Saturday, April 04, 2009

Getting Gardening

It's getting late in gardening, but we've had the weirdest weather. I haven't done ANYthing. So after work yesterday, I got some seeds started indoors and cleared out two of the raised beds. I planted lettuce, spinach and radishes in one bed. The other will be my herb garden and cilantro and oregano both got in the ground. 

I got a new toy for indoor seed starting. I bought two of these from Totally Tomato.

They are compact plant trainers. They are self-watering and you can plant 49 seeds in each one. They are super small and I think will work really well.

I planted a bunch of the squash, cucumbers, watermelons and basil. I decided to try a different seed company this year, Jung's. Paul thinks I'm nuts because of the ol' "if it ain' t broken, why fix it" adage. But I wanted to try some different varieties and Gurney's didn't have them. It seemed to take forever to get the seeds from Jung's but when they came, I got free samples and a free gift, so I won't bitch at all. Who doesn't love free things? They know what they're doing, heh.

As far as the big garden goes, it's been too wet what with the SNOW and all to get in there and till. With our clay soil, it holds water too well (good for garden, bad for getting-garden-ready). I've been waiting but it's rained a lot. And we're supposed to get more snow tomorrow. I'm pretty sick of this snow in April crap so hopefully that will be the last blast.

We are going to make some more raised beds and then we won't have to entirely deal with this. The tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans will be in the beds and the corn, watermelons and pumpkins will be in the regular ol' ground. As you can see, we're trying out some new things and we'll see how it goes.

Zucchini will be plain ol' regular green ones, yellow crooked-neck squash and a variety pack of scallop squash. I will try some successive planting on these to ward off those awful squash bugs. 

Cucumbers will be slicing and some pickling ones. I may have to learn how to can, but plan on making more refrigerator pickles for sure. There's a very wide variety of types you can make and now that I will be growing the correct cukes for the job, I plan on doing dill and bread and butter. Paul loves his bread and butter pickles. I also want to play around with a spicy one, but there's no mix for that so I need to do some research into it.

Also, new this year will be watermelons and pumpkins. I wanted to try these out for fun. Pumpkins will strictly be for seeds and Halloween although my friend Beth might actually know how to make a pie from real pumpkins and she might want some.

Corn is the same, but will be planted completely differently to try to avoid the whole being knocked down and broken by the wind thing. 

And we're doing pole beans instead of bush beans this year. I may throw a couple of bush beans in the mix, but we'll see once I get the raised beds going. 

Paul needs to make me raised beds but since he's been working overnights, he's been busy trying to adjust to the new schedule. I may force him to do some tomorrow when it's all snowing and crappy outside. It will make me feel more useful. After the beds are in place, we will have to move lots of dirt so I beseech my friends to help me. There will be pizza and beer involved. We're thinking about six, but I need to sit down and really think about it first.

That's about all I have to say about gardening right now, but if anyone wants to come over and make me raised beds, give me a call!

Belinda

2 comments:

Betty (Beth) said...

There once was a lady named Bella,
She married a very tall fella,
They both were quite happy,
And life was not crappy,
She felt like a modern Cinderella.

Now Bella could grow things quite pretty,
In her garden in North Kansas City,
She planted the seeds,
And cleared out the weeds,
Used manure, which was kinda shitty.

She grew many things that were yummy,
Many things that go good in my tummy,
She's raising some beans,
And probably some greens,
I doubt any of which will be crummy.

So Bella, please let me help you,
My hands will scoop dirt till their blue.
Just make me some pickles,
Dills please, I'm fickle,
And I'll bring the rest of the crew!

Nikki said...

Remind me to ask my mom about spicy pickle recipes. She and her sister made them last year and I had some and they were delicious. I'm pretty sure jalapenos were involved in the jar.