Summer Garden

Early summer harvest: onion, potatoes, and tomatoes

Last year, right around the time that Abram was born, the weeds in my garden went into hyperdrive, growing so fast you could almost watch it.  Being rather busy at the time, I mostly closed my eyes and looked away.  (Other than dragging various family members out to hoe for me....)  This year most of the plants going into hyperdrive are producing food, so I don't mind so much.  Of course, the weeds are going crazy, too, but they don't have quite as much open territory to work with this year!  The picture above shows some of the early fruits of my labor: some potatoes I dug up to try, the first onion, two tomatoes I picked a little early in case they split with the rain, and one green one that I broke off by accident.

 The pepper plants are doing really well, too, with big, plump peppers hanging from all of them.  Well, all of the first-planted round (to the left of the milk jugs in the photo below).  The ones from the second round of planting (to the right of the milk jugs) are still not very happy campers.  They're greening up a bit, and some are finally starting to bloom.  Overall I think that the opportunity to turn this ground after pulling out the pak choi and spinach was NOT worth the delay planting the peppers.  The peppers on the left were interplanted between the romaine and spinach as babies; I think I'll do more interplanting next year.  What do you think?

Early- and late-planted pepper beds

Eggplant blossoms

The eggplants are just beginning to bloom.  The flea beetles are still chewing them up, which I thought they wouldn't do once the plants reached a decent size, and last week I found a potato beetle on one of them.  N is not a big fan of eggplant, and I did plant 5 plants, so maybe it's just as well if they aren't too productive.  However, the plants are still growing and trying to bloom.  Aren't the blossoms gorgeous?

 

Potato "patch", almost ready for harvest

 My potato patch is getting close to harvest ready.  Several of the other gardeners have already dug their potatoes, but I'm waiting until the vines are done, since I'm not really ready to start planting fall lettuce yet anyway.  The ones in the foreground of the picture are the Yukon Gold that N wanted to plant - they're really almost ready and I've already dug some of the them.  Then in the background, kind of all over the place, are the german butterballs.  They won't be ready for at least a couple more weeks.

Marigolds taking over my onion patch

 I've been really surprised by how happy my marigolds are.  They are growing almost as fast as the weeds.  (But at a significant advantage since I don't rip off their tops periodically.)  I ended up scattering them here and there throughout the garden, wherever there was an empty spot I could take advantage of.  In some places they've become almost a nuisance - for example here they cast a lot of shade on the onion plant behind them and the bulb is noticeably smaller than the others.  But they are supposed to be helpful for keeping away pests, and how could I get mad at them, anyway?  They're so cheerful and happy! 

You can see in the picture some of the onion tops fell over during the crazy-fast storm system last week.  I've been watching for the tops to fall over so I know when they're "done", but I don't think this counts since the leaves are still green.  At this point I'm picking them as they're needed.

I'm definitely much happier to have the food and flowers than the weeds.

How's the Garden?

The community garden plot

June is a precarious time in the garden.  There's a lot of empty space around plants that aren't yet fully established - prime weed-growing real estate.  There's also (in my area) not a whole lot of rain falling, so many of the newly planted summer crops need water.  Add that to the relatively little harvesting and planting to be done and the human tendency to steer clear of heat and burning-bright sunshine and you have a real recipe for disaster.  This is when we lose a lot of the new gardeners at the community garden.

Luckily, I am behind schedule this year, so I have plenty of reasons to crawl out of bed and go take care of things.  Here's a rundown of the crops currently in the community garden plot:

