2016 gardening

We are kicking off the year with chocolate mint and regular peppermint plants. The chocolate is darker and stemmier than the other peppermint I traded some garlic for. Quality garlic makes good currency in the world of gardening swaps. :lol:



Waiting on a package of pepper, herb, and edible flower seeds this week. Next week the fruit arrives. New trellis area pictures to come.

Chocolate mint is yummy

Today I planted sweet pickle peppers, bee balm, cream nasturtiums, viola mix, phlox, and a pink lavender. I don't have great luck with bell pepper plants but I had some bushy marble peppers grow wonderful. The marble pepper is often too hot though. I found these sweet peppers in a similar size and bushing habit but thin, 2" long multicolored peppers. See how those work out. It's a bit late to plant but winter is running late and therefore my preparation of planting areas is running late. I don't use seed starter specifically. I've never had good luck with it. The best thing I found for me is this coconut compost potting soil. It takes very little water.

Spring is finally back on track here after winter made a 2 week encore. I've stopped growing wheat fodder because as the temps rise it tends to mold. Still have the last few trays growing out and will feed the last of it Friday.
We hope to plant out some of these onion seedlings this week to make more room for tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings that are coming along. And the perennials that had started to grow before the cold and snow came back definitely need dividing this week. The chives are up far enough to use. I'm wondering how the lavender fared through a winter that often lacked snow cover--it's always one of my latest to show new life.

We changed it up some this year, starting some seeds outside in pots under a plastic hoop house. Yesterday we moved broccoli, cauliflower and tomato seedlings to their final spots in the garden. None of my pepper seeds came up- think it might have been a touch too early for them.

Onions are in, potatoes too. Purslane, parsley, plantain, and beets coming along. Mustard greens, spinach and red romaine are doing well.

Just need the crazy weather to stop.

Rain. Rain, rain, and rain. And more rain.

Miss M":2nhars81 said:

Rain. Rain, rain, and rain. And more rain.

Click to expand...

At least it isn't snow

I need to try onions and garlic... I use enough of them in the kitchen, but for some reason have never tried growing them!

I have peas that are over 6" tall grabbing onto the trellis, radishes, beets, kale, chard and lettuce starting (I planted a 2 types each of beets and kale and there is a marked difference between each, trying to actually take notes on things this year so I can start learning and improving things each year rather than starting all over). The lettuce doesn't seem to be coming up very well, but what ODD planted in her garden bed did so I am wondering if a chicken got into mine and either ate the seeds/seedlings or disrupted the soil enough to mess up the seeds. Going to replant some today. Also have purple and gold potatoes - I see the first glimpses of the golds coming up through the soil. We put corn and squash in the three sisters garden (based on what I heard about planting the corn when the dogwood leaves are the size of squirrel ears), but no sign of them yet (probably a good thing since we had a frost/freeze last week). I have some seedlings started in the kitchen - okra went kaput, not sure what happened. Everything looks pretty leggy, but I will admit I have never had good luck with seed starting... this is the best I have ever done . I am going to start some more from seed in the beds as well, just in case my seedlings are duds. Pumpkins, peppers (maybe, they look pretty puny), tomatoes, gourds, and eggplant, but no sign of anything green in the eggplant pots. Totally forgot zucchini, which is a key summer veggie in my kitchen, so I will buy a couple of those from the local feed and seed.

Rainey":1bkyqpec said:

Miss M":1bkyqpec said:

Rain. Rain, rain, and rain. And more rain.

Click to expand...

At least it isn't snow

Click to expand...

:lol:

We planted radishes, onion starts, potatos, lettuce, spinach, kale, cabbage, and kava beans early. The radishes have done good, and the potatoes and onions have done well. Kale, cabbage, spinach, and lettuce were a wash. I'm not sure if I planted them to early or if I got a bad batch of seed or what only a few of any of them ever came up. I got some more lettuce at Walmart and it's come up good. The kava beans are up but not doing very good. Later we planted carrots which are up and garlic which is also doing well.

We planted an early corn and sunflowers several weeks ago and they are actually up. I told hubby it was to early for corn but we planted anyway :lol: Last weekend I planted another row of radishes (hubby loves them), another partial row of lettuce, and the last of my spinach seeds.

I had started tomatoes, peppers, some broccoli in the house way back in feb. They were only about 2" tall. Reading about seed starting I don't think I was giving them enough light. So I went ahead and put them out last weekend as well.

Now I'm wondering, if in that big garden bill tilled up, I'm gong to have enough room to plant the corn, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, and okra, I still have to plant :lol:

Miss M":5zbnmgzx said:

Rain. Rain, rain, and rain. And more rain.

Click to expand...

At least it isn't snow [/quote]
:lol:[/quote]

That was last week.

