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.

Garden roundup for May

During May, the only thing we harvested was some rhubarb.  We picked it three times over the month.  Most of what we picked ended up in a couple batches of rhubarb bread, but my mom also froze a couple bags. 

In May, I also planted: carrots, corn, peas, kidney beans, and some potatoes.  I had started some seeds indoors, but the only thing that came up was a cantaloupe.  I planted it, but I don’t know if a slug got it or what.  None of the other cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini, or cucumbers came up.  Some of these are old seeds, but the other stuff shouldn’t be.  One possibility, is that it has been a cold, wet spring, but it has finally warmed up.  I’ll check a few days after this is posted, and if nothing else I’ll plant a bunch more.  Of course, I’ve already planted seven or eight zucchini seeds, and if I plant seven or eight more, they’ll all come up and we’ll be drowned in zucchini even more than we usually are.  We also bought some tomato plants, as well as some peppers and broccoli, which I’ve also planted.  Besides the zucchini and stuff, all that I have left is some more potatoes.  I’ve just had too many things going on to plant them.  But there should be a few good days next week I can finish up planting everything.

The one problem I have so far – other than stuff not coming up – is the slugs chewing up my green beans.  We set out some beer traps last year, and we had some leftover beer, but it rained like every other day.  We used some extra plastic tubs you get sandwich meat in, and just the other day I realized they come with lids.  So I’ve cut some holes on the sides for the slugs to get in to the beer that won’t be watered down now.

I guess the only other news is our chickens are growing.  Which is great, except we still have to get the coop fixed up, and they’ve almost outgrown what we have them in.  But, as I’m posting this, we’ve finally gotten around to fix it up.  There were unexpected things with the coop, as well as some personal drama that held things up.  But the roundup for June should have news about the coop, as well as more harvests.  I did pick some leaf lettuce the other day, but it ended up on some cheeseburgers before I thought to take a photo of it.  Also, our red currants are starting to turn, so I might be picking them in a few weeks.  Hopefully, there will be other good news.

Garden roundup for April

Here’s a list of what I got planted in April.

Last year, my mom got a couple parsley plants figuring that my siblings would take a couple of them.  But nobody wanted any.  So there were three plants put in a pot that we picked off over the summer.  In the fall, the pot was brought inside and the plants … slowly became half-dead.  But once it warmed up, I planted them outside and they seem okay.

We had a really good onion harvest last year.  We still have a dozen or so onions to use.  But there were three that started growing, so I’ve planted them.  I’ve also planted two dozen or so new onion sets.  All seem to be growing well.

I’ve also planted green beans that are doing well, and beets which – I think – have just come up.  I also have a little patch of leaf lettuce that have only been up a few days.  The only other food thing I planted in April were parsnips, but they take a long time to come up.

The non-food things I’ve planted are sunflowers – which we just grow to feed birds over the winter – and other flowers.  The sunflower just came up, and the other flowers may have come up, I’m not sure what they look like.   

In March I planted some potatoes, but they haven’t come up yet.  One I think was eaten by a mole or something.  I dug down and didn’t find anything.  I started digging in another, and I found the potato and it was just starting to grow, so I reburied it.  It did freeze a couple times after I planted them, but I figured they would pop out as soon as it got warm.  Hopefully in another week or so they’ll finally sprout, if they haven’t been eaten yet.

All of this is in my raised beds or other beds.  I have one more raised bed that’s almost full, which I’ll plant with carrots.  I haven’t gotten the regular garden worked up yet.  Last fall, I was busy with the raised beds and didn’t get around to cleaning out the garden – all the cages and whatnot – but I did get around to doing that in April.  Now I just need it to not rain for a couple days so I can get it worked up and plant peas, kidney beans, potatoes, and everything else.

I planted some zucchini, cucumber, cantaloupe, and watermelon seeds inside.  The only one up so far is the cantaloupe.  The others were pretty old seeds, so I don’t know if they’ll grow or not.  We’ll have to see.

Garden roundup for May

During May, our chickens laid 108ish eggs, of which 68 made it to the house.  I say 108ish because, last month I said I suspected there was a nest in the barn.  Well, I finally found it and it had a dozen or so eggs in it, but they were all broke.  The nest was between two bales of hay, which I moved apart.  I don’t know if they’ll find a new spot now, or what.

