i ate some lettuce from the garden last week. turtle-man enjoyed it as well.

Catch up?

So, I haven't posted in a while, but our garden is trudging along.  We have put nearly everything in, except some herb and pepper seedlings, which we are saving in case this cool, wet weather knocks out some of the plants already in the garden. 

Right now we have lots of peppers (which we started inside), radish, carrots, lettuce, pole beans, peas (we have flowers and fruit already!), basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, cilantro, spinach, and lots of onions. 

Now all we need is for it to heat up so that all these plants can actually grow!

Hopefully will have pictures with the next post.

It's Time!

We have had such a warm spring this year, that I think we will be able to plant some cool-weather veggies (spinach, lettuce, radish) this week!  We got permission to work in the garden before the traditional work day in May.  So we sent in our rental fee and plan to pick up compost from the county yard waste site ourselves.  I stopped by there on Saturday and the plots are marked with stakes, so we will know where ours starts and ends.  The soil is not frozen and very fluffy.  All we need to do is mix in some compost, measure and mark our planting beds and get started!  I am really excited to get back to gardening. 

Plans for Next Season

Eric and I are planning to garden again this summer.  We learned so much last year and hope that our yields will continue to improve with time.  We have already made plans for what, when, and how to plant for next year.  I will add that soon.

I failed on my plan...

Like I actually thought it wasn't going to happen...but I fell down on the job. I didn't post much towards the end of the season, mainly for two reasons. The garden was no longer 'fun' and 'exciting', but mostly because August/September are my busiest times for doing field research. The last I wanted to do after being outside in a soybean field all day was to come home and crawl around in my garden! Luckily at this point all we had to do was harvest, but I wish I would have stayed on top of the posts. We got our first significant snow fall today (yes, TODAY!) so the gardening season is just about over. All that is left is to clean out our plot and lay down some compost. We will be back next year (so long as the community garden will have us...I don't think we did anything to warrant expulsion, so we should be good) with a much more thought out plan. We already have a map and I might post that along with our plans over the winter. Maybe I will do better next year!

So its been a really really really long time...oops...

Well its been a while, but the garden is going well. Yesterday I picked a multitude of peppers (especially poblanos and anaheims) and my first tomatoes. The tomatoes are a little small (a little bigger than a golf ball), but I am going to make salsa with the peppers and cilantro I picked yesterday.

We have pulled out the peas since they were dying and the beans are about ready to go as well. We will probably pull them this weekend. We have lots of beautiful flowers, marigolds and zinnias, and our herbs that we didn't pick in time are also flowering. Earlier in the week I picked some fresh dill and made veggie dill dip.

Sorry its been a while...

I was out of town for two weekends and I am finally catching up with things. These pictures are from July 6, the last time I took pictures at the garden. We are harvesting more peapods than we know what to do with! We are also starting to get beans. The cilantro and basil are also ready to 'harvest', but we will just be taking some here and there, when we need it. We finally have lettuce that is large enough to harvest.

We replanted the spinach and have some carrots coming up. The tomatoes are about the size of ping pong balls and we have tiny green and jalapeno peppers!

Because our peas are shading the peppers, the tomatoes and turnips are encroaching on our neighbor's plots, and the beans are taking over, we have already been thinking about better plans for next year's garden. Ideas include: fewer peas, pole beans instead of bush beans, only one tomato plant and no turnips!

Its a jungle!

The garden has exploded! Its like a jungle of peas, beans, potatoes, lettuce, radishes and turnips. We were able to harvest our first batch of snow peas today. They taste excellent right out off the plant!

We've got flowers!

The peas are really starting to flower and the peppers and tomatoes aren't far behind. Without flowers we can get no fruit, so I am excited that our hard work is really starting to come to "fruition" (pun intended...).

We've got radishes!

We harvested many of our first batch of radishes today. They are the biggest radishes I have ever seen!


Everything else is moving right along. We planted carrots in the rows between the remaining radishes...so we can add another crop to our list!

Finally some rain!

We finally got some rain this weekend- over an inch. So we were able to take a couple of days off from watering. Some of the radishes are nearly ready and can probably be harvested soon. Everything else will have to wait out the cool temperatures, as it won't be above 70 degrees again until after Wednesday.

Our first garden meeting was tonight. I took the job of 'historian' and will also be updating a blog for the entire garden. I will add the link when I get things up and running.