• Potatoes - seem to have some sort of fungus or disease causing the outside edges of the leaves to blacken, but I think it won't seriously harm the yield.  At any rate there will certainly be plenty of potatoes this year.
• Tomatoes - Both rows are setting fruit, but the ones in the back row are larger.  Both rows also seem to have the fungal problem I was worried about in the spring, which I think is gray mold.  The back row really needs to be tied and pruned - I'll have to get to that this week.
• Garlic - some if not all of the garlic is probably ready to be picked.  The plants are browning and seem to be shrinking before my eyes as the energy from the plant slowly goes into storage in the bulb.
• Carrots - there are three rounds in the ground right now, with the oldest ones ready to pick and the smallest ones barely out of the ground.  I really should have put more compost into the carrot bed before I planted it - the carrots I'm harvesting are pretty stubby and crooked and split from the hard clay soil.
• The back peas aren't really producing much anymore, thanks to the heat, I just haven't gotten around to pulling them out yet.  I'll plant some beans there soon.
• The onions are so exciting right now.  It's my first year growing bulbing onions, so I'm trying not to get too excited, but it's really hard when they are clearly making onions!  I don't know when they'll be done, but I'm thinking at least another month.
• The asparagus seem to be loving life.  They could use some light weeding, and maybe some fertilizer soon, but mostly they seem to take care of themselves.
• The back pepper plants are starting to produce lots of peppers (bell and chili), while the front ones are still getting over being trasplanted.  Also I think the front ones are a little chlorotic.  I think the wood chips I added were not sufficiently rotted and now I'm worried there's not enough nitrogen in those two beds.  I watered them with some fish emulsion, and threw some more coffee grounds over the soil, so hopefully they will start to look better soon.
• The celeriac is bushy and I think I can see the tops of the thick roots widening below the soil.  I'm continuing to weed the bed, but other than that I leave them alone.
• There are little cucumber starts tucked between some of my pepper plants that look like they're starting to take off.  It's good because I'm almost out of pickles!
• The eggplants are all growing, although they're still getting torn up pretty badly by flea beetles.  The ones I started at home, which were horribly ragged when I planted them, are starting to close the gap with the nursery-bought transplant.
• The bed that used to have the broccoli in it is full of new little things whose outcome is far from certain.  There are two watermelon starts, a butternut squash start, a spare bell pepper plant and marigold that look pretty happy, and lots of little carrot and basil sprouts.
• The front bed is newly planted with summer squash: zucchini, yellow squash, and tromboncino (seeds).  There's also an extra 6-8 feet of space in there that I think I may use for beans.   I definitely don't want to plant extra summer squash!
• I haven't seen much action where I planted the parsley seeds.  I wonder if those seeds are no good any more.  I'll give them a little more time and then try some other seeds.

Whew!   The little bit of extra planning I've done this year has made a tremendous difference in how efficiently I'm using the garden space.  Can you tell I'm really proud of the garden?  Cause I am.

Watching the Potatoes

My friend Renee Michelle once told me some advice she said came from her mother: that you can't get your floor clean unless you get right down there and scrub it.  Curious, I knelt down on my floor one day with a sponge and a mop, Cinderella-style, and tried it.  Yugh!  I'd thought my mop was doing a wonderful job, but upon closer inspection the floor was actually really dirty!

Potato plants -see the barely noticeable yellowing on that bottom middle leaf?

Little potato flower buds

Garden plants are kind of like that, too; if you don't kneel down and look at it real close, everything might seem fine.  By the time you notice the problem from standing height, it is because the plant is suffering, and it is probably too late to do much.  Having learned this lesson the hard way many times, I try to make it a policy to look closely at all my plants on a regular basis.  (It also helps that I bring a very short person with me every time.)  Right now I'm watching the potatoes very closely because I think it was about this time last year that I failed to notice early signs of potato beetles eating them and possibly infecting them with...something.  (See Potato Problem.)  I have squashed two adult beetles so far, and spotted just a bit of damage.  I also found a moderately large egg mass.

Fortunately, I think this year's plants have a jump start on the bugs.  I noticed last week that several of the plants are starting to form flower buds, which they didn't have a chance to do last year.  I'm crossing my fingers for a serious spud harvest this year!