At the beginning of the month, one of our hens wasn’t do so good.  And after a couple of days, she died.  In previous months, I’d said that one of our hens was at the bottom of the pecking order and I think wasn’t getting enough stuff for strong eggs.  She was the one that died.  Like I said, they’re getting kind of old, so it wasn’t that surprising.  I had hoped that that would be the end of me finding broken eggs, but it turns out we do have one hen that eats them.  Well, I think she just eats her own.  I don’t know if she was the one laying in the barn, but when I disrupted her she came back to laying in the coop.  Whatever the case, I’m still pretty annoyed with it.

The last note about eggs, is it was the last week of May 2023 that I started keeping track of eggs.  Well, I kept track of how many eggs made it to the house.  And even though we’ve lost a couple of hens since then, the numbers aren’t that much lower. 

Other updates, the onions that had started to grow over winter and that I planted in pots to try to transplant out, all died.  Most died before I had a chance to transplant them, and the two I did transplant didn’t survive.  I guess I’ll just have to make sure I dry any onions I get this year so they last through the winter.

Last month, I hinted at two upcoming stories, one about lettuce and one about something else.  The lettuce one I’ll have to write up a post in a week or so.  The other one … will take a lot more work.  It’s something I’ve tried several times over the years, but without any luck.  And circumstances demand I try again, hopefully with better luck.  If I do have any luck, I’ll write about it.

Something I forgot to mention last month, was that I had started some seeds indoors.  I started a zucchini, a cucumber, and a pumpkin.  I also tried to start a watermelon, cantaloupe, and a squash that germinated but almost immediately died.  Well, this month I transplanted the zucchini, cucumber and pumpkin.  I also direct planted another zucchini and squash, but they haven’t germinated yet.  I didn’t direct sow any watermelon or cantaloupe because my sister finally gave up trying to garden in her … bog, so we needed garden space for her plants.  But she had a watermelon and cantaloupe, so hopefully they do well enough that we can get a couple.

May was a very busy time in the garden.  I also direct sowed some parsnips, peas, green beans, kidney beans, corn, and beets, as well as some onion sets.  All of them are up, unfortunately, something – probably a rabbit – went to town on the peas.  I plant a double row of peas, and then put stakes on the outside and run line for them to climb up.  I hadn’t done that when I found the damage, so I put in the stakes and ran the line pretty close together at the bottom, so hopefully the rabbit will look elsewhere for a meal.  I’ll probably sow in some new seeds to fill in the gaps.

I’ve also planted some marigolds, sunflowers, and some other flowers.  Some of the sunflowers were up, but then something – rabbit? – ate them.  I was thinking of replanting some sunflowers, but putting some type of cover over them so they would get some size before something could chew on them, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.

Other plants we got at a greenhouse.  We got tomatoes, green peppers, broccoli, and cabbage.  All have been transplanted in, with the last thing – the tomatoes – going in on the 31st.  So far, the only problem I’ve had is that something dug up around one of the cabbages to get at the compost I buried next to it.  To stop whatever digging up the other plants, I didn’t put any compost with them when I transplanted.  Instead, I’ll spread it out in the path above them and work it in.  But that will have to wait until I have time to do it.

Other notes, we picked some rhubarb this month, but I can’t remember how much we stored.  I’ll have to get those numbers later.  Our currants are starting to ripen, so that will be one thing I’m doing in June.  Also, the only things left to plant are our potatoes and carrots.  Both we just started working up their spots, now if the rain will hold off for a couple of days, we’ll get them in.

Garden mistakes I’ve made this year

The weather here was pretty warm in April, and I wanted to get a head start on the garden.  So I went ahead and planted some zucchini, watermelon, cucumber, and cantaloupe seeds in pots.  They came up and were doing well, and the weather got cold.  So they stayed on the porch, and got a bit leggy.  But then the weather warmed, and I got the garden worked up, so I transplanted them and mulched them in good.  There were a couple of nights it was going to get into the upper 30s, and I worried, but hoped that with the mulch they would be okay.  But then I noticed half their leaves were brown.  I kicked myself, and worried, but hoped for the best.  Then, on our last frost date, we got frost.  I debated on doing something to cover them, but I’m a night owl and don’t usually get up till noon, and they were half-dead anyway.  So my seedlings died.  My onions, peas, and lettuce pulled through without issue, and the couple potatoes that had come up are recovering.  It did take a long time for my beans and corn to come up, but hopefully that was just because the ground wasn’t overly warm.  The beans are finally coming up, and the corn is a bit hit or miss, but that might just be because it’s old seed.