22 Days

Its been three weeks and we have signs of life from nearly everything we planted. Today we picked up some free mulch and spread it around some of the plants. Since we have had nearly NO rain, I hope the mulch helps keep the soil moist so we don't have to water for 25 minutes twice a week. The lettuce and the herbs just don't want to take. In case there was some issue with our previous planting, we planted more lettuce, cilantro, and basil today. We also added dill to the mix. Eric picked out some marigold and zinnia seeds to plant around the edges of the plot. These are supposed to attract beneficial insects (insects that eat pests like nematodes, aphids, whiteflies, etc.). Hopefully it will make our plot look a bit more 'pretty'.

The radishes were supposed to be ready today, but considering the lack of rain and the cool evenings we have been having, I think we will have to wait another week. Our second round of beans and peas are up and moving right along. Hopefully we will get some warm, wet weather to urge things along. Our peppers and tomatoes don't seem to be growing much, but once the nights warm up, I hope that changes.

Cutworms

One of the other gardeners emailed everyone last night to warn us about cutworms he found in his plot. They are larvae of moths that overwinter in the soil. They chew plants at the base of the stem, causing the entire plant to break off. The gardener had lost a tomato plant to them. We went to our plot today to check for cutworms. Fortunately, we didn't find any. We should have killed any that were in our plot when we tilled the soil. For more info about cutworms, the U of MN Extension has a good information sheet.

not today, dear

We didn't do any gardening today.

Just checking in...

Went back to the garden again today. Gave everything a little bit of water and checked on our transplants. Everything looks good still, but the peppers are getting beaten up by the wind. They are still small and should be able to stand up to it. We could use some rain!

After two weeks...we've got a garden!

Today we took a risk and transplanted our pepper and tomato seedlings (technically the last frost date for our area is June 1). We have FOUR types of peppers: green bell, anaheim, poblano, and jalapeno. I don't know anything about tomatoes, so I picked an early producing variety called '4th of July'. In fact, I don't particularly enjoy tomatoes in general, but last year we picked up some fresh tomatoes at the farmer's market and I couldn't believe how much better they taste when they haven't been shipped across the country in the back of a truck. Add some fresh mozzarella, basil, and balsamic vinegar and you've got an awesome caprese salad (but even fresh tomatoes don't belong on sandwiches). And since tomatoes seem to be the cornerstone of the home garden, I thought I would give it a try.

We also put up some trellises for our peas. We planted bush beans, so they shouldn't need support. We took out the eggplant and okra because they didn't look like they were going to survive and we needed the space for the tomatoes and peppers. We also planted a second round of peas and beans. We transplanted the free basil I picked up from the University greenhouse and planted basil from seed.

We still haven't seen any sign of life from the herbs we planted from seed and nothing yet from the lettuce or turnips...they should all be coming up very soon! If we don't see anything by next week, we might replant.

The potatoes we planted on a whim are coming up. Some green leaves are pushing through the small hill. Spinach is also coming along.

After 9 days

Went back to the garden today to water (we haven't had much rain this spring). The okra (top picture) and eggplant (middle picture) didn't do so well over the weekend. We had a particularly cold night Saturday night. I don't think they are going to make it.

5 days in...

We have something green! Our radishes are coming up (top photo), which is no surprise considering they should be ready to harvest in 22 days. I picked up some free okra and eggplant seedlings in the campus greenhouses. These are both warm weather plants, but we didn't want to keep them at home, so we decided to plant them earlier than would be recommended. If there is any cold weather, they probably won't survive. I don't particularly enjoy eggplant or okra, so their loss wouldn't be a big deal. But I just couldn't pass up free plants!

Day 1

This is our plot, it has just been planted with seeds- so no green stuff yet...

Let the Garden Begin...

Today was opening day at the Falcon Heights Community Garden. The garden is located in a local park and has 29-12ft by 10ft plots. I signed up earlier in the year and we were lucky enough to get a spot. Its a very popular program and I am excited to be a part of it.

We planted seeds of: leaf lettuce, spinach, red potatoes, oregano, parsley, cilantro, snow peas, pea pods, bush beans, turnips, and radish. We thought we would start with 'easy' plants, but it hasn't necessarily ended up that way. When we were turning our soil and adding compost, we found some small red potatoes already sprouting in the soil. So I figured we might as well plant them and built a small hill for the potatoes. Potatoes are notoriously difficult to grow and organic potatoes are notoriously difficult to come by (many fungal diseases and a couple of severe insect pests)...we will see how that turns out.

I am going to try to take weekly pictures to document how things are coming along.