Finally Got the Carrots In

Well, according to my Clyde's Garden Planter, I should have planted my carrots on April 5.  I finally got them in on Saturday (the 10th), so that was much more "on time" than I have been with pretty much any other gardening project that I've accomplished this year!

(No, by the way, I wasn't leaning sideways when I snapped this photo.  We live on a very hilly lot, so we have to garden on a slope.)

When I pulled out my carrot and radish seeds, I was kind of irritated that 'someone' had gotten into my seed box and strewed cilantro and lettuce seed everywhere; so I came up with a revolutionary method that would probably make me a millionaire if I would package it up and market it craftily on the World Wide Web (but for all those 'special' people here who actually come to read anything I have to say, I'll let you see for free!):

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You're welcome!

P.S.  We don't even like radishes, but I read that you should plant some radishes among your carrots (I don't even remember why ~ I think it repels some kind of bug?), so I just bought a cheapo pack of WalMart radish seeds for 20 cents to scatter among my carrots & squash.  I normally buy high quality heirloom seeds from Baker Creek; but we're not going to pull the radishes, so... who cares?!

Growing Potatoes

I read about a neat gardening method for growing potatoes that I am going to let my children try this year.  We ordered some Yukon Gold seed potatoes from Gurney's already, but last Sunday a man at our church gave us some more seed potatoes.  I am going to let the boys use those to try the "no digging, no tilling" method of growing potatoes.

You basically just spread the quartered seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with straw.  You continue to add straw periodically, and the potatoes completely grow in the darkness of their "straw cave"!  When they are ready... POOF!  You remove the straw, and there you have a big old crop of potatoes!

I read about the method in an eBook that is part of the Green Thumb Library collection.  The entire collection of gardening eBooks is on sale for $9.95 now, if anyone is interested. 

The Weekend Is Over... and the Weather is Beautiful!

Not that I'm complaining about beautiful weather, mind you!  Just wish it would not have been raining/freezing cold on Saturday!  We were going to get a load of manure for the garden, but that got postponed until I-have-no-idea-when, since my hubby will be at a Men4Christ retreat this weekend.  Hopefully, since he'll be using his boss's dump truck and getting some for his garden, too, Bossy Man will nicely let him go during a week day, if things get slow at work.  ☺

We use Clyde's Garden Planner, which is the neatest little cheapo tool.  We bought ours from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company (which is where we buy all our seeds) for just $2.75.  It's a slide chart that uses your location's last frost date (or first on the autumn side of the chart) to tell you when to plant, how deep and far apart to plant, etc. several popular varieties of vegetable seed.

Last year we just planted our vegetable garden in the long, typical rows; but I'm reading Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide to Gardening, trying to figure out how to lay out the garden; and now I'm wanting to go kind of fancy.  ☺  I know I'd better just hurry up and decide because, according to Clyde, we are already a little late getting some of these seeds in the ground!  I am reading the book Carrots Love Tomatoes to figure out which vegetables to place or not place next to others.  That book was really helpful last year, and my library has it.

Ready to Get the Garden In!

Ugh, it's supposed to rain all weekend.  But my beloved husband got up early and tilled my garden this morning!   The birds are really having a feast in it now, too.  We are blessed to have wonderful soil and lots of little wormies. 

Today the boys and I are going to rake through it and pick out the rocks.  Tonight we will hopefully (in-laws willing ☺) have a date night that involves a stop at the feed store for lime and manure.  I already spread all the compost I had on the garden last week, and my hubby tilled it under.  For anyone who is interested, here is my composting technique:

I have an old laundry basket on my deck right outside the kitchen door.  I put a layer of soil from our yard into the bottom of it, and I throw all my compostable kitchen scraps right in:  fruit & veggie peels, tea bags, coffee grounds, eggshells, high chair scraps (anyone with a toddler knows what I'm saying here:  all the pieces of cooked carrot, green beans, pancake, etc. that land in the radius of kitchen floor around the high chair), etc. 

When I get a layer of "green" compost, I add another layer of dirt from the yard and continue in layers until I'm ready to dump the whole mess into a designated area of the yard/ditch near the garden.  We give it a stir with the shovel every once in a while and add all the grass clippings, mulched leaves, and ashes from the woodstove to it.  If I had access to some cow manure-caked hay, that would be even better... but we just have to make do with what we have!

We annually spread all that compost on the garden plot before tilling it under, and we also use it to mulch the plants in our garden occasionally. 

Another little tidbit:  we save our fish guts to plant beneath our corn seed.  Corn needs the nitrogen.