The
2016 gardening season is in full swing now. Nearly everything is planted in the
garden and we’ve already been able to pick some things. It is wonderful to be
in the second year of a garden. The chives were up and ready to use by the
middle of April and on the 25th of that month we had our first
asparagus. We made a rhubarb pie on May 7th. We had to supplement the
fresh rhubarb with some frozen from last year to fill the crust but it tasted
very good. The strawberries are coming back strong as well.
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| Garden at rest in mid-April |
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| Home-grown asparagus - yum! |
As
usual, I spent much of late winter/early spring poring over seed catalogs and
working out my garden layout. After the fungus on the chard and beets last year
I had to make sure I rotated things around this year. That’s just good practice
anyway, but it did lead to a lot of erasing on my plan. I thought I had it all
set when I realized I had put the tomatoes where the potatoes were last year
and that’s a no no. So, I had to make some changes but finally got everything
worked out.
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| Potatoes starting to peek through |
I
put the first seeds in the ground on April 29 – scallions, beets and arugula. At
the beginning of May we put in the potatoes, carrots, pak choy, chard, snap
peas and garden peas. Since then we have been battling squirrels who think
their nuts are still stashed in the garden from last winter. In all fairness, I
have pulled out two acorns that were on their way to turning into oak trees so
the squirrels are not entirely wrong.
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| An oak tree in the garden? I don't think so. |
Nearly
every day there were new little drill holes in the raised beds. I wouldn’t mind
the digging so much if it didn’t disturb the new seedlings. The only seeds the
tree rats seem to actually be digging up and eating are the snap peas which
have been entirely cleaned out. All the other plants are just collateral damage
of the digging. I tried dusting everything with cayenne pepper but that seemed
to have no effect. I probably didn’t use enough. One container got spread over
the entire garden. I have some other pepper-based repellent on the way from
Amazon so we’ll see how that works.
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| The Enemy |
The
strawberry bed seems to be a favorite place for the squirrel digging. Again,
they have not damage the plants, they are just digging everywhere among them. I
worried that when the strawberries actually did come on that the squirrels
would finally turn their attention to the berries. After waiting over a year
for the fruit myself, I am not about to give them up to the squirrels or the
chipmunks or the birds, for that matter. So, I got some bird netting and made a
little cage over the plants. I got that done a few days ago and so far so good.
(fingers crossed)
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| Protecting the strawberries |
I
just got the rest of the seeds in the ground yesterday. The list is similar to
last year – corn, pumpkins, beans, cucumbers, summer squashes, acorn squash. I
gave up on some vegetables I planted last year like kale, turnips and spinach
and have added watermelon radishes to the mix. I started several plants indoors
earlier in the spring but I forgot to start hardening them off until yesterday morning
so I’m not ready to plant them out yet. I’ll write more about starting the
seeds in my next post.
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| View of the garden on May 28 |
My
husband asked me the other day if it actually saved any money growing produce
ourselves or if it was cheaper to just buy vegetables at the grocery store. My
first thought was that it must be less expensive at the store, especially if
you figure in the time we put in to keep the garden running. Of course that’s
one of my favorite parts of gardening so I hesitate to consider that an
expense. So, I decided to run some numbers. This year, we spent $23.89 on seeds
and $55.77 to amend the soil. We also spent $374.87 for everything needed to
start seeds indoors. That’s a grand total $454.53 (so far). Will the garden
produce that much store-quality veg? I don’t know. If it does, great. If not,
well, at least I had a great time playing in the dirt!
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| Pak choy seedling |
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| Strawberry blossoms |
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| Arugula before thinning |
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| Chive blossoms |
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| Garden pea seedling |
