garden 2010

I realized yesterday that I should post about our gardening efforts this year, since we're almost a month in already!

This year we tried something new: growing our transplants from seed. These are normally things we'd buy at the nursery, but we wanted to give it a shot ourselves. Eventually we'd like to be saving all our seeds and replanting exclusively from those, but we're easing in to it.



Oh--and our seed-growing spot? Master bathroom. Bathtub. (really looking forward to taking a long luxurious bath again one of these days...)


Our original plan this year was to nearly double the size of our garden, but Neil remembered (as he was tilling, and fortunately before he tilled that area!) that our electrical lines run right through the planned expansion site. So...our garden is a little bigger than last year, but not as big as we'd like. We're still contemplating our options and dreaming about the day when our garden will be the size of our current backyard.

A couple of weeks ago we planted peas, lettuces (lots of different kinds), a couple of varieties of spinach, green onions, leeks, kale, and radishes. All of those are now up and growing happily; yesterday we planted turnips, carrots, parsnips, beets, and more radishes (interplanted with the parsnips to break the soil for the weaker parsnips). Ideally, we would have planted those earlier, but we had to wait until we re-tilled the almost-bricklike clay that comprises our backyard (awesome developers who scalped and sold off the topsoil).


Jules standing near the lettuce box (you can see the just-transplanted leeks in this shot)

The chives have been up for about six weeks now and we've been eating them quite a bit; the oregano and rhubarb are up as well and almost ready to begin harvesting. The raspberry has put out a million new shoots and we really need to get pruning there...

If you're interested, here's everything that's going into our garden this year:

• Broccoli (Calabrese)
• Herbs (lavendar, rosemary, dill, cilantro, basil--oregano and chives already growing)
• Peppers (Sweet Red, Sunbright, California Wonder, jalapeno, Anaheim)
• Leeks
• Eggplant (Black Beauty)
• Tomatoes (Fourth of July, Brandy Boy, Big Mama, Best Boy, Steak Sandwich, Super Sweet 100)
• Okra (Clemson spineless)
• Brussels sprouts (Long Island Improved)
• Watermelon (Sweet Scarlet Hybrid)
• Cantalope (Ambrosia)
• Pumpkin (Small sugar)
• Peas (Super Sugar Snap, Little Marvel)
• Radish (Cherry Belle)
• Turnip (Purple-top White Globe)
• Spinach (Baby's Leaf & Harmony hybrid)
• Parsnips
• Yellow onions (sets)
• Beets (Detroit Dark Red)
• Kale (Vates Dwarf Blue)
• Swiss Chard (Bright Lights)
• Lettuce (Simpson Elite, Vivian, Burpee Bibb, Little Caesar)
• Beans (Bush Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder)
• Corn (Early and Often)
• Cucumber (Sweet Burpless hybrid)
• Squashes (zucchini hybrid, Pic-n-Pic, Waltham Butternut)