my garden today

Mom's garden

This morning I visited my Mom and planted more of her garden. It's doing really well I have to say. Much more is planted there than in my gardens. Today I planted seedlings: 7 tomatoes, several peppers, a couple broccoli, some escarole, and a couple each of yellow summer squash and zucchini squash. Also I planted seeds for beets, sunflowers, and nasturtiums. I forgot to take photos. Next time.

community plot planted - finally

May 23! I can't believe I am planting so late this year. Today at my community plot I planted 4 varieties of seed potatoes today, lots of onions, leeks, and green onion seedlings. Also, flower seedlings: heliotrope, marigolds, and bells of Ireland. Flower seeds: sunflowers and nasturtium. The season has been chilly and the estimates are that the weather here is 2 weeks late in warming up. I think I'm another week late on top of that. We had a water problem at our community garden and finally got our water on this past weekend, so it worked out fine that I was late. I planted and then was able to water everything. It certainly has been dry here.

today's harvest

my winter bed in May

I'll be emptying this bed out soon. Tomatoes will go here for the summer. For now, I've left kale and collards to flower for the bees. They love them.

planting cabbages, brocccoli and bok choi

Finally! I've gotten the compost down to the garden (actually my husband did that for me - thank you, Steve!), spread and turn it. Then we hooked up the hose to get some water down to the garden. The brassica bed was ready for planting, so yesterday the plants went in! I have so many seedlings waiting to be planted that I'm so happy to be getting some planted. After planting and watering, I covered the bed with row cover to protect the plants from cabbage worms.

I planted three types of cabbage, napa, savoy and red. Also broccoli: mini and a package that had a mix of broccoli types. And a couple rows of bok choy Pechay.

new asparagus bed

Here's my new asparagus bed. The sprouts are up, so I layered on another 2 inches of soil/compost mix today. I'll add another 2 inches in a few days. The plants should have 5 inches of soil above the crowns.

I squeezed my asparagus row between the fence and a raised bed. There was too much room there to let it go empty, but it's a difficult place for planting. Hard to access. Also, the soil of the lawn below is rocky, compacted, and nutrient-poor. When planting, I layered on compost and did my best to turn it into the lawn soil. The asparagus is now a raised row, so I'll need to make sure the soil stays raised and doesn't flatten out. I'm hoping this will work.

sprouted potatoes

After 3 weeks of sprouting on my window sill, this is how my potatoes look. No, I did not sit and watch them the whole time. ;-) Tomorrow, I have two potato planting events scheduled. I'll help the kids at the Wheelock School in Medfield MA plant their potatoes and then I'll go to my community garden plot and plant my own potatoes. It's potato planting time!!

today's harvest

I pulled a big bowlful of cilantro greens today. I planted these last summer, but they came up and bolted, so I let them go. They self-sprouted a couple months ago. Today, we had a delicious salsa fresco.

sunning seedlings

garden work

rake edges of front lawn and clear out winter fallen branches
mow, lime and fertilize lawns
haul 2 truckloads of branches to Town DPW
finish mulching the back cottoneaster and peony bed
fertilize my blueberry bushes

I think I can start on my vegetable garden next!!! Yeah. It's about time.

My Master Gardener class this week was given by a professional landscape designer. I could definitely relate when she said a goal of design is to minimize the amount of lawn and the amount of mulched beds! I've spent 2 weeks tending to lawns and mulching beds. It's a lot of work!

master gardener help line

I'm working as a volunteer at the Mass Horticulture Master Gardener help line tomorrow. It's open MWF, 10-2 EST. Give us a call if you have a garden question. I'm just a student still and will be in the background helping out. The certified master gardener will answer the line. Phone: 1-617-993-4929. Or email us at mghelpline@masshort.org.

spring garden work

-cleaning out perrennial beds
-spreading bark mulch
-fertilizing lawns
-preparing vegetable beds

I had a giant pile of bark mulch delivered in my driveway. I'm cleaning out my perrennial beds and then spreading the mulch. A deep brown color. I'm almost finished with this. Today I bought fertilizer for my next yard project. I have several areas of lawns to fertilize. They're thick with dandelions and other weeds so I'm busy pulling weeds before fertilizing. I did soil tests and one area needs lime and phosphate along with nitrogen. Other areas need nitrogen only. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to spread this and water it in. Every thing gets spread separately.

