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Area 14: The Veggie Bed
May 23: You have to take your time and savour the seasons first taste of home-grown veggies. It took me about five minutes to eat my first radish from the garden - it was very sweet and absolutely delicious :-) I am very happy to say that everything is growing well. There isn't a single row that doesn't have something growing, even if they aren't all up yet. Heather is getting anxious for me to order another load of soil so she can finish off the end of the bed where the radishes are and get more radish seeds started.
Thankfully, we've been getting a period of cooler temperatures and a lot of rain (almost too much). It's only lasted a little over a week now, but the plants have all breathed a sigh of relief and jumped a few inches into the air. Everything can start growing at full speed now.
Thanks for stopping by,
Brett
Previous entries:
May 05: The Veggie bed has been all planted out. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see what will actually grow. The peas and radishes (of course) are already making a bit of a show. Here's hoping. The pepper\celery\tomatoes that I started indoors seem to have taken the transplanting well enough. I leaned the strips of paneling up beside some of the rows to offer a little shade, though. The weather here has been extremely hot and dry. We normally anticipate cool, wet springs around here, but so far we've had temperatures around of 28�C (80'ish�F) and haven't seen a drop of precipitation since our last snowfall (Easter).
April 19: It's started, my wife looked out on a bright, sunny day today and decided it was spring, and if it's spring we should be planting something. A little while later she was planting seeds for radishes, peas, leaf lettuce, and carrots. She started looking at my seedlings and I was forced to intervene, still a risk of frost. I also managed to get another wall cast at the end of one bed. So we're off and running, Heather has a little more enthusiasm for the gardens this year, and I'm hoping she'll get bit by the bug. Time will tell.
April 17: A few days ago I took delivery of 6 yards of triple mix for this pair of beds. I finished digging out the two areas for the beds, and then filled the long troughs with the new mix. That gave me close to 18" of good soil in each bed. Because I had scrap on hand, I built an A-frame for the cucumbers we are planning to put out. I also installed a soaker hose that my parents weren't using anymore (click here for more info). I'm still planning a mass planting for the weekend of April 29. I'll be starting to harden off my seedlings as soon as the weather warms up since our last dumping of snow (yesterday).
Initial:Here we have a virgin vegetable garden. The sod has been removed, the areas where the actual beds will sit are being dug out to roughly 1 foot down, and the triple-mix which will fill the beds will be here shortly. I'm still about 2-3 weeks from planting out and wanted to give the new soil a chance to settle in and get rained on a little before I started sticking plants in.
Each finished bed will be raised 8" and have a hypertufa wall supporting it. Two 5' sections are complete, but the rest won't be done until I have much of the other work finished and materials on hand (just not high on the priority list). I also plan to surround it with a gravel walkway, but for this year I will simply be using straw. As far as my grand scheme goes, I'm right on track. I'll be updating this when I actually get the seedlings and seeds in the ground.