Recently in Raised beds Category

We definitely, certainly, without fail need fences next year. Casualties so far include: sunflowers, tomato blossoms, pea vines, spinach, scarlet runner beans, carrot tops, pumpkin leaves, zuchinni leaves, cucumber leaves. Looks like mostly deer to me (they've left footprints). Surprisingly -- no lettuce seems to have been eaten.

What we've eaten so far -- about 10 peas, many salads with the lettuce. Zuchinni is on the menu sometime this week. We'll probably try the green beans, too.

Some observations for next year: Plant less lettuce! And plant in rotation so we get multiple crops per square of smaller, more tender leaves. Don't be afraid to THIN that lettuce. Pumpkins need more than just 2x2 for a single plant. Unless I can find a way to make them more vertical, I'm thinking two plants in a hill in the center of an entire 4x4 bed. Outside corners can have something that's harvested by the time the vine takes over -- maybe the lettuce? Or something tall like sunflowers.

After the salad last night, I need to rethink the lettuce I'm growing in the garden. I don't like the endive-type lettuces. They're too bitter for my taste. And the broadcast seed means that I need to spend what seems like an excessive amount of time picking and preparing the salad. I'd rather use square-foot gardening methods and wait a little bit longer to harvest larger leaves without needing to thin.

Today we ate the first produce from our garden. Salad!

Some more pictures of how things are growing.

Lettuce (needs thinning soon)

Peas (and a sunflower)

Zuchinni. I'm amused at how it hung on to the outside of the seed.

Carrots.

Beans.

Purchased some flowers, peppers and tomatoes.

Got these from the Powers' Farm Market, since there wasn't much tomato selection at Gentle's Market last year. Also, Grossmans only had plum tomatoes when I checked the other day. Purchased a six-pack of Big Boy tomatoes (though I only planted two). They were a bit on the leggy side, but I'm hoping they'll do OK.

Also two kinds of peppers: California Wonder and Cubanelle.

For flowers, I purchased purple Alyssum and Cosmos in two shades of pink, which I planted (with help from Ben) along the front walk.

He wanted to plant the tomato plants right away.

And this is how they look:

Note the poor, sad tulip leaves which is about all that's left from the many tulips I attempted to plant in this bed several years ago.

Planted pumpkin seeds with Ben. The space might be a little small, I expect I may have to trim off the ends of the vines by the end of the season. See the plan for details of where things are planted.

We finally had another sunny day here after a cold miserable rainy week. The water's good for the garden, of course, but it was nice to get out and do some work in the yard today.

The peas are sprouting. Just one pair of leaves so far.

The lettuce sprouted! Yay!
Clearly the mix I used and the way I scattered it puts the seeds a bit close together. These will need to be thinned when they're a bit bigger.

Watered the garden a bit more, and this time observed the drainage problem first-hand. There appears to be a low spot. Guess I'll add some compost to raise the level a bit, after the seeds sprout.