It’s chilly and foggy today and I’m actually hoping it rains so I don’t have to water the garden. We put some new plants in this weekend and they’ll need water this evening if these clouds don’t make themselves useful! We spent most of the weekend doing a few chores and some desperately needed housework, and gardening. Oh yeah, and continuing the never-ending, car-hunt debacle–but I’ll spare you the tears of exhaustion and frustration on that topic for now.
So far, other than lettuce and broccoli, we’ve been following our little garden planning sketch pretty well. Our strawberries and onions (did you know they’re great companions?!) are looking beautiful!
Strawberries and onions in a raised bed together.
Our new raspberries are a heritage variety. They’re not doing nearly as well as our wild transplant variety, but they are brand new this year so we’re trying to give them a chance before I consider moving our wild variety into the bed with them. Our wild ones are already two-three feet long! We’re also looking forward to planting garlic in the raspberry bed once the raspberry patch is established.
We planted four heritage raspberries. This is the biggest one so far.Our asparagus came up a little late this year. I think that was just because we put a late layer of compost and mulch on top of them so they had an extra couple inches they had to grow through before we saw their little heads poking out. Asparagus season is kinda fun and kinda crazy. It takes forever for them to show up, but one they do you have to check the bed every day because they’ll shoot up inches over night. So this is the time of year we start eating asparagus in everything. (Last year Mr. Fix-It drew the line at eating it raw in salads. I have to admit, it was not the tastiest thing we’ve ever tried.)
We plan to add chives to the asparagus bed. They’re supposed to be good companions with asparagus and keep away bugs. But chives struggle with weeds and so does our asparagus bed so until we get the wire grass under control we’ll just leave well enough alone!
The kids love to hunt for purple “baby” asparagus heads pushing out of the soil. This bed definitely has the biggest weed problem.We put in a row of tomatoes this weekend and we have room for a second row in a couple weeks. Canning tomato sauce and salsa is on our short list of new things to try this year. We’re trying to both simplify and expand our horizons at the same time by focusing on learning to make our own versions of things we eat all the time. Not necessarily trying new food in the garden, but trying to produce our own food with the garden–beyond just salads. So spaghetti sauce and chunky salsa are our major new goals this year. Everything else we just plan to eat fresh or save frozen like usual this year.
There’s like a thousand different tomato varieties to choose from. It’s overwhelming. This year we’re sticking with Celebrity and our second row will be Romas, to keep it simple.And while I was doing all that reading on companion planting for the garden we came across several natural pest deterrents too–including herbs. Have you ever noticed that the more you study natural systems, the more things fit together? Herbs like basil, oregano, rosemary, and mint are great natural pest deterrents. And they just so happen to also be great accompaniments to salsa, spaghetti sauce and lamb! Hmm….
We planted “Herb Row” in the middle of the garden this year.
There’s basil, oregano, and rosemary in “Herb Row” in the garden itself. We planted mint in a contained flowerbed out front. Eventually I’d like to border between the garden and the orchard with lavender, which is good for bugs and to attracted bees. Eventually. {smile}We’ve also got our green beans and sugar snap peas in, although they’re not sprouting their little heads out yet. They should be up by this weekend. The potatoes are doing well, of course, and I’m not giving up on the idea of carrots. Mr. Fix-It has tilled and tilled the garden and the soil is looking really, really good this year. I know carrots like loose soil, so we’re laying out seed tapes (we used this simple seed tape tutorial) this week.
You can see the irises are just starting to thicken up and get ready to flower…Meanwhile, my flowerbeds are pretty much on their own. {smile}
Are you doing a garden this year? What’s your family’s favorite food? Have you ever thought of how you could grow it yourself?
See where I’m sharing this week…
