Everything is in the Ground

Last Saturday morning we woke up to a light frost. None of the new seedlings suffered any damage that I could see but I’m glad I hadn’t planted the rest of the garden. When we lived in the Adirondacks, we always waited until Memorial Day weekend or later to plant the garden. Even with the slightly longer season here, that still seems like a good rule of thumb. After a frosty start, the day warmed up and I did finally transplant my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and herbs. I also planted the rest of my seeds. It took me about three hours to get everything set to my liking. Now all my raised beds are filled.
 

Tomato and pepper plants getting used to their new environment

Yesterday evening I weeded my garden for the first time. There really weren’t many weeds to pull yet but there were enough to compete with the seedlings. Plus, I actually like weeding. There’s something about moving through the garden, pulling out wayward stalks, leaving just the desired plants and fresh, clean ground behind, that I find very satisfying. My back and legs may beg to differ but my muscles get used to it fairly quickly. I also took the opportunity to thin some of the plants. I always feel a little bad about pulling up seedlings before they’ve reached their full potential but it is necessary. 

Pull the grass, leave the chard.

Another thing I felt badly about doing was pulling the flowers off my strawberry plants. I know that keeping the plants from setting fruit helps them grow stronger roots but I really like strawberries. As with all home-grown produce, strawberries taste so much better when you grow them yourself. I may give in eventually and let a few berries grow or I may not. I just have to keep reminding myself that I’ll be grateful for this season’s sacrifice of fresh strawberries next year.

Strawberry plant in bloom

Removed flowers and tiny strawberries – just wait until next year!

It’s amazing how quickly some of the plants are growing. The turnip seedlings appeared just four days after planting the seeds. The pak choi will be ready to pick in no time (it is a miniature variety) and we should have our first batch of arugula in about a week. I’m really looking forward to eating fresh produce from our own garden but as I said to a coworker today, “don’t count your zucchini before they hatch.”

Pak Choi on May 22

Pak Choi on May 27

Unfortunately, I had to cut my adventures in gardening a little short yesterday. While wiring the lattice fence to the posts to make it sturdier, I felt something like spider webs on the back of my hand. Since I had seen a couple spiders while working, I thought nothing of it. Spiders don’t mess with my plants and as long as they are outside I let them be. When the odd, light tickling sensation did not go away after brushing off my hand, I took a closer look. There were dozens of tiny, pale gray creepy-crawlies moving over my skin. I don’t know if they were baby spiders or mites or what but my garden time was over. I put away my tools, went onto my back porch, stripped down, left my clothes outside the door, streaked past my husband and jumped in the shower. I can’t say that the bugs bothered me that much – they are a side-effect of working outside – but I was glad to be all nice and clean again. Hopefully, the tiny beasties were a one-time encounter.

Here a lovely bee to take your mind off a swarm of tiny crawling insects.

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

When people ask what I’m planting in my garden, I tell them “everything.” They laugh and I laugh and it’s all great fun but it’s also sort of true. I am planting a lot of different things this year. There are two reasons for this: 1. since it is a brand-new garden, I want to see what actually grows well in this climate with this soil and 2. I have accumulated a lot of seeds over the years and I want to use them.

I am taking inspiration from the Shakers so I’m planting vegetables they would have traditionally planted – beans, beets, carrots, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, cantaloupe, onions, parsley, peas, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, sage, spinach, squash, tomatoes and turnips. I’m also stepping out of the Shaker model a bit and planting soybeans, kohlrabi, fennel, kale, chard and pak choi.

The bulk of my garden space is devoted to annual vegetables but I also planted some perennial favorites - asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, horseradish, chives and thyme. I have always wanted a strawberry patch, especially since I haven’t been able to make my annual picking trip with my grandmother. She’s still alive and well at 90 and still picking strawberries but I’m a couple hundred miles away now. After her hip replacement some years ago, one of her physical therapy goals was to be able to get down on her knees and back up again to pick strawberries; a goal she achieved, by the way.

With the gorgeous, warm (almost hot) weather of the past few weeks, I found that all the garden stores were out of things like asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries so I had to order them online. I don’t like ordering live plants like tomatoes and peppers, though. I would rather have a good look at the plants in person. So, even though it is still too early to plant such things, I went to the greenhouse this weekend. I worried that if I waited I would not get the varieties I wanted. It was a successful trip. I got a Juliet tomato plant (my favorite), as well as, a Beefsteak, an Early Girl and a yellow pear tomato. I got peppers and eggplants, too, and some perennials for around the house. Now, we just have to keep them alive until it’s time to put them in the ground. At least with the humidity up we can use the water from the dehumidifier in the basement to keep them watered.

Plants from the greenhouse waiting to be planted.

I’m afraid I was rather short on pictures to illustrate this post but here are some photos from this weekend.

First Seeds in the Ground

It was the perfect weekend to work on the garden. I’m glad I planned ahead so we had nearly two full days to move soil and build fencing. When our six cubic yards of garden blend soil arrived at around 10:30 Saturday morning, the driver told me that it was a good thing I had gotten my order in early. He was already booked solid for deliveries and folks who had called on Friday, presumably trying to take advantage of the gorgeous weather that had been forecast, would have to wait until Monday.

Soil ready to be moved into the garden beds

As I was paying for the soil, another delivery truck arrived with the twelve blocks of peat moss I had also ordered. It was kind of fun blocking up the street for a little while all for the sake of my new garden. From my experience last year with the museum’s garden beds, I know that the soil around here can be heavy with clay. Even as part of a garden blend that contained sand and compost, I knew we’d have to lighten it up a bit.

Peat moss with a bonus free gift – a wooden pallet!

