just finished my first set of spring/fall PJs.  I used a combination of KwikSew 3553 for the top and Sewaholic’s Tofinos for the bottom (short sleeves and long pants).  I’m really happy with how they turned out.  The advantage of PJs is you can use cute prints that you wouldn’t be able to get away with wearing outside the house.  The next set will be with the same patterns but using a little blue with small white flowers.

After I finish my second set of PJs I need to decide how I’m going to use all the seersucker I ordered this spring.  Kaufman had a really awesome set of seersucker plaids in bright colors, so I ordered as much as I could find since most seersucker seems to only come in pastels for some reason.  I’m planning to use it for a dress and some shirts for me and Patrick this summer.  It’s hard to beat seersucker for staying cool and it doesn’t matter if it gets wrinkled since it starts out that way!  These should all be patterns I’ve used before so sewing them should be straightforward, even if shirts are more complex.  And I like sewing shirts (despite all the buttonholes…) and dresses.  I should also finish sewing up the second black wool skirt for work.  I’ve got the lining done, I just need to cut out and sew the wool pieces.  I should also make up the couple of shirts for work that I have fabric waiting for.  But work clothes aren’t half as fun as summer clothes.

I’m not sure why it’s so fun to sew summer things, but it is.  Maybe because the fabric is light and airy and feels wonderful?

Speaking of summer sewing, I also should probably get around to figuring out how to edit my shorts pattern.  I’ve been using the Thurlow pattern from Sewaholic which is comfortable, but I don’t think the flair on the shorts works well on me. So I need to figure out if I want to edit the pattern or try a new one…  I’m thinking about trying Kwik Sew 3614 (despite the terrible picture) they’re described as “fitted shorts” which might work for me.    I will have to find a copy though.  It’s out of stock at the JoAnn’s and on Amazon.  Maybe I’ll have better luck at G-Street.  Even if it means going to G-Street. .. 🙁    This area has a class problem in some places that if they don’t think you’re “fancy” enough they’re going to ruin your day.  G-Street is one of those places, and as an engineer who lives frugally because it seems prudent, and who sews her own clothes because it’s practical and fun, I’m very much not what they think of as fancy.  Though when I buy the nice wool suiting (yay designer lengths on sale!) and know to get the good lining fabric they will at least be polite.  Maybe I can get my invisible zipper foot while I’m at it.  The fact that Bernina will only sell feet for their machines through their dealers and the fact that the only local dealer (G-Street) is both rude and is always out of stock of half of them is not a good time.  Oh!  I could bike there on my day off when it’s nice out, that makes it more appealing!  Then I’ll have my zipper foot, my pattern and maybe something cool from the remnant pile.  We’ll see…

I also have to decide what I want to knit next.  I finished my cropped cardigan so I need another big project.  My “Summer Flies” shawl is my current portable project.  I have a couple of sweaters in my queue and  I want to make my father-in-law more socks at some point.  Or I could start working on my vest again…hm… It’ll probably be the vest or the socks, spring is to new for me to want to think about sweaters right now!

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Weather Surprises

So last week it felt like summer and this week it feels like winter again.  Well, it’s a lot warmer than that, but after last week it feels cold.  I got out my summer dresses (and even got to wear my new Anna Dress that I finished this spring!) and now we’re back to night temperatures in the upper 30s.  The worst part is I need to bring in all my seedlings every night.  Since there are six trays of them plus the three big ones in pots, this is an adventure.  The forecasters are saying this will continue through next week too, so there’s no chance I’m going to get to plant anything early.  I’ll just have to look at pictures of the garden from last summer to console myself…

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If I’m lucky though things will warm up next weekend and I’ll be able to plant almost everything the first weekend in May (not this weekend, but next weekend).  I think the tomatoes, marigolds, impatiens, zinnias, ground cherry and probably the peppers will go out next weekend.  The eggplants and the basil are going to have to wait until the week after.  I can still plant a lot of the seeds though, I’m looking forward to planting the beans, squash, corn and cucumbers!  They’ve got nice big seeds so they’re easy to plant generally.

