Gardening woes and woohoos

I love our garden. Here are some things I have learned already.

Square foot gardening is super easy and your garden looks really awesome. I love it and think I will (hopefully) add to my one box next year.

Radishes are not all that great. But they are fun to grow. We ended up throwing a lot of them away. It was much easier to do this than to throw out a tomato plant that I have no room for. Funny isn't it?

My kids love the garden. Daniel helped me thin the carrots. Alice helped by sitting on the echinacea and breaking it in half. Amazingly things still survive.

Our soil is so crummy. The clay wouldn't be nearly as bad if our soil wasn't about solid rock. All we do is dig up rocks. So if anyone ever needs rocks please just come and take them. We have learned lots of good tricks though. Pick axes are much better than shovels around here. Our neighbors lent us this huge iron bar that you smash into the ground and it helps with digging huge holes. We are exciting to get our own huge iron bar. It is absolutely amazing to me that things survive in this clay soil. We are waiting anxiously to see how our plants manage. So far most things look pretty good.

So far we have four different kinds of trees planted, butterfly bushes, raspberries, boxwood, dogwood, forsythia, cotoneaster, lilacs, and a bunch of herbs and a few flowers. We are awaiting the emergence of our sunflower seeds. It has been hard to plant the seeds since it is always windy or raining. Daniel loves shoving the seeds into the ground. He is the best helper. Until he tries to dig up and move all the topsoil, then he is a bad helper.

Here are a few things we are managing and learning to manage. Weeds. The lawn and mushrooms on the lawn. How to deal with empty lots all around us. Wind. So more on these subjects to come.

On a good note. Our seven different tomatoes are doing awesome as are our peas, carrots, peppers and onions. The basil in the garden looks a little sad but hopefully will snap out of it. We are really hoping for at least one super fantastic cantaloupe this summer. Only one bean seed came up but I think that is great considering we left for Hawaii two days after I planted them so when the neighbor kids watered the garden they thought that box was empty and ceased to water it. Maybe I will go stick another few seeds in there. I love green beans.

Recent health findings in our family has made eating healthy a top priority for the year. I am excited that our garden can help us with these new goals.

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.

Radish Sprouts!

Good news! One of everything planted has "been hatched." We have about seven onions popping up, one pea, one carrot and a whole lot of radishes. The kids are still loving the garden and insist on being outside as much as possible. We are watering every night and every morning and haven't killed anything yet. Still waiting for mom to plant her garden and keep us updated on a garden in Idaho. In a few days we will start thinning.

The first week

Well I am pretty impatient. I go out and stare at the box that looks empty but clearly isn't because I know that I put in hundreds of carrot seeds, quite a few radishes and lots of onions. But still nothing is poking up in order to receive real sunlight. I did kind of get lazy by the time I planted the radishes so we will see what turns up there.

My box is broken. I am however optimistic that it will be fixed and fairly easily. My kids love dirt and come inside screaming and crying everyday. It is a chore to get them to come inside and eat. Hopefully when we lay sod in a few weeks we can just eat outside. Alice clings to her little pink shovel and at least three time an hour brings me my shoes, her shoes and her shovel and throws them in front of me and then sits and puts her feet up so I can shod her. Hilarious.

So far the dirt and rocks are winning. Hopefully some of my seeds will come through by Saturday. I can't wait.