Don't plant until memorial day!

I read this gardening book "Joy of Gardening" and it is about gardening in Utah. The women recommended not planting until memorial weekend for the warm crops. They claimed that there is always a last late freeze. I did not heed their advice and the following happened.

This weekend it was supposed to be colder but not freeze! Daniel and I planted the peppers and tomatoes and put in the bean seeds fully aware that we would need to cover the garden. Here is a picture of the covered garden.

 

Sunday night we covered the garden again and it began to rain. At 10 pm when I went to bed it was still raining. When we woke up this is what we saw.

 

Knowing that I was not the only one to have a frozen garden we went to the nursery as fast as we could get out of the house. We bought new peppers, tomatoes and finally found Sweet Basil, and I added a cantaloupe at the last minute. These items will camp out in the garage until June 1st.

Although the garden was wilted and struggling, we still picked some radishes for dinner. Yummy. I learned that I missed one or two in the thinning process. The middle radish had the biggest greens so I was expecting a huge radish. I pulled it out and with it came the radish on the right. The greens had hidden it and instead of a huge radish I got two tiny ones. Thinning is important. The radishes were supposed to take 23 days to mature but have taken longer, much longer which I am assuming is due to the four snowy days we have had since I planted them.

 

What is in the ground now?

This is what our yard has so far. Two patmore ash trees, one austrian pine, two blue spruce trees, one crab apple "prarie fire," two bailey dogwood bushes, one lilac, and some grass. We have tried a few different things. Bigger holes on some, more compost in some, and played with how much of the root ball needs to be showing to make it match the picture on the instructions.

So far everything is doing well and enjoying the rain. We will be buying the rest of our garden in the next few days and hopefully we will still be able to find plants.

My garden is doing awesome. The onions look fantastic and the radishes are almost ready to eat. They have loved the rain. The only huge bummer about the rain is that it is extremely hard to plant in six to twelve inches of mud. I should say, pretty easy to dig in the mud but hard to stand in it.

I am super excited that at least we have some things in the ground. The lilac we planted will take at least three years to bloom. I can't believe it takes so long. Hopefully the wait will be worth it.

Seed failure and snowy gardens

Here are just some pictures of our initial planting of the peas. The kids love to help in the garden.

 

 

April and May have been difficult gardening months this year. We have planted onions, peas, carrots, radishes and that is all. We keep waiting for the warmer weather to stay but it looks like it will just be super cold and then mega hot. Here is a picture of what we woke up to one morning. Snow everywhere. Luckily the garden survived.

 

So I bought some flower seeds, got some dirt from the topsoil in our yard (yes that was brought in by a truck I just have rocks) and then for my birthday we had planting day. I wish I would have taken pictures of that because we planted inside since it was raining. I spread out a sheet and the kids proceeded to dump dirt everywhere. It was fun though. After two or three days I noticed something weird about the pots. Testing confirmed that somehow we had made a type of cement out of dirt. We couldn't poke anything through the dirt and even after watering it just didn't work out.

Lesson learned was this: if I do seeds again I will buy planting soil not just dirt from the yard. The kids still think that one day we will have something in the pots which is why they are still in the window sill.

 

Still Waiting to Plant

I am still waiting for the weather to be warm enough to plant anything. we are usually 2-3 weeks behind Utah for planting. I have my plants waiting in the garage. I tried to start earlier but had to hurry and move things in the garage as it snowed and was freezing weather for a week. Oh well, gardening is a lesson on patience.