Having all the plants being almost ready to go out makes things feel half finished to me, and I have a hard time leaving things as only ‘almost’ finished.  Therefore it’s really tempting to just stick them all in the ground!  Maybe I’ll cheat a little and plant the marigolds and impatiens this weekend since based on the forecast they’re going to stay out overnight ever night for the next week (starting Saturday night) anyway.  I think I’m going to start hardening off the basil and eggplants this weekend too.  They can’t get planted until the second weekend in May in all likelihood, but at least getting them out of the basement during the day will really cut down on the gnats!  (I will never ever be getting the Miracle Grow seed starting soil again, ever!)

At least since it’s cold it should be easier to focus on sewing and knitting, so I have plenty of indoor distractions.  I’m almost done with my cropped cardigan, and I’ve just stared my “Summer Flies” shawl.  And I have my spring sailboat PJs all cut out and ready to sew together (I even have buttons and remembered to cut out the interfacing!  I’m extra prepared this time!)

Gardening in March

So unsurprisingly March includes a bit more outdoor activity than February.  And some flowers.  So far there are crocus and snow drops, and not even the local deer population has managed to eat them all before I could go out and see them! This week it’s finally supposed to warm up some; even though the average high for March is about 50 degrees, it’s been in the 30s and 40s all month.  So this week we’ll finally get to go out and plant some peas and lettuce and other spring vegetables. I’m also hoping to plant the potatoes this week too. We got the jumbo grow bags this year (4 of them!) so there should (hopefully!) be lots of potatoes. We picked up the potting soil today, so we just need to dump the first half into the grow bags this week to get started.

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So far my spring seedlings have been stuck inside, though they got a taste of outdoor life last week. This week I’m hoping to get them outside some more. I’m planning to start them out in the porch on Monday and Tuesday and slowly expand that to spending the day in the sun. The overall goal will be to plant them next weekend. I’m hoping to plant my violas, pansies, broccoli and lettuce.

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The other seedlings are doing well. I think next year I’m not going to start the impatiens quite so early since they’re happily blooming away in the basement. On the upside, despite all the issues I had getting to germinate I have one of each color! So in a few weeks they’ll be ready to head outside too. I’m going to plant them along the edge of the porch since that’s mostly in shade. They will be some nice color at the feet of the sweet peas and morning glories.  The sweet peas, being more cold tolerant, will get planted tomorrow so they will have a head start on the impatiens and morning glories.

At least even if it doesn’t really truly feel very spring like at the moment, warm weather is getting closer!

Gardening in February

The last couple of years by the time October (and our first freeze) rolls around, my garden has grown into a giant jungle worthy of Jurassic Park that tries to eat me as I fight my way in to get the last tomatoes/peppers/lettuce and I’m secretly almost glad to see it go to sleep as the weather gets cold.  Now, this may have something to do with the fact that I have a full time engineering job and have been taking grad school engineering classes in my free time…in addition to all the other life stuff that’s been going on.  But that’s been my fall experience the past few years.  (Note, the flowers are the exception, I always miss those.  I refused to pull up my flower bed until they were entirely gone and P. had made a couple of concerned comments about the look of the front yard…)

Still, when the seed catalogs come out at the end of December I’m very much ready to have plants again.  I’ve never been very good at houseplants, and winter is always extra hard to keep up with watering, so I really miss my garden during the winter.  As I learned last year though, no matter how much I want plants starting seeds super early ends badly.  And by ends badly I mean ends up with buying a card table and window boxes for the dozens of extra celery seedlings that were definitely big enough to be planted out by Valentine’s Day… So this year instead of planting everything at the earliest possible date and growing as many different types of plants as possible, I’ve tried to carefully think out what would be best to grow and what would be the optimal time to plant my seeds.

So February ended up being when I could start planting.  The first batch of seeds has been all flowers because they grow more slowly and fit in the six-packs much better and longer than the vegetables, also some of them can be planted out before the last average frost date.  So I got to start my first violas, pansies and impatiens right at the start of February.