I thought I will show everyone the big progress of making my fruit area and taking fence down but then I looked at the pics and went wow my yard is still in shambles. Anyway we don't use a clothesline much and I can't exactly take it down so it is now a fruit trellis. We have raspberry plants shipping this coming week and it's suggested to grow them on lines so I thought we'll just use one side of the clothesline and put some lines down lower. I don't have the posts up to put the lower lines in yet. I am also including it as part of the guinea pig grazing pen. That wood fence is coming down. I decided to keep the gate and just connect where it is instead of running up to the sidewalk that I was standing on for that pic. We suck at gate building and a path is already worn down there.

<br /><br /> __________ Thu Apr 21, 2016 4:04 pm __________ <br /><br /> Fruit arrived in the middle of the rainstorms which isn't entirely bad but we planted in the mud yesterday. Found a use for all the excess cages that are too small for my guinea pigs. Each one has a mint plant (the light green in the bottom starting to poke through the mulch) and a raspberry stem protected from dog digging and rabbits until the fence is up.




I cleared this area, added 4" of compost and made it a partially raised bed for swiss chard, radishes and carrots last year. It's gained some of the creeping charlie that takes over everything and rather than rake it all out I'm wondering about just leaving it as a ground cover to put a row or 2 of corn there. Would probably have to pull a side off and expand to make room for a 2nd row. Will the corn grow through the groundcover fine if we clear around the seeds while planting so it takes a bit to fill back in?

we don't plan on much of a kitchen garden this year, -- we have a field of hard neck garlic we are tending, -- so, keeping it weeded, watered, website, and sales, is about what we can handle..

I'm hoping by oct to have a place to put garlic again. It did work out great and while I still have plenty hanging in the basement to last through next year it turns out it trades well for low effort. We did chesnok red and didn't fertilize and fell behind on weeding the month before harvesting but still dug up dozens of great bulbs and few stragglers.

akane":3ki0gpwb said:

I'm hoping by oct to have a place to put garlic again. It did work out great and while I still have plenty hanging in the basement to last through next year it turns out it trades well for low effort. We did chesnok red and didn't fertilize and fell behind on weeding the month before harvesting but still dug up dozens of great bulbs and few stragglers.

Click to expand...

Chesnok Red is one of our favorites as well..

I need to try some garlic... what is it about the chesnok that you like?

My aunt and uncle grew garlic every year - over 20/25 I would guess? It was some her uncle brought them back from Italy. (My uncle eats garlic like it's candy) I remember seeing braid after braid of it hanging in the garage when we visited. Last year his brother helped plant it and my aunt said it was too shallow, but they wouldn't listen. Total crop failure... she was so upset. They don't have any of it left.

Chesnok red is one of the most popular cooking garlics. It comes out fairly sweet and with complex, mild flavor when cooked. Along with slow cooker and roasting items it's used even in some desserts. Apparently garlic ice cream is a thing. We mostly use garlic in soups, stews, a type of mild curry, spaghetti sauces... It also stores very well for a hardneck variety and hardneck garlic overwinters in colder climates better.

Garlic-- info
My son is still working on this website, [as well as getting rid of the background color behind the text I hope]
but here is some info on some varieties we grow. http://www.mountainvalleygarlic.com/

[don't order from this website, - none of it is available right now]

Our garden year seems to be off to a bumpy start. March was so warm and then April so cold. The peas went in early but have come up unevenly. The 600 onion seedlings all went in a week or more ago. The pepper and eggplant seedlings are doing well, but the tomato seedlings that were started a bit later when the weather had turned back cold took a couple weeks to emerge and are growing very slowly. Last week we saw the first dandelions blooming and planted one bed of potatoes.
Planted another today with help from a mother and two young girls. (This week is spring vacation for local schools and we invite families to come to the farm, help with some work, go for a walk and look for wildflowers etc. This family was new to us and I was pleased and surprised at how helpful they were--picked rocks out of the pig area and gathered greens for rabbits as well as planting. And they were so delighted by the trillium and the frog they found and the long swing and the rabbits of various ages.
Supper was a stir-fry with the first fresh shiitake mushrooms and first fiddleheads of the season along with ramps (wild onion family plant) and pork.
And the forecast says rain but so far it has just been the slightest sprinkles. It's been dry, sunny and windy, for 10 days or so. We could really use some rain.

Today I threw out a combo of seeds from multiple pollinator and hummingbird mixes, an herb mix, some rye and blue grass seed, some sunflower seeds, random flower seeds I had left over, and red clover for the guinea pig grazing area around the blueberries, mulberries, and raspberries. It was probably half a 5gallon bucket worth of seed. I haven't made much progress on my raised bed I want to use this year. I might have to go plant the partially made one last year again despite the creeping charlie that took it over. My husband wants me to cram a dwarf cherry in there this year but he hasn't gone out to help do the work for a potential location I have in mind. The old trellis needs taken down which is not difficult because it is half held up by the grapevines themselves with no screws or nails, and then see how bad the grape roots in the area are to see if we can plant dwarf fruit trees right up the row the trellis was on. I just have too many other things to do to take over getting that done. Cherry trees may be next year.