My plan had been to transplant in the seedlings, then wait some weeks before direct planting more seeds, to spread the harvest out some.  So I left spaces for where these new plants would go.  Now a week or so before the frost, we had some old eggs that needed to be gotten rid of.  And I figured I’d bury them in the garden.  I dug a trench about where some tomatoes will go and buried most of them, but I also buried some where I was going to direct sow the melons and such.  We have about six inches of soil, then a clay layer.  I dug down into the clay layer, dumped in the eggs, broke them, dumped some compost on top, then covered them over.  And I put a marker to know where to plant.

After the frost, I needed to replant stuff, but since we don’t have the longest of growing seasons, instead of planting one hill, then waiting some weeks to plant another, I figured I’d replant over the dead seedlings and in the new spots.  So I did that, and watered everything in good.  Then a couple days later I went to the garden to see something had dug up the old eggs.  I cursed, but got more compost and filled in the holes, and replanted the seeds again, only for the next day to find they had dug everything up again.  Apparently, they left an egg or two, or hoped the eggs would refill.  I really cursed, but left the holes open.  The next day it rained for most of the day, and the day after that I had to work.  But the next day I went to the garden and nothing else seemed to have been dug up, so I filled the holes in again.  It’s been three or four days since that, and the spots where I’m going to plant the zucchini and such haven’t been dug up, and the tomato trench has had a couple, half-hearted digs.  So hopefully, that’s all done with.  Now, the issue is do I replant the seeds again.  I don’t know if whatever dug them up also snacked on the seeds, but with my luck if I replant, I’ll probably end up with three zucchinis coming up in one spot.

First outdoor planting of the year

I was going to call this “First planting of the season,” but I did plant some potatoes last fall as a bit of an experiment.  And I had planted some seeds in pots, but yesterday was the first time I planted something outside, this year.  I was also going to start by saying I planted seven things yesterday, but there are some grey areas, so I won’t try to number them.

First off, we are still about a month away from the last frost date for this area, but there’s also a week of good weather, which is rather rare this time of year, so I wanted to get something done.  But I will have to keep an eye on the overnight temperatures.  Also, our garden is damp, but hopefully it will dry enough this week that I can at least start on working it up.  We do have some small, raised beds, and that’s what I planted into.

There were three very simple things I planted: a short row of leaf lettuce, a couple of daisies, and a couple of marigolds.  These were all planted from seeds.  Everything else I planted were onions, which is where some of the grey areas come from.

First up, I think last fall one of my nieces sold boxes of fruit and vegetables as a school fundraiser for something.  In one of these boxes were some nice, fist-sized onions.  One day, a couple of months ago, I noticed that one of these onions had sprouted.  So I got a pot and planted it, and stuck it in with all the houseplants.  It grew, but I don’t think it was getting enough sun, so I planted it outside.  Hopefully, it’s the right type of onion for this area, and we’ll get something from it.

We normally plant onion sets, and that’s what we did last year.  I gathered our onions, dried them out, and put them in a mesh bag hanging in our cellar.  A month or so ago, I noticed that one of them had sprouted, so I put it in a pot.  It grew and I transplanted it yesterday.  But there were also twenty or so bulbs from last year still in the cellar.  Either we didn’t use as many onions this winter, or the fundraiser onions were more than enough.  So I just planted the rest of them as a new set. 

Now, as I said, we normally plant onion sets, but I was curious about trying onion seeds.  So I got a pack some time ago.  Wanting to get a head start on them, I planted some in pots back in February.  I also wanted to try biodegradable pots made from cardboard rolls, so I made a dozen of them and planted onion seeds.  But, either the seeds aren’t that good, or I didn’t water them enough, or it was too cold on the porch, or something else, or some combination, but only four plants sprouted.  So I planted those four, along with the other pots in case the seeds were just waiting for better conditions.  I also direct sowed some of remaining onion seeds. 

I guess this is another grey area.  In two of these cardboard tubes, some non-onion seeds grew.  I’m not sure what they are, but I planted them to see what they become.  And incase the onions I did plant in them ever come up.

So that’s the beginning of my 2023 outdoor gardening.