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This is my seed growing set up in the basement.  I have my own shelf this year.  Last year my plants were sharing space with the pantry goods which was a challenge for everyone.  The shelf is the basic wire shelf for Home Depot, and it’s 4 ft long and wide enough for the lights to fit between the vertical supports.  I got proper EnviroGro lights with four T5 bulbs in each light.  Last year I got two bulb lights by Lithonia from Home Depot that cost almost as much but they didn’t provide enough light and one of them promptly broke.  The new ones are much sturdier and provide plenty of light.  They’re also plugged into an outlet timer to keep the plants on a proper day/night cycle.  I’ve found that the T5 bulbs don’t make a noticeable difference in our electric bill so it’s definitely worth going for the nicer lights to be able to use those.  The other advantage of this set up is that I can adjust the height of the shelves to give plenty of room to raise and lower my lights as the plants get bigger.

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I’m also using the seedling trays from Burpee.  I like them because the capillary mats (the black mat in the picture) does a much better job of watering appropriately than I do on my own.  The best part is you can reuse them by washing them at the end of the season with a very diluted water/bleach solution to sterilize them.  Sterilization is important to prevent damping off and other problems.  I now have four sets, two regular (72 count) and two XL (32 count).  For the most part the larger ones will be for the vegetable plants and the smaller ones for the flowers.  They also come with covers so they can function as greenhouses when the seeds are first planted.  You just have to remember to take off the lid as soon as seeds start to sprout.

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I’ve also been very careful to label each plant.  Last year I thought just making a diagram would be enough, but I forgot that once I picked up my six-packs to move them outside I would no longer know which tomatoes were on which side…

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So far I’ve planted the flowers I listed earlier, broccoli, habanero peppers and Pow Wow White Enchinacea flowers.  The last flowers are perennials which should get pretty big and have awesome white daisy-like flowers all summer.  I’m hoping it will be a nice low cost way to fill in some of the gaps in the slightly neglected landscaping in the house we rent.  The hard part now is waiting to plant the rest…  Next week will be the rest of peppers, and the tomatoes the week after that, and lettuce and marigolds the week after that (I’m getting a head start on the lettuce), and herbs the week after that, and last the zinnias the week after that.

It’s tempting to plant them all now because planting them is fun and it’s exciting to see them grow…  But as I learned last year, this is a bad idea.  So!  As usually, making things is an exercise in awesomeness and patience.

Garden Plans for 2015!

2015 Garden Plan

This is my 2015 garden!  Or at least I hope it will be.  I have 6 beds to work with, they’re not big raised beds with defined sides, but I find it easier to build up the soil in my garden into separate beds and then mulch in between them.  The above picture shows the layout I have planned for most of the summer, though hopefully I’ll have some additional vegetables to grow in spring and fall.  I’m also hoping to grow herbs and some extra tomatoes in containers as well.

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First we’ve got the border.  I planted two types of garlic last October, Chesnok Red and German Porcelain.  These are both hard-neck because I’m hoping to get scapes this year.  Also, I planted in fall since I’m hoping they’ll actually develop heads this year.  The first year I got very small heads of garlic and last year the garlic got taken over by the celery and peppers.  The garlic will also be sharing the border with marigolds, scallions and ginger.  The scallions and ginger I planted last year and the garlic should be ready to pull about the time the marigolds start to get big.

I’m planting the ‘French Vanilla’ variety of marigolds this year because P. really likes them.  They will also fit well with the other flowers I have planned.

Inside “The Fortress” I have a number of different beds.  The front left bed has three types of strawberries I planted last year.  There are early, late and ever-bearing varieties.  Last year they did pretty well, I didn’t get enough to make jam from them, but I did get plenty to eat fresh.  I also learned at the end of the season that they’re very good at making lots of new strawberry plants, which are currently trying to colonize the two beds above them.

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The bed on the upper left will be the squash bed.  After squash vine borers obliterating my squash the last couple years, this year I’m going with only two types of winter squash and no summer squash.  Both the White Cushaw and Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck are supposed to be very resistant to vine borers and are also supposed to be good dense squash for roasting and making pies.  I’m also planning to grow a mix of colorful carrots (“Kaleidoscope”) around the edge of the squash bed.  I think they’ll finish before the squash gets big enough to take them over.