Spring Progress

 Some (more) not-so-quick bullet points:

Potato seedling peeking out at the world

Happy broccoli

Pea seedlings at the community garden

• The broccoli is looking utterly fabulous.  Even the poor little sacrificial lamb that didn't fit under the cover looks beautiful, no sign of cabbage worms since I picked off some eggs a few weeks ago.  I put coffee grounds all around the plants, hoping to mask the scent - maybe it's working?
• The potatoes are up.  I have some rogue viking purple potatoes at home in a recycling tote, plus German Butterball and Yukon Gold (N's choice) at the community garden.  The ones in the tote are already a little nibbled in one spot, but I can't see anything that might be causing the damage, and it seems to have stopped.
• Peas are up at home and at the community garden.  I actually replanted some of the empty spots at the community garden last week, so hopefully those will be coming up soon, too.
• Last week I went ahead and planted seven of my poor little tomato seedlings at the community garden, filling one of the two beds I'd planned to use for tomatoes this year.  They are not looking any better out there than they did in pots, so Tuesday I went ahead and planted the second bed with seeds.  The trouble is that now I don't want to re-plant the first bed with tomatoes this year, in case it's contaminated.  Sigh.  I'm working on a plot to rearrange the garden, but it's going to take some significant machinations, since I planned everything so well in the first place.  Drat my cleverness and my black tomato thumb.
• I planted some  ginger in my home garden.  I don't know if it will come to anything, but I had the space and thought I would try.
• I have given up weighing the lettuce.  There is so much of it!  Yesterday when N saw the salad bowl on the table he gave a deep sigh, then sat down manfully and began dishing it out.  I grew a lot this year, thinking that I just wanted to use all of the garden space during the spring, even if that meant giving away a lot of it.
• The romaine leaves seem very thick to me, compared to those I've grown at home in the past, and even compared to the ones I buy at the store, although it's hard to tell because mine are all open, with shorter leaves.  (Am I supposed to be doing something to make them grow in a tight head like the store-bought ones?  I don't know!)
• I'm trying to diversify the herb garden, which has been somewhat neglected since I installed it.  (Herbs are just never a priority, but really they should be, since they are so easy once started!)  I transplanted some lemon grass that I grew last year, and some potted chives that have been on my back step for at least three years.  (They promptly tried to bloom.)  I also added some lemon balm and a new cilantro seedling.  (More on cilantro in a later post, I hope.)  In the home garden I also planted cumin, basil, and dill - just a little of each.  I think this year I'll try to plant a new round of basil every few weeks, rather than try to prevent the plants from flowering all summer.
• Over the last two months I've been stealing 30 minutes here and there to work on a major undertaking by the back fence.  There is an area there where we have been letting volunteer trees and at least three different kinds of ivy just take over.  I've been working to clear it, which has taken a lot more effort than I expected.  There is still a stretch behind the shed that needs to be done, plus a lot of little volunteer trees on the other side of the fence that I need to go around the block to cut.  But I can finally set all my little potted plants and seedlings over there and imagine how it will look when they're in the ground.

Bullet Point Update

Here I go again with the bullet points:

• I got the rain barrel back out, still need to hook it up
• I bought a grapevine to put in the asparagus bed
• I got the potatoes planted, but had to buy some more because there just weren't enough - now I have too many
• some of the peas are planted, but there's more to go
• another gardner from the community garden gave us some garlic and I planted a few in the home garden
• possible freezing on Tuesday night
• momotaro tomatoes are dropping their bottom leaves - Territorial rep suggested they may be too wet, but she's going to send new seeds in case these have a disease; they're quarantined in the low tunnel for now
• I came up with a new trellis for the raspberries - the old one wasn't large enough anymore

gift garlic

new raspberry trellis

Planting Update

The weather last weekend was gorgeous, and I transplanted the first round of onions.  N and R also helped me get some lettuces and spinach in the ground.  I had hoped to do more, but I really got too much sun as it was, so I suppose it's good that my potatoes didn't arrive until Monday.  (At least, that's what I'll tell myself so I don't have to be angry.)  Unfortunately, Tuesday brought rain and clouds, and the soil at the community garden has been too soggy to do much in the rest of this week.

Here's how the plot looked after last weekend:

The curtain is covering my cabbage plants, as well as all of my broccoli seedlings.  The cabbage worm moths have been circling for a couple weeks now, and I'm hoping this will stop them from laying eggs on my plants.  The problem, of course, is that the curtain is just not nearly big enough to cover the broccoli once it's planted!

