May 17 '12

Here I am again :)  This picture is of where the sweet potatoes are going to be  planted.  I received 25 slips in the mail a couple of days ago.  Now I have to wait for the weather to settle.  I found a website that gives precise information about the heat needed for sweet potatoes to grow and produce well.  In our area (zone 4b), they should not be planted until the middle of June.  I have hilled the soil and placed black plastic in hopes this will warm the soil enough to plant a little earlier than that.  I have georgia jets that have a maturity of 85-90 days, fine for our short growing season.   There is space for 9 or 10 plants to be set out.....this year :)  If they do well, I will plant more next year.  

I wanted more of an herb garden but the space just is not there for it.  Here are two of my plants from last year, a horehound and a sage.  Off to the right of the sage mound there is a new seedling that volunteered from last year's plant.  It is borage.  Borage has flowers that bees love so is a good plant to have in the garden to attract those little pollinators. 

This is supposed to be a square foot garden LOL.  After almost a month in the ground the carrots and onions are just beginning to come up and I think it will not be all of that I planted.  I will just have to wait and see what comes up then fill in the spaces.  All the little seedlings are sweet annie.  That plant reseeds profusely (much like the borage above)so I will never have to buy seeds again :)  I will just thin them, then pick one out and transplant it.  That is it for my 4 herbs in the garden.....

Above is a pic of one of my rhubarb plants that I put out.  3 out of 4 made it so I am happy with them.  Darn it!  Another one that I have to wait at least a year to get a taste LOL

It looks like 8 of the 10 red skinned potatoes I laid on the ground have sprouted.  The others may have sprouted and are just not peeking out of the hay stack yet :)

I broke down and bought this lilac bush at the grocery store.  It is doing well.  There are lots of new leaves on it.

This is a poor pic of the red raspberry stick LOL.  At the very top of the stick you can see leaves Yayyyy.  Out of 8 that I set out, only 4 are showing new growth.  Some of them are growing shoots from the roots instead of leaves on the above ground stick.  I hope that the remaining bare ones are simply taking their sweet time about it.  :)  There are 2 different varieties.  5 of them are Caroline variety.   3 of them are Heritage variety.

A mostly good beginning

Today I decided to take the chance and plant my tomato plants.  The big one in the foreground is from Sell's greenhouse.  They always have huge plants available.  This one has several nice green cherry tomatoes almost fully grown now.  before the end of this month I will be eating ripe tomatoes.  :)

See the bamboo teepees?  I am using them this year along with sisal twine for trellises.

I also planted 4 romas and one beefsteak type.  There is a space saved for another variety of roma.  There will also be a tomatillo planted somewhere in there. 

This is a general view of the strawberry patch in the foreground, sage and horehound in the middle and the red potatoes covered by old hay.  The potatoes are about a foot high now.  I planted them very early when we had the unseasonably warm weather on March.  I will have to remember to harvest some horehound tomorrow.  Maybe some sage too.

Between the potatoes and fence in the back is where the rhubarb will live.  

Speaking of rhubarb, this shows the placement of 3 of the 4 I put out today.  The order I  received should have had 6 but there were only 4 and I believe one is dead but I put it out anyhow in the hopes that it is still dormant.  The others had a little bud on new growth though so I am not hopeful that the one will live.  Oh well, they will grow fast.  They went into a spot that has a lot of nice organic matter in the soil.  Can't wait for next year's garden.  I will also have blueberries and red raspberries next year.

Here is my second planting of strawberries.  They look really good, there is new growth, they seem to have taken to their new home very well.  They are day neutral so I need to pick any flowers off until the first part of July, then I can let them produce berries.  They will probably be small but will be sooooo much better than store bought.  Oh Yeah!

I don't have a picture of it but a few of my red raspberry sticks that I planted have some tiny new buds on them  Yayyyyy

The lilac bush that I planted by the shed is beginning to be covered with a lot of new leaf buds.  Next year there will be a few posies on it. 

Oh I almost forgot.  The carrots are NOT coming up :((  I think they were planted too deep.  Who did that?  LOL   "sigh"  I will have to replant that entire patch......argh

There are some beets coming up as well as some spinach.