Garden Roundup for May

During the month of May, our chickens laid 116 eggs, of which 108 made it to the house.  Part of the reason we “lost” some, is because one hen wasn’t laying in their normal nests.  I noticed we seemed to be down on eggs, but I figured maybe a hen wasn’t feeling well, or they weren’t getting enough feed, or the temperature swings were too much.  But then I noticed one hen seemed to be poking around in another part of the coop and I found a nest with a few eggs in it.  My first thought was to gather them up and throw them in the compost since I wasn’t sure how long they had been there, but then I wondered if maybe she would nest and we’d get some new chicks.  So I left them alone for a couple of days, but then she started laying back in the normal nests.  I waited a few days, then got rid of the old eggs.  Of course, it seems since then that about every other day she slips off to lay her egg there.

May was a hectic month.  It started cold and wet, meaning I barely got the garden worked up to get it planted.  But I have it all planted now, except for the second batch of sweet corn, and our potatoes.  I’ve planted a few potatoes that had started to grow, but we haven’t gotten any seed potatoes yet to plant.  Of course, I don’t know if we can find any seed potatoes this late in the year.

What I’ve planted and is already up: peas, carrots, parsnips, green beans, kidney beans, beets, turnips, leaf lettuce, and some flowers.  The only things I’ve planted that aren’t up yet are some more flowers and the first batch of sweet corn.  It’s supposed to germinate in 7-10 days, and it’s been 11 days since I’ve planted it, so I’m getting a bit concerned.  Stuff I’ve transplanted are: onions, green peppers, parsley, broccoli, cabbage, cucumber, cantaloupe, watermelon, and zucchini.  

The only harvest I made in May was some leaf lettuce, but there will be more in my June Roundup.

First lettuce of the year

The other night, we had cheeseburgers and potato salad for dinner.  I was getting my burger fixings ready – ketchup and onions – when I realized that I had some leaf lettuce that was just about ready.  So I hurried up to the garden and got some lettuce – about three leaves per burger – to give our burgers a bit of the “fresh from the garden” taste.  I’ve tried to take a picture of my first harvests, but the lettuce was all eaten by the time I thought about it.

This lettuce has a bit of an interesting history.  Last spring, I tried starting more seeds indoors than I usually do, but with limited window sill space, I ended up with a lot of straggly seedlings.  So I bought a grow light, hoping I’d have a larger area than a window sill to start seeds.  I also wondered if I could grow some leaf lettuce during the winter.  I found a spot I could put the light – it’s not the best place, but I’d have to clean out a spot for something better – and planted a small pot with some old seeds.  And nothing grew.

In late winter, I went and bought all my seeds for the year, including new leaf lettuce.  I planted another small pot, and it germinated.  At first, it seemed fine, but then it still went a bit straggly.  I think my light was too high, something to fix for next year.  But about a month after I planted it, it finally stopped snowing and I worked up a spot and transplanted out my indoor lettuce.  I also direct sowed a larger patch. 

That was about a month ago.  The lettuce I direct sowed looks like it will be ready to harvest sometime next week.  So it took a month of growing lettuce indoors to get a harvest about a week-and-a-half earlier than if I had just waited to plant outside.  Of course, if I hadn’t tried to grow lettuce indoors, we wouldn’t have had any for our cheeseburgers.

Garden roundup: January-April

In the first four months of this year, our chickens laid 405 eggs, of which 400 made it to the house. 

The only other harvest we’ve had so far are the parsnips we planted last year.  After cleaning them up and cutting off all the little side roots, we were able to get five quart bags in the freezer.  That doesn’t seem like much, but I think it was more than we got last year.  I think we didn’t have the best germination rate last year, so we’ll just have to see how this year goes.

Speaking of this year’s parsnips, they’re planted, but haven’t germinated yet.  Also planted are some turnips and some leaf lettuce.  My sister got a thing of, probably, 100 onion starts.  She planted some, then gave us the last 40 or so.  This happened just a couple days after I went and bought a bunch of new seeds, as well as a pack of 80 onion sets.  I have all of them planted, along with about ten old onions we didn’t eat over the winter.  So we’ll have plenty of onions this year.