Since that photo was taken I've spread some additional mulch on the paths (trimmings from the shrubs in my yard), weeded and harrowed that front bed, and hauled in some fallen branches from the woods nearby to sort of fill in that trench at the front a little.  That front bed is supposed to be planted in peas right now, but I haven't gotten around to doing it.  Hopefully I'll get around to it tomorrow, although I'm starting to think this will be a disappointing pea season because of the heat.  If the ground has dried enough I also plan to plant the potatoes tomorrow.  Yay!  (Why to I get so excited about planting the potatoes?  I just don't know!)

Harvest Notes

Early-picked carrot from the community garden

I really didn't spend enough time in the garden in last summer this year, mostly due to the mosquitoes.  Harvests right now are pretty thin - I should have lettuce and spinach right now, but they were planted too late and didn't make it.  I did get a handful of little potatoes from some that surprised me by sprouting in my container during late summer (see Apparently I'm Incorrigible), and the carrots at the community garden are turning out really good.  A few are stubby or forked, but many are long and beautiful and N says (with surprise), "They're really good!"

8 oz potatoes
8 carrots (more to come)
a lot of parsely and cilantro



Potatoes from backyard



There's still cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli in the community garden with the rest of the carrots and next year's garlic sprouts.  Some of the cauliflower is trying to produce flowers; I think both it and the broccoli were planted later than they should have been.  The cabbage is just gorgeous, so maybe in the spring I'll have a bumper cabbage crop!

Changing of the Gaurd (Fall Cleanup)



Inside my compost bin

A bunch of fall cleanup work is slowly getting done around the house.  I screened the last of the 2011 compost and started next year's pile with some of the earliest leaves.  (Since this photo was taken the bin has been filled to above the 2/3 line.)  Our three maples and neighbor E's big tree will fill this several times over.  Extras get stored in contractor bags until the compost starts to shrink down.

Garlic shoot in my home garden

I brought in the basil plant I potted up earlier in the month, and my new ginger plant.  Now the only things in the home garden are the last of the hot peppers (soooo many of them), some lettuce seedlings that were probably planted too late, and these cute garlic shoots. 

 I also painted the adirondack chair, and N and I watersealed the new picnic table.  N cleaned out the rain gutters, though they may need another look sometime in December.  Finally, I emptied the new water barrel, which the Aquabarrel people say is not for use during winter.  The representative actually said I needed to find it an indoor spot for the winter, but our shed is too full (what on earth do people do with 10 of these things?) so I settled for a nice sheltered spot next to the back fence and the shed.  I'll put a couple bricks on top later to make sure it doesn't blow away.

On a more fun note, remember the volunteer potatoes that were sprouting in the container near the back fence (see Apparently I'm Incorrigible)?  I cut down a bunch of weeds/trees that were shading them and they look really happy.  Maybe I'll have another round of new potatoes next month? 

Apparently I'm Incorrigible



Potatoes from home



Last spring I planted potatoes in old recycling totes in my yard. Then after I got my community garden plot I planted the leftover spuds out there. The potatoes at the community garden you've heard a lot about already, but the potatoes at home had a rough year. The spot I picked out for them was a lot less sunny this year than last, and they were so far away from the hose spicket that I'm afraid they didn't get quite as much water as they should have, either. The plants eventually fell over and died, and I let them go out of sympathy. (And, I must admit, laziness.) Then the other day, while I was playing with R in the backyard, I glanced over at the bin and noticed something green peeking over the edge. Though I knew I deserved nothing whatsoever from the home garden potatoes, I dared to stick my hand down into the soil next to it.

Young potato plants

Sure, enough, when I dug down into the bin I found a bunch of other little potatoes getting ready to sprout.  (See the photo at the top of this post.)  It wasn't a bad haul for a recycling tote, actually. The garlic I planted in the other two totes also didn't get enough water, and I wrote it off. But it is sprouting as well!

Garlic sprouts

Potatoes!



Potatoes dug from my community garden plot



Saturday night N and I had our 6th wedding anniversary; we stayed in and made steaks and -  you guessed it - potatoes!  It turns out N's hard work with the potatoes at the community garden didn't got to waste at all.  The first tomato plant to fall victim to whatever disease took out the patch (see Potato Problem) didn't produce any potatoes, but the rest all produced several.  R and I had a lot of fun digging out the mommy potatoes and baby potatoes. 