My other project is preparing my vegetable beds. To most, I add 2 inches of compost. I do this every year and turn it under. Beds that will grow beans/peas and root crops (with the exception of onions) don't get compost. That ends up being almost all of my beds. I also have nice winter cover crops growing on beds at my community plot. That gets turned under to with compost. I've started this process and hope to finish this week. I have lots of trays of seedlings ready to plant out soon. The weather and soil have been cool here, but I think it's warming up now. It seems we're about 2 weeks behind the average year this year. I very pleased that I have lots of homemade compost this year. That's a really hard thing to come by. And there's nothing like good old home made!

I hope to show pictures of newly planted seedlings soon!

harvest

Today's harvest. A big head of escarole. A bit bolted, but lots of nice greens.

today's harvest

planting asparagus

I am SO busy with my Gardening Class added to spring planting on top of my usual work, but the asparagus I ordered arrived in the mail yesterday - so, it's time to plant asparagus! I need to move a few wheelbarrows full of compost over to the bed I have planned for them, turn it under, then plant the crowns. Last time I planted asparagus, I set the crowns in wrong. I dug them up and replanted them. So this is my second time planting crowns and I'll know what I'm doing (I hope). I'll add some pictures of the process.

today's harvest

Today's harvest was a big bunch of spinach and a couple small heads of red romaine from my winter tunnel. I made sauteed spinach with pesto on pasta and pork tenderloin for dinner. It was yummy.

mom's garden

My mom's garden looks pretty good. I planted winter rye that did very well over the winter. I am gradually working on turning it under. I planted Super Sugar Snap peas at the far end of this photo and have branches in for support. Mom's garlic looks really good. It's about the 3rd or 4th year now that I have used a portion of her harvest for replanting.

transplanting tomatoes

photo by Amelia Fannin

A group of volunteers from my community garden got together and transplanted tomato seedlings yesterday. We do this every year. They are late blight resistant tomatoes: Jasper, Mountain Merit, Defiant and Iron Lady. We transplanted about 360 seedlings. We raised them at home under lights and now they'll be raised by Sandra Curro at Underwood Greenhouses. They'll be distributed free to any of our 135 gardeners who want them. Extra plants will be for sale at Underwood Greenhouses beginning May 7: 20 School St, Belmont MA.

photo by Amelia Fannin

sprouting my seed potatoes

I like to sprout my seed potatoes before I plant them. They're all sitting on my kitchen windowsill now. I'm looking at them and wondering: does a watched potato sprout? (silly...)



Potatoes are hardy enough to be planted outside now. One reason I'm sprouting them inside is I haven't prepared my potato beds yet. It's been chilly and I've been busy. But I have been researching how to prepare the beds. (They're at my community garden.) I looked up whether potatoes like a fertile soil and I found all sorts of different answers: some site say they're light feeders, others say heavy feeders! OK, so a Google advanced search of only .edu sites, voila!, they are heavy feeders. All the extension sites agree.

I didn't realize potatoes are heavy feeders and so I haven't given them much compost in the past. This year I want to put on a good 2 inches of compost. That means I'll need 1 cubic yd (27 cu ft). Compost is so expensive, especially when purchased by the bag. I think I'll bring compost from my home bins to my community garden. I've generated a lot of compost in the past year and I figure the effort to transport it is similar to transporting bags of compost. So that's on my to-do list next week.

