Straight from the Farm

It rained!!  Finally!  April was a very dry and hot month up until the last weekend.  And while it may have been pouring kittens and puppies outside, a nicely organized and supplied potting shed was at hand.  As such I got several seeds started on April 28th, including two varieties (’Polar Bear’ and ‘Granny’s Bouquet’) of zinnias for my cutting garden, a mix of cherry tomatoes, a mix of heirloom tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, round zucchini, and some chamomile for my tea garden.  

I know it’s okay to direct sow the cucumbers and zucchini, but thought I’d try starting them in the greenhouse to get a headstart on these summer crops.  Frankly, I’m not wild about growing either of them in this particular garden since they take up so much space (I do like eating them though). But if I get them producing early enough, I’m hoping they’ll finish in plenty of time to pull out and make space for some of the fall crops I’m aiming to grow.  

It was nice to finally get some stuff on my bench in the greenhouse.  Since these few trays took up residence there, I’ve almost filled up the rest of the bench with plant material I scavenged from around the area, more trays of seeds (another post on those later), some herbs bought during a trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens last week, and transplants I got from the farm (it’s nice to have connections).  Now I’m just really antsy to see these seeds start germinating!  

And since it was rainy outside, I also took the opportunity to take a few artsy-fartsy photos of the stuff in the potting shed.  Not all were that great (awfully poor lighting in the rain in there), but I like these two.  Makes gardening look a little less messy, ya know?  

Two weeks of having my new garden, and I finally feel like I’m making some progress with it.   Digging the pathways and raised beds was quite the laborious task and took a lot more time than I anticipated.  But I wanted to do the framework right, putting in deep paths with a deep layer of mulch so weeds and mud will be staved off most of the time. 

Grunt work done, it was time to get planting.  It’s already quite late in the seaons to be planting some of the cool weather spring crops.  But since I already had the seeds, I figured it was worth putting a few in just to see what would happen.   On April 24th, I sowed seeds for Easter Egg Radishes (Raphanus sativus), Sugar Snap Peas (Pisum sativum), and an “antique” lettuce cutting mix (Lactuca sativa).  For the radishes, I put in a 3′ x 5′ section of one of my raised bed.  For the peas and lettuce, I sowed them together in the same section of another raised bed, hoping the peas growing up the trellis will eventually provide enough shade to keep the lettuce happy a little longer in this unseasonably warm spring.  If nothing else, I can hang a tent of filmy cloth from the trellis too.  Granted, this little scheme of mine depends in part on the peas taking off themselves, a challenge on dry near-80 degree days like we’ve been having this April.   Fingers crossed! 

    
                Radish Seeds                                Sugar Snap Pea Sees

In any case, I sowed 20 peas and broadcast a 2′ x 6′ section of the lettuce seeds.   I wish I had talked to Harold, one of my teachers, a little sooner about some of his helpful tricks for planting in clay-rich soil like what’s in my garden.  Next time I direct sow small seeds like lettuce and radish, I’ll follow his advice and cover them with potting soil instead of the existing dirt that tends to form a hard crust that diminishes germination success. (Of course this is only practical advice for the home gardener with a small manageable plot.  Farmers would be hard pressed to do this.)   Live and learn, right?

Read the rest of this entry »