So, with all our bed-filling ingredients ready to go, my husband and I got to work. Before we moved any soil, however, we lined the sides of each bed with 7 mil plastic. The recycled plywood we used to build the beds was pressure treated. That’s why it’s still usable and not just a rotten pile of mush but we don’t want chemicals leaching into the soil and then into the plants.

It took about three hours and 52 wheelbarrow trips to fill all eight beds with layers of garden soil, peat moss, and shredded leaf mulch. My husband shoveled and moved load after load while I raked everything into the beds and blended it all together. By the middle of the afternoon, the pile of dirt was nearly gone and I was ready to sit down.

Progress by the end of the day Saturday

On Sunday, we picked up work again. My husband moved the last of the soil into the garden beds and I did some more blending. It think it’ll be a while until all the soil components are really worked together but if gardening has taught me anything, it’s patience. With the beds now filled to my liking, it was time to plant some seeds. The first official planting in the garden was actually a horseradish root. After that, I put in my cool season vegetables – spinach, chard, peas, beets, carrots, scallions, pak choi, and arugula. I planted them all in one bed in a series of wide rows using twine as a guide. I made a small fence for the peas at the end of the row for easier picking.

Rows lined off and ready to plant

While I was planting, my husband was building. We need a fence around the garden. That is an indisputable fact. There is a lot of wildlife in the area and while I enjoy watching the deer and rabbits and occasional woodchuck, I do not plan on feeding them from my garden. Most of the perennials growing around the house have already been sampled. We salvaged some lattice fence from the old pool to use around the garden.

Starting the fence

The lattice is two feet tall so when placed on top of the edge of the garden beds, we get a three-foot tall fence. On the north side, however, the beds sit into a slight hill so it is, effectively, only a two-foot fence. A deer can easily lean over a fence like that to nibble on my plants. I plan on planting vegetable along the inside of the fence that, in my experience, deer don’t usually browse but we also have a back-up plan. We added five-foot tall posts in the corner so that, if needed, we can stretch a line higher above the fence and add tin pie pans or whatever that might deter the deer. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all works out.

The garden on Sunday afternoon

I made it through the weekend with just a few minor scrapes and bruises, some sore muscles and an unexpected sunburn on the backs of my elbows. I have to say, that when I stood in my garden with the fence all around and the first seeds planted I felt almost giddy with happiness. It is exactly how I envisioned it!

My Shaker Garden!

Waiting for the Dirt

Things are finally moving along with the garden. We’ve finished up construction of the raised beds (there are now four 4-foot by 11-foot beds and four 2-foot by 11-foot) and got the gravel filled into the side paths. It’s really coming together now.

Finished garden beds

The real work will take place this weekend. The garden soil is scheduled to be delivered on Saturday. I expect it will take many hours and countless wheelbarrow loads to fill the beds with soil, peat moss, compost, and maple leaf mulch from last fall. I’m no stranger to a shovel but I know this is going to be a lot of work. I already warned my coworkers that I will probably be useless on Monday!

Raised beds waiting for soil

Once the soil is in place, I’m ready to plant. After quite a bit of consultation of gardening books, arranging, erasing and rearranging, I think I’ve finally come up with a layout for the garden. I have most of the seeds I want to plant and will be purchasing plants like tomatoes and peppers. I didn’t start any seeds early but I’ll probably try it next year. A majority of the seeds are left over from the small “surrogate” gardens I planted last year. With no space of my own, I worked garden beds at the museum at which I work and at my in-laws’ home. I’m really looking forward to having a nice, big garden of my own with all sorts of vegetables and herbs again.

Plotting and planning on my living room floor

The "final" garden plan

Once the garden beds are all filled and set, we’re going to have to get the fence in place. Last night, we watched two deer wander around our backyard. They are probably the young ones we saw when we first moved here. They are so used to life in the suburbs that they have very little fear of people. They’ve already nipped off some of the daylily leaves right next to my back porch as well as the newly sprouted hostas in front of the house. I fear it’s going to be a long battle against the deer. They are quite nice to watch, though. We’ve also been having a good time watching the rabbit that has been spending its evenings in our back yard. 

Bunny!

Dividing the Lilies

Finally, a nice spring weekend! After snow on Easter Sunday, I was beginning to think that I would never get my hands into the soil. But this past weekend was gorgeous. I was even able to hang some sheets and towels out on the clothesline for the first time this year. On Saturday, I had the chance to split up some daylilies by our back porch. We have two nice, large plants that were just starting to send up shoots. I decided it would be nice to spread them out along the entire length of the porch.

Before – those bushes needed to go

I have never been much of a flower gardener but I do know that daylilies are almost indestructible. This made for a fairly quick and easy project. I did Google when and how to split up daylilies just to make sure I had the right idea of what I was doing. Here's how it went:

Daylilies ready to be divided

Step 1: Dig them up

I took a shovel and dug all the way around the plants until each came up as a single clump.

Step 2: Split them up

I then drove the shovel down through the plants and split them into several large chunks. (Instructions I read said to split them into 6-8” pieces. I just split them up however looked right.)

What a lovely chunk of plant!

Step 3: Dig more holes

I wanted to put in a full row of the lilies along my porch so I dug holes in a relatively straight line. (Keeping the plants about 12” apart was recommended. Again, I just did what looked right.)

Step 4: Put them in the holes

I put a chunk of lily (very technical, I know) into each hole root side down, obviously, and filled in around it with dirt. I packed the dirt down firmly by hand. Then I moved onto the next hole and did the same. I did not feel the need to water the transplants in as it had been raining just days before and the soil was still pretty moist.

After – the line of new transplants

Step 5: Stand back, admire your work and hope for the best

In about half an hour or so, the two daylily plants magically became twelve. I’m really looking forward to watching them grow.

Three days later and still looking good

Oh, and by the way, some of the mystery bulbs are indeed daffodils.

First blossom of the spring!