It's been a couple of weeks since I had a chance to update the progress on the garden. But I'm happy to say that it's going really well -- things are growing and I've even eating a spinach leaf so far. And it was
good.
So far, the good news is that things are growing. Since my last update I've planted my winter squash, zucchini, and beans (wax and soup), and all of them are practically leaping out of the ground. The only thing I'm worried about is the time it's taking for everything to grow. I'm using my radishes as a baseline -- they should only take about 30 days, but I definitely planted them over 30 days ago and they look only half-grown. So I'm thinking that maybe adding a good amount of organic matter next year will help speed that up, and maybe making sure to properly add fertilizer at the right times this year.
The spinach had started to grow big enough that I needed to pick some of the leaves. The only problem is that I should have planted more spinach than I did, because the amount of leaves that resulted is only enough for one salad. Oh well -- there'll be plenty more when I do my fall spinach crop planting. So next year: plant more, plant sooner!
Everything else is looking great and I'm planning to put in the tomatoes and peppers next weekend, and plant my cucumber seeds this week -- I have to pick up another packet.
You can see some of the progress at my Flickr page.
Lots of progress on the gardening front this week. Today I worked on my favorite part of this house: the giant window boxes on the front of the house. I put in red and white petunias just like I did last year. Petunias are probably the most pedestrian plant you can get, but I love them -- they're hardy, they're cheap, they come in a zillion colors, and they're pretty. I picked them up today at ShopKo along with several pots for the front of the house. In those I plan to plant several different kinds of flowers -- nasturtiums, morning glories, poppies, and more.
In the vegetable garden I transplanted the broccoli and the onions. Both seem to be doing fine today. I also started the bush delicata squash seeds. The only seeds I have left to plant now -- and these will go in next weekend -- are the watermelons, cucumbers, summer squash, and corn.
And speaking of the cucumbers, I had started them earlier in the greenhouse downstairs along with the watermelons. After realizing I had the light too high and I was top watering them, the watermelons began to droop as if they had damped off. I figured that I'd started them all too early and should have just been patient enough to direct seed them since they only take 55 days to mature, so I removed the tray from the greenhouse and set it on the floor of the basement. I expected them to all be dead the next day, but while the watermelons had indeed all died, the cucumbers were actually [i]thriving[/i]. So this week I began hardening them off and I hope they'll transplant well.
Everything else I'd direct seeded in the garden has come up, which is basically the root and leafy vegetables: turnips, beets, carrots, radishes, lettuce, and spinach. However, the transplanted lettuce isn't thriving; the seeds I started the same day are overtaking them. Next year I can direct seed them.
That's it this week. Everything is doing better than I expected!