At my Master Gardener class today, the speaker talked about SOIL. A great topic! The head of the soil testing lab at the Univ of Conn (Dawn Pettinelli) gave a super 5 hour soil course. She told us that pH is the most important parameter to keep track of in garden soils (drainage too). She mentioned that potato scab is one of the plant diseases affected by soil pH. (I hate digging up potatoes and finding them covered in scab.) She said that at a pH lower than 5.2, the scab pathogen won't grow (the potatoes will), so this is one approach to prevent scab. But if you lower the pH in your potato bed, it makes it hard to rotate plantings. So she said - grow resistant varieties. OK, I did select for scab resistance in the varieties I have this year. Hopefully I'll have scab-free potaotes this year.

seed potatoes arrived today

My seed potatoes from Moose tubers arrived today. My plan: let them sprout a couple weeks, while I amend their beds, then plant them. I have the tubers on my kitchen windowsill so I can watch them sprouting. To amend the beds, I want to add a good 2 inches of compost and dig it in. No scimping this year! I want my spuds in happy soil.

master gardener class

I've signed up for a Master Gardener Certification class. My first class is tomorrow. It's a class offered by the Massachusetts Master Gardener Association held at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Horticulture Center at Elm Bank and includes 60 hrs of volunteer time and 80 hrs of class time. I'm excited to learn everything about many topics including composting, turf, weed ecology, botany, soil science, etc, etc. All taught by experts in the fields. I am excited about the first class tomorrow - Soil Science by Dawn Pettinelli. I love soil! I also can't wait to hear the last class - Vegetables, taught by Roger Swain! Awesome! Roger Swain is my hero.

asparagus ordered

I finally remembered to order my asparagus crowns. 25 Jersey Supreme from Johnny's. They'll be delivered April 25. I'm planting a new bed in my backyard garden.

it's a bluebird day!

Well, "a bluebird day" is supposed to mean a beautiful day. I can't say it's that today. Low temp was 16F last night. Still snow on the ground. The magnolia blossoms that were just opening have turned mushy brown. And I don't think the forecast is looking very good. But, yippee for the bluebirds! They are beautiful. (So are the gold finches that are turning bright yellow now.)



I'm hoping a bluebird pair will nest in one of my bird boxes this year. Last year I had both my boxes up against the woods on my garden fence. Not a good location for bluebirds, who need at least 80 ft of open area all around their box. So I had house sparrows. This year, I moved one of the nest boxes out to the center of the yard. Not quite 80 ft from the woods, more like 50 I think. But I'm hoping it will be enough. If not, maybe a swallow will like the box.

The bluebird in the picture perched on a post on my patio. I was able to take his picture from the kitchen window. It was the second time I saw him perch there today. The first time I got so excited that the dogs started barking and he was gone before I grabbed my camera. The second time I was very calm and quiet. The dogs didn't know anything was up.

sustainable farming

Here's an interesting article about sustainable farming in Cuba: http://theconversation.com/cubas-sustainable-agriculture-at-risk-in-u-s-thaw-56773

spring and then winter

We've had crazy weather for April. I was ready for spring. Well, the flowers and birds and my garden were ready too. Now we have 6 inches of snow on top of the spring plants. And icy temperatures in the 20sF. These are my photos, first of spring on April 2nd, then the return of winter on April 3rd.

My peas were sprouting, so I covered them with old oak leaves.


My garlic is 6 inches high. At least the snow will insulate it.


My winter tunnel will be fine. I pulled up both layers of covers. The snow just makes it hard to harvest the greens.


The spring flowers were beautiful. These photos were taken during a mild rain. I suppose they'll all be mush once the snow melts.


Here's the view of my garden and the pond beyond. One day apart.


Snow covered forsythia.


I only went out to clear the driveway yesterday, but today, I'll need to go out in the backyard to tend the chickens. I'll walk down and see what the garden looks like. I'll check for those swallows. I didn't see any from the window. I think maybe they've gone back south.

the swallows are here!

The swallows are here!! We got 3 inches of heavy wet snow overnight and everything is white. But there are swallows all over the place! I love to to see them swooping and soaring over the pond.

Someone asked for pictures. So I did my best a couple days later. It's pretty hard to photograph a swallow in flight. And it was too cold for me to try too long. This is what I got. One of the blurry swallow photos caught the mute swan pair in the background.

my seedlings