Last fall I bought a grow light.  Over the winter, I tried two experiments.  Every year there are a couple onions that start growing, and I’ve planted them but they never do much because they were just set up against a winter window sill.  I hoped with a grow light they might actually do something.  And they grew, they just didn’t produce anything.  I also tried growing a small pot of leaf lettuce under the grow light.  The first batch with old seeds didn’t germinate, so I waited until I bought new, and they grew, but they seemed to get rather scraggly.  I’ve transplanted them outside, and we’ll see if they do anything.

Other seeds I’ve planted, but haven’t transplanted yet, are some zucchini, cucumber, watermelon, sun flowers, and some other flowers.  I think my grow light wasn’t low enough, so they were getting scraggly, and it was warm so I set them outside to get them ready to transplant.  And then the weather grew cold.  I think in a couple of days it’s supposed to get down to just about freezing.  I do have a couple of clearish totes that I set over them to act as a mini greenhouse, and hopefully that will be enough to get them through any cold nights.

As to everything else, I’m waiting for the garden to dry out enough to work it up.  And I need to add soil to my raised beds, but I don’t have enough and don’t really have the time to do it all, so I’m doing some, hoping that will be enough and that I’ll have more time and energy this fall to top them off for next year. 

We’ll just have to wait and see.

First harvest of the year

 

Here's a photo after I cleaned it up a bit.  There was also a smaller one growing right next to it that came out when I pulled this one.

I pulled these yesterday, and we fried them up with some potatoes and onions, and they were very tasty.

A quick 2025 roundup

I had planned on writing up a post about all the problems I had in 2025, from old seeds not germinating to slugs killing the ones that did.  But as with most things, I kept putting it off.  Getting into December, I figured I should really get that written up so I could just add in how many eggs we got this year and be ready for a year end roundup.  And then I had a series of minor, yet annoying health issues.  I spent a lot of December either not being able to do more than watch YouTube, to just not feeling like doing more than watching YouTube.  So none of that stuff got written up.  My new plan, is to go over some of that stuff in a month or two when I put out a post on my plans for 2026.

The one thing I will roundup, will be our eggs.  Our old hens had just started laying again when they were killed by a mink at the end of January.  We only managed to get 8 eggs from them.  We fixed up the coop and got new chicks, which started laying on September 1.  Since then, they’ve laid 434 eggs, of which 428 made it to the house.  We’ve used a lot of them in baking, and giving a bunch to my siblings.  I’ve also sold 11 dozen to my coworkers.  The cold weather hasn’t seemed to slow them down that much, so here’s looking forward to 100+ eggs a month for 2026.

Garden roundup for August and September

At the beginning of September, I knew I needed to do a roundup for August, but it seemed like one thing after another kept coming up, and I delayed it so long I figured I’ll just do a roundup for August and September.  And here it is, late on the third of October, and I’m just going to do the most basic of roundups.  This gardening season hasn’t been the best, and I really just want to get started on next year.  I still have carrots and potatoes and some other things left to pick, but I’ll probably save all of that for a year end roundup.

Anyway, the good stuff.  As I mentioned in a previous post, our chickens have started laying.  During the month of September, they laid 81 eggs, of which 80 made it to the house.  They’re still a bit smaller than typical eggs, but it’s nice to have fresh eggs again.

Towards the beginning of August I finally started getting zucchini, and by the end of September I’ve picked 46.  So we’ve had fried zucchini and zucchini bread and given several away to my siblings.

I’ve picked all of our green beans, and shell beans, peppers, and onions, which did pretty well.  Just yesterday I picked our third and final pick of broccoli.  Our tomato harvest was … okay.  Not great, but not terrible.

Terrible harvests were kidney beans (few), pears (3), and the one tree for applesauce, which only made enough for three, small servings of applesauce.  But those were better than our corn, which did nothing. 

Part of me wishes I could just jump to next spring to try again, but there’s a lot of work I need to do before then.  For example, my raised beds settled way more than I expected, so I need to get them filled back up.  Hopefully, I can get that done before it snows.  We’ll see.

The first egg from our new hens!

They're still learning.