Potatoes! (I have very original titles for my blog posts)

 This is my first year doing potatoes, hopefully I don't screw it up.

First, you cut all the potatoes bigger than a golf ball in half, making sure there are eyes on each part.

Mountain Rose potatoes

Even the eyes are pretty

 Then you let them sit and form a scab on the cut part for a couple days.

Pre-scab

Then you shove them in the ground, mound the dirt weekly and pray.

Potato plants around some carrots

Then you do some optimistic exploring in the dirt several weeks before the potatoes should be harvested because you have OCD and just want to make sure they are coming along...
 

YES

Then you eat the crap out of the little things and promise not to pick the rest until they are truly ready.

Sour cream and chives from the garden. Yum.

Then you also make some pasta with leeks from the garden because, why not?

GARLIC!!!

I planted garlic last year for the first time and was very successful. Huge bulbs, very tasty. So this year I decided instead of planting 10 cloves, I'd plant over 100. I pulled up the first 50+ today, and will pull the rest in two weeks. The bulbs are not as big as last year's (probably since I planted Inchelium Red this year, the Music garlic was huge), but they are pretty and smell damn garlicky.

July 1, 2012 - That's a lot of garlic

July 1, 2012 - Decent size

July 1, 2012 - The ugliest garlic braids ever

Check out my garden plan!

http://gardenplanner.motherearthnews.com/garden-plan.aspx?p=105642

Warming Up

This spring has sucked way less than last spring. Although we did have a very late frost (end of March), and for 3 nights in a row! A little snow too, which melted immediately. The first frost everything did pretty well, but 3 days later...I lost a lost of seedlings. Despite this, the garden is doing quite well, as you can see below.

May 19, 2012 - Corn

 

 

May 19, 2012 - Pepper transplants and melons in the back

May 19, 2012 - Garlic!

May 19, 2012 - In front a leek, garlic behind.

May 19, 2012 - Radish seed pods

May 19, 2012 - Volunteer lettuce going to seed

I hit some weird button on my camera for these next ones, accidentally. Kinda neat though because only the green hues show up.

May 20, 2012 - Herb bed growing swimmingly

May 20, 2012 - Carrots at the top, potatoes surround

May 20, 2012 - Tomatoes on the right, edamame in the middle

May 20, 2012 - MOAR GARLIC!

May 21, 2012 - Nasturtium, the picture does not do it justice

May 21, 2012 - Peanuts! Surrounded by diatomaceous earth

May 21, 2012 - My baby, the rio red grapfruit tree

Bird Netting

My bird netting has done a lot of things, unfortunately keeping birds from eating seedlings doesn't seem to be one of them.

• It has taken out a beautiful lizard (it's head got trapped and it strangled itself)

• It has trapped and killed an equally beautiful dragonfly that I didn't get pictures of
• It seems to be a cool place for snails to hang out on

 

I have to conclude that this stuff is pretty useless. I won't be buying more.

Blueprints

This year's garden:

A couple blank spaces to fill in still...

Planting season is here!

I can't believe it is my 3rd planting season since I started gardening. It's hard for me to imagine my yard before there was an abundance of edible things growing in it. I went a little crazy(er) this year and bought A LOT of seeds. Specifically this collection from Baker Creek.

Small Southern Seed Collection

Baker Creek has a huge variety of seeds. The catalog takes days to go through, and has really cool pictures.

Here is what I have already planted/started for the spring garden:

Basil (Genovese)
Basil (Thai)
Beet (Bull's Blood)
Broccoli (Waltham 29)
Cabbage (Early Jersey Wakefield)
California Poppy
Carrot (Big Top)
Carrot (Cosmic Purple)
Catnip
Celery
Chives
Garlic Chives
Cilantro
Corn (Fisher's Earliest Sweet)
Cucumber (Japanese Long)
Dill
Garlic (Inchelium Red)
Lavender
Leek (Blue Solaise)
Leek (King Richard)
Lettuce (Green Oakleaf)
Lettuce (Sanguine Ameliore volunteers)
Marigolds (Red Marieta)
Melon (Rich Sweetness)
Mint
Mustard
Nasturtiums (Empress of India)
Onion (Ailsa Craig)
Onion (Australian Brown)
Onion (Borretana Yellow)
Onion (He Shi Ko Bunching)
Onion (Red of Florence)
Onion (Red Wethersfield)
Parsley (Giant from Italy, flatleaf)
Pepper, hot (Chinese Ornamental)
Pepper, hot (Habanero Red)
Pepper, hot (Ordono)
Pepper, hot (Tohono O'odham)
Pepper, hot (Wenk's Yellow)
Pepper, mild (Carnival Mix)
Pumpkin (Pipian from Tuxpan)
Pumpkin (Shamrock)
Squash (Early Golden Summer Crookneck)
Strawberries
Sunflower (Mammoth)
Sunflower (Mexican Torch)
Watermelon (Golden Midget)
Zebrinas
Zinnias (Persian Carpet)

February 5, 2012 - Starting seeds!

March 9, 2012 - Time to transplant!

And here is what I'll be planting in the next few weeks:

Amaranth (Golden Giant)
Beans (Blue Lake)
Beans (Heavyweight II)
Morning Glorys (Grandpa Ott's)
Okra (Red Burgundy)
Peas (Oregon Sugar Pod)
Peas (Super Snappy)
Peanuts
Pink Banana
Potatoes (Yukon Gold)
Soybeans (non-GMO!)
Strawberry Spinach
Tomato (Arkansas Traveler)
Tomato (Cherokee Purple)
Tomato (Moonglow)
Tomato (Wapsipinicon Peach)

And here's what overwintered:

Basil
Habaneros
Tomatoes (Roma)

I planted some really strange looking pumpkins. This is how big they grew in less than two weeks!

March 9, 2012

March 9, 2012 - These things get big, fast.

March 9, 2012 - Neat leaf pattern

March 9, 2012

This year's corn bed. Last spring I had some volunteer sorghum from who knows where grow here, so I figured it'd be perfect for the corn.

March 9, 2012

March 9, 2012 - The new beds this season

March 9, 2012 - Garlic, leeks, radishes, volunteer lettuce.

I let one lettuce plant bolt last spring, and below is the product. For some reason the volunteer lettuce growing in the rocks with very little water or room to develop root structure is doing phenomenally while the lettuce I painstakingly planted in even spaces in perfect soil, has almost all died. Go figure.

March 9, 2012 - Sanguine Ameliore lettuce

March 9, 2012 - More garlic!

 I broke down and started planting flowers. Not because I'm a real girl or anything, but because I want to attract more pollinators.

March 9, 2012 - Marigold

 The one head of lettuce I planted that hasn't died.

March 9, 2012 - Green Oakleaf lettuce

 My overwintered tomato plants are a bit diseased and not at all pretty, 

but they are still alive and producing fruit already.

March 9, 2012 - Boo yah! First tomatoes of spring in yo face.

March 9, 2012

Broccoli is pretty cool, you chop it's head off and then it grows more little ones for you. Like a hydra.

March 9, 2012

 My sad, sad cucumber seedlings. They will probably die. I kept trying to transplant before they got root bound but we kept getting Gail force winds and cold nights. I planted seeds right in front of the seedlings when I transplanted as a Plan B, so either way I'll have cucumbers.

March 9, 2012

March 9, 2012