The variety I planted is called Viking Purple.  The exteriors are a vibrant purple intermixed with brown, and the interiors are bright white.  I couldn't see any evidence of fungus on any of the tubers, so I don't think it was a blight that took out the plants; maybe M is right and it was a disease that came with one of the seed potatoes.

Potato Problem

My potato plants this year look pretty sad, despite N's best efforts.  They looked quite happy and healthy until sometime in May.  We started seeing some kind of red beetle on them that I never got around to identifying; R would help me find them (kid eyes are really sharp!) and I would squish them whenever we visited.  Then one day we showed up and it looked like one of the previously vigorous plants had suddenly died.  M, our community garden guru, said he was familiar with the red bugs and thought the death was caused by something else - possibly some sort of disease or fungus that was on the potato bud when I planted.  Now none of the plants really look healthy, and none of them have produced flower buds, which I think they should have by now. 

It's a shame, really, because the potatoes are the th,ing N spent the most time and energy on, hilling them up and looking them over every time he came to the garden this spring, and they're really the only thing in the garden that looks like it's doing badly.  Hopefully whatever is affecting the foliage won't spread to any tubers the plants produce.  I've been watering and hoping for the best.

Happy Mother's Day

"Here mama, take this!"

R and I have been spending a couple evenings a week at the community garden plot, but we always make a lot more progress when N joins us, which he did tonight.  We brought several bags of Leafpro (the commercial name for the composted yardwaste from Montgomery County) and spread them on the beds that haven't been planted, along with fertilizer and sulfur (gypsum) and some vermiculite that I've had in my shed for a couple years now.

Potato sprouts

Meanwhile, I did get the tomatoes in the ground and planted corn last week, and I managed to take some pictures of the beds that are done.  The potatoes are up; not all of them came up, but that wasn't too surprising given how long it took me to get them planted.  There were a few rotten spots on them by the time the bed was staked out and dug, but the ones that have come up so far look really happy with their situation. 

One of two rows of tomatoes

I ended up buying tomatoes seedlings at a local nursery, 5 that are indeterminate (need staking), 3 that say they are determinate, and 2 that were mysteriously not labeled either way.  I'm going to try putting plastic over the soil as a mulch this year because of the lack of water supply out there and because it's supposed to help prevent mold spores from splashing off the soil onto the plant.  I'll let you know how it turns out!

I learned something interesting from Mario, the helpful individual with the gorgeous plot (it's gotten even more beautiful since the photos I posted some time ago).  There is a small creek that runs through the woods next to the garden plots, which I had assumed would dry up in the summer when there's much less rainfall, but he told me that it's spring-fed, and has never run dry in the three years he's been gardening there.  How exciting!  He says it's a little steep getting to the water, but it's still nice to know it's there in a pinch.  He is a very interesting guy; he has a large cold frame built next to the compost pile filled with plants waiting to be transplanted into his plot, and he mixes his own organic fertilizer.  (I tried asking him if he knows where to buy bulk cottonseed meal around here, but he says he hasn't been able to find it either, so he uses....birdseed!  What genius!  He mixes it in his blender to break up the seed and says if the birds eat a little bit he doesn't mind.)

Garden Update

I was just sniffing around the garden blogosphere and realized I'm not the only slacker who's gotten too busy with spring craziness to keep her blog up-to-date!  Here's some of what's going on:

1) R and I transplanted basil, dill, and eggplants into our home garden plot.  I have completely abandoned the original planting plan in favor of just getting things in the ground quickly.
2) The azalea bushes and irises are in bloom.
3) The potatoes are up in my backyard container as well as in my community garden plot, which was planted almost three weeks later.  (They're a little smaller.)
4) The first planting of peas are more than a foot tall.
5) Both of my gardens are covered in little sprouted weeds.
6) N came out to the community garden plot with me last week and helped me move a bunch more compost from the pile out there onto my plot, and turned over the soil in the zucchini bed.  I'm ready to plant the corn and put out some tomatoes, I think.  (More on tomatoes in a second post.)  We've had an odd spring, with lots of thunderstorms and cold weather, and geese still flying overhead even yesterday, so I've been a little reluctant, but the rush of all the spring stuff blooming lately makes me feel like it's time.
7