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Next door is the pepper bed.  We’re growing four types of peppers again this year since last year we actually did really well with out peppers.  The secret to the peppers seems to be making sure they have a reasonable amount of fertilizer and water and making absolutely sure they get plenty of light.  Giving them most of a bed last year seemed to do the job.  This year, we’re going to see if we can take that a step further and grow even more.  We got plenty of bell peppers (“Block Party”) and jalapenos (“Hot M”), but not as many wax peppers (“Hungarian”) and habaneros (“Caribbean”).  The habaneros still gave us enough for our needs (a little goes a long way!) but wax peppers are very tasty and more slow growing, so we’ll be doing more of those this year.

I’m also going to grow some “Tokyo Cross” turnips in this bed in early spring before the peppers get going.  They’re only supposed to take about a month to grow, so I’m hoping I can get a bunch of nice turnips before the peppers are ready to head outside.

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Moving further right I have the favorite victims of the slugs and cabbage moths.  Last year the experiment of direct seeding broccoli was a failure, made worse when the survivors got taken over by the tomatillos.  So this year, the “Sun King” broccoli is getting a second chance, mixed with “Packman” to spread out the harvest.  They will also spend their entire lives outdoors covered by a summer weight inset barrier so I’m hoping to get lots of tasty broccoli without having to spend 10 minutes evicting caterpillars before eating them.  In front of the broccoli we’re going to try chard (“Neon Lights”).  The spinach never got going last year, and I’ve read it can be kind of finicky so we’re going to see if chard does better.  P. has banned kale, so hopefully chard will be a good spinach substitute.

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The bed on the far right will have the most seasonal changes.  In spring, it will be half full of peas (“Little Marvel” and “Burpeeana Early”).  Last year we got about a cup and a half of peas, but they tasted wonderful.  So!  This year the peas get a lot more space.  Frozen peas may be cheap, but fresh peas are worth growing because they taste so wonderful.  Then in summer it will be half full of bush beans.  I have a mix of “Blue Lake”, “Cherokee Wax” and “Purple Queen” that are still good.  I’m going to aim for planting the purple and yellow beans because I love the flavor of yellow beans and purple beans are easier to find and harvest than green beans.  Then in fall this half of the bed will be a mix of peas, parsnips (“Half Long Gurnsey”) and some more turnips.  “Half Long Gurnsey” are supposed to be short stout parsnips, which I think will give them better odds in our clay soil.

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Behind the seasonal bed will be the main row of tomatoes.  Last year only the San Marzano tomatoes produced much at all, and then most of those were ruined by a disease that destroyed the actual fruit.  So this year’s plan is to grow “thug” tomatoes that can withstand our crazy weather, bugs and diseases.  So I will be growing “Early Girl”, “Ozark Pink” and “Arkansas Traveler”.  I will also be giving them each at least two feet of space and I’m going to use the heavy duty XL tomato cages from Burpee.  The cheap tomato cages I used the first year were a disaster (they bent under the weight of the plants) and while the Florida Weave method worked for my poor tiny sad plants this year, it was messy and didn’t contain them very much even if they were upright.  Therefore I’ve invested in some nice giant heavy duty tomato cages.  Hopefully this way they will be under control but won’t need a lot of pruning.

I’m planning to use these mostly for eating fresh.  I might freeze a few, or if we’re incredibly successful, do some canning.  But I’m planning to get most of my canning tomatoes from Butler’s Orchard (they’re a local pick your own farm).

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The last bed is the salad bed. There will be small, fast growing radishes, probably “Scarlet Globe” and “French Breakfast”.  Next to them will be more carrots, probably “Danvers Half Long” and lots of lettuce.  The lettuce will be all types.  “Ice Queen” for P. because he loves iceberg heading lettuce and “Buttercrunch” for me because it’s my favorite for summer BLTs.  We’re also going to have lots of leaf lettuce like “Baby Oakleaf”, “Flashy Oakleaf”, “Gem” and “Tango”.  I want these to grow quickly and provide enough greens for making a salad to go with dinner more often than not.  The last section will be cucumbers on a trellis.  Last year they died an untimely death from something that had to do with the cucumber beetles I think.  Still, I got lots of great pickles from “Boston Pickling” and even though “Marketmore 76” didn’t do well for me last year I want to give it a second try.  Since I love cucumber sandwiches, pickles and fresh salads I’m growing two of each.  I will also start new seedlings in July in case of more untimely demises of cucumber plants.

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