turning the soil of my raised beds

My spring routine is to turn the soil of my garden beds. Today I turned three of my beds. I use a standard garden shovel and flip the soil over onto itself - the way my dad showed me years ago. If I have a cover crop, this gets turned under. This year I have a light cover of winter ryegrass. I like the wait a week or so, but sometimes right away, I smooth the soil level with the backside of a metal rake. Finally my irrigation lines get buried and the beds are ready to plant.

Tomorrow the skies are forecast to cloud over and rain is scheduled for the weekend. Once it clouds up, I plan to transplant my broccoli, kale, onions, endive and some lettuce seedlings into the garden. Exciting! My first garden transplants of the year. My pea sprouts are doing well and if I have time, I'll sow another row or two of pea seeds. Another sign that spring is here is that there is an endless amount of garden work now.

To turn or not to turn? I've recently heard that turning ruins the structure of the soil. I'll have to read more about this. To me, turning mixes in the cover crop, aerates the soil, and is a spring activity I look forward to. With only 360 sq ft, it doesn't take very long. Afterwards I feel like I've done some real work. I can throw my clothes in the wash, eat and sleep well, and look forward to planting.

topic: soil

sure signs of spring

what's wrong with my onions???

I often have trouble with onion seedlings. They shrivel up and die a week or two after sprouting. The ones in the tray (the photo on the left) started dying a couple weeks ago. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Fortunately, I also did some winter sowing and seeded onions outside in plastic bottles (photo on the right). These are doing much better. They look good to me. They are growing very slowly, but surely.

Last night I picked up my new book, The Gardener's Bible (my bedtime reading), and read about onions. "To grow good onions, give them what they need and then don't bother them. Come harvest time, you'll have a crop that will bring tears to your eyes" says the author, Edward C. Smith. I think this is the problem. The onions don't seem to like all the attention of my seed trays under the bright lights and warm room temp.

What is it about onions? Are they shy? My other seedlings are doing well.

a sunny day

A perfect day for garden work and looking at flowers. Unfortunately, I wasn't out there with the squirrel today.

Rock Meadow activity

This is the community garden where I hope to get a plot this weekend. There was lots of gardening activity over the past weekend.

Belmont Victory Garden

Rock Meadow Conservation Land, Belmont

bulletin board

I'd like to set up a forum where backyard vegetable gardeners can communicate with each other. It would be nice to have a local forum. (Is this available anywhere - am I missing anything?) Here's my previous post on this topic.

1. The first reason is to see if and when other local gardeners want to arrange to share extra spring seedlings and meet each other. We could set up a site, like Rock Meadow in Belmont on a certain time and day ...

2. Other reasons, to encourage information sharing in an activity that requires a fair amount of info, but is often solitary.

3. To get Belmont on the map as the first US town where every backyard has a vegetable garden (just kidding) (but can you imagine it?....) (I wonder how many there are?)

4. Can you think of other reasons?

So, now I have downloaded, unzipped, and uploaded phpbb3 software to my personal website (sks1.org). I have even gotten the installation procedure to open. My challenge tonight is INSTALLATION. We'll see.....

Well, here's my new board link: Backyard Vegetable Gardeners Board But I don't know how to use this. Any advice? This board seems complicated.

cheers!

Here's to pea sprouts and sowing tomatoes.

Topic: martini!

tomato sowing day!

Here's my planting list:

Tomatoes, New Girl (6 for mom, 3 for me)
Tomatoes, Big Beef (6 for mom, 3 for me)
Tomatoes, Orange Blossom (3 for mom, 3 for me)
Tomatoes, Brandywine (3 for me)
Tomatoes, Pink Beauty (3 for mom, 3 for me)
Tomatoes, Cherokee Purple (1 for mom, 3 for me)
Tomatoes, Purple Calabash (1 for mom, 3 for me)
Tomatoes, Giant Belgium (3 for me)
Tomatoes, Oxheart Red (3 for me)
Tomatoes, San Marzano (3 for me)
Tomatoes, Tomango (3 for me)

The numbers listed are the numbers of plants I would like in the garden. To make sure I get enough, I'll sow twice as many seeds and thin (or give away) extras later.

My mom only wants the early varieties (70-80 days), since she's in northern MA.

Descriptions of all of these varieties are here.

Since tomato soil temperature should be at least 75F for germination, I wanted to use my fish tank as an incubator again. This worked well for my peppers. Since the space is limited, I sowed the seeds close and will transplant seedlings to pots later. I spread an inch or two of soil in a planting tray and planted about 9-15 seeds in each of 10 rows. I laid out straight rows using large plant labels, which I removed after planting. I labeled each row and duct taped the label in place.




Since I took a set of lights off the top of my fish tank to use for my seedlings, I had room to just set the tray on top of the tank. Its close enough to the water surface that it should stay at the water temp, which is 78F.

Solanum lycopersicum

free tomato seeds

With my seed order, Sand Hill Preservation Center sent me a package of free tomato seeds. The variety is Tomango. Its a stuffing variety, which is almost like a bell pepper. I've never heard of this.

