In The Garden With The Vegetables (Spoiler Alert The Beet Did It).

 I must say after a long winter of reading and eating bon bons, getting a garden planted in spring is a lot of physical work. 

Hoisting trays of plants and dirt.

Using my trusty Groundbreaker to hack roots out of my raised beds so I can plant in them.

Moving lawn furniture around.

This week, I hacked out a place in Raised Bed One for two rows of fingerling potatoes. They were all sprouting like mad so I didn’t “chit” them ( a word that raises my hackles somehow so I more often rebel as not and don’t chit). Pictures when I find them. 

I’ve been using my camera rather than my iPad which continues to inch toward death.

I did use it today to take a picture of Raised Bed 3 which has three kinds of peas, five shallots in a row, a large number of red onions in a row, and three lettuces I purchased last week while plant bingeing.

Why yes, I did over plant those peas. This bed is a target for creature attacks. It could all be dug out by morning. For sure if there’s an undetected rabbit in the yard, he will get those lettuce.

Needer, rabbit boy. I planted only three lettuce here and the others from the packs are off the ground in pots. The lone strawberry I purchased so far is in a pot. The three beets I purchased are in a big bowl that I can move into a shadier spot if need be.  I saw a recipe for pickled beets this morning by chance. Grow, little beets, grow!

DOA in the Garden: One Potato, Two...

I have had the Dread Crud since last Thursday and but just had to get outside today for awhile.  I could see crocus from my kitchen window!

Not much else is up.  My Bergenia "Baby Doll"  which I've had for years but has only bloomed once looks nice but is bloomless as always.

At this time of the year, any green is welcome.

I suspect this is Poppy "Louise" coming up faithfully.

This little planter of Hens and Chicks that I overwintered on the workbench in the garage is doing nicely, though the ones I left out in concrete urns were dead and had to be tossed.

Some chives are coming up, and will be moved soon.

I have a small bed of daylilies and daffodils and other plants that are in the "dog" area and right near my clothesline.  The dogs relentlessly work to get in this small plot and then they dig and dig and do other doggie things which you don't want in your garden.  I'm giving up the fight to keep them out this season and will move the plants in the next week or so out of their zone so we can all be happy.  This will give the dogs another closeup spot to leer into my veggie garden though, wishing they could get in, digging, digging...

I planted my fingerling potatoes today.  I was worried that I had too many pieces of potato for the space.  As it turned out, the Rose Finn variety had lots of eyes but also one was completely rotted, ick.   I ended up with just the right amount of these for half of the bed space.

The Russian Banana ones were nice throughout but had few usable eyes so again they filled half their bed space.

I made nice furrows and put in the potatoes, the pulled the dirt over in a mound.

I took some dirt out of the bed so I could start low and add dirt back in as sprouts appear.  I think this will work out very well.