Catching Up

Since my last post, I have been busy! We have had great weather much of April, especially the last two weekends. I've transplanted sunflowers, nasturtiums, lettuce, spinach, beets, leeks, kale, chard, cabbage, broccoli, peas, cilantro, and celery into the raised beds in my garden.

Kale and shallots have a shady spot beneath the kiwi. 

Cabbage, beets, and carrots grow on the left, while onions, leeks, lettuce, spinach, and radishes flourish on the right.

Peas begin their climb up the trellis while celery and broccoli take hopeful root at the end of the bed.

I have also planted corn (twice), delphiniums, collards, and more sunflowers.

My collard greens are growing fast.

The beans are thriving, from bush to runner to pole varieties.

The corn has popped up, while just beyond, the watermelon seeds I saved from a local mini melon sprouted behind the pumpkins.

Meanwhile, we had a busy weekend with an excavator we rented, which we used to place rocks onto a pond liner for a water feature on our patio, as well as place our pizza oven. The latter was a bit scary but after careful thought and much prep work, we finally have the oven in place.

The pizza oven is ready for curing fires. Just behind is the waterfall we placed rocks for as well.

A close up of the water feature shows the rocks the water will cascade over.

You can see the excavator from this vantage,

Additionally, I bought eight strawberry plants and put them in my new flower/vegetable combo beds.

This patio bed contains potatoes, nasturtiums, strawberries, gladiola, and columbine.

The bed has tulips, strawberries, spinach, and allum.

My tomatoes are woefully disappointing, (only six inches tall), so I bought four plants today. They are my usual from Soil Sisters out of Monroe. I also bought two pepper plants (not much to choose from) as they are only an inch high in my greenhouse. I will stop at the Carnation Farmer's Market on Tuesday to see if Soil Sisters will be selling their plants there as they have in years past. 

These are my pitifully short tomato plants.

The ones I bought from Soil Sisters are 12-24 inches tall.

The oxalis is the pride of my greenhouse. 

My basil is looking good, too!

I planted cilantro with the pepper plants. I only have two so far.

Next weekend I will be planting beans and getting the tomato and pepper cloches ready. We will be building a frame that is six feet high in back and eight in front. The roof will be clear plastic rigid roofing, and then there will be either a piece of mylar coated insulation as a back wall to reflect light, or we will use some wafer board that came as part of the pizza oven secure packaging and paint it white.

I have lots of figs coming already. They are looking great!

Each branch is loaded with little figs, around five on each. I expect over 100 figs.

All for now.

NG Gardener