Tomango: late, Ind, 2 to 4 oz., not quite as hollow, stuffing type, red with yellow streaks.

Solanum lycopersicum

a pea sprout!

Definitely a cause for celebration! I found a little green pea sprout out in the rain today. A Sugar Spring snap pea. Yippee! Not much to look at yet.

These were planted on March 18th (17 days ago).

community plot countdown

I'm getting excited about my upcoming Community garden plot assignment! My count down is into the single digits now! 9 more days! On April 12th I'm hoping for a big sunny new garden plot. I'm number 2 on the waiting list of new gardeners.

Someone from a neighboring town asked me how I got on the community plot waiting list. Last summer, I looked on the Belmont town website and found the garden information and emailed my request.

For Cambridge, you could check out this link: • How do I get a community garden plot in Cambridge MA? Their answer: "You may contact the Conservation Commission at (617) 349-4680. You likely will be placed on a waiting list."

My understanding is that community garden plots are in short supply around this area.

communitygardening
Belmont Victory Garden

seedlings

More sprout photos. I got out my macro. Its like having a cute baby to photograph... just greener... If I watch long enough, I can almost see them grow....

Sprouts in these trays are: onions, kale, peppers, lettuce and escarole. Seeded, but no sprouts yet, are: asters, cosmos and marigolds.

Kale (Brassica oleracea, Acephala Group)

pea trellis (on a windy wednesday)

I like to get the pea trellis up before the peas sprout. This year I made a zig-zag trellis from poles and sticks and tie-wrapped a white plastic net to it. It seems a bit wobbly and I may need to reinforce it with more poles later.

The pea trellis is in the sunny part of my garden, right up against the house and under the windows where my seedlings are growing.

(As an aside, the trellis assembly was a bit of a struggle. I thought for a while that the net was going to win. For some reason, I decided to assemble the trellis during a wind advisory, which is issued in the US with sustained winds 31-39 mph for at least 1 hour. Also, we had a steady drizzle and I was working fast trying to beat the more serious rain. AND, I wore clips in my hair that had an annoying way of catching on the netting. (It must have looked funny to my neighbors...) There may be easier ways to work with this netting - maybe cutting the netting and assembling the trellis flat on the ground and then putting it up. Maybe just avoiding high winds. It would help to have some prior experience with tie-wraps so you already know that only one direction works. The netting came with a warning to assemble it taut, so birds don't get caught in it. The net comes folded up into a neat little square. I think in the end, I unfolded it, tie-wrapped and trimmed it so it looks good. I think its taut enough so the birds should be OK.)

I picked up an old pallet from the Free Stuff pile at my local True Value hardware store. I made the paths from the boards. (That way I don't compress the soil by walking on it.)

I think I'll plant the trellis half with Capucijner peas and half with Tall Telephone peas. Both are 6 ft vines. I'll underplant with Sugar Sprint snap peas (about 2 feet tall) and Pisello Nano peas (only 1 foot). Recommended companions for peas are daisies and cosmos, so I'll mix these in too.

I've already planted a couple of the zigs of the trellis with peas. Once these sprout, I'll plant more zigs (or zags). When they sprout, I'll do another sowing, etc. This succession sowing should extend the harvest. Not so important for the sugar snaps, which had an incredibly extended season last year, or for the Capucijner soup peas, which I'll dry and collect for winter anyway, but a good idea for my green shell peas.

To the front of the path (between the boards and the stone walkway), will be brassicas (kale and broccoli). These will be covered with a white, light weight row cover May to Sept because of cabbage worms.

Right now I have a small plot of fava beans planted in front of the plastic bottles. I had hoped to grow the favas at my new Community Plot this year, but I will not get an assignment until April 12. I'll try a second seeding there I hope.

Pisum sativum

Yippee its April !!

Happy April Fool's Day. Skippy and my gnome are now hard at work on the new season's crop.

more pictures of skip

pea rootlet

I checked on my peas that I planted outside two weeks ago (March 18). They have been growing - little roots have started! We have warm wet weather coming up, so I'll watch for sprouts.

Pisum sativum

mail order box

Another box from Johnny's! What fun.

This one has: light weight row cover to protect my brassicas from the white butterflies this summer, thermal black plastic for my tomatoes and peppers, pins, markers, and roll of nice-looking white plastic netting for my peas. Also a few packets (15) of seeds. (Does 15 count as a few?)

The seeds include some flowers recommended in my new gardening book (Great Garden Companions) as good vegetable companions. I am looking forward to a more colorful vegetable garden this year! The flowers are: asters (China Opus), Anise hyssop, cosmos (Cosmic Orange), marigold (Signet Lemon Gem) and nasturtium (Alaska Mix and Whirlybird Mahogany).

I also got some of my favorite varieties of bush beans (Provider), radish (small tricolored easter egg) and lettuce (green summer crisp Loma) seeds to share
with my parents (shhh, don't tell them). They will start their vegetable garden soon.

Lastly, a new cover crop to try this fall - Crimson Clover. I thought I'd mix it with my rye grass. Its early to order it, but this way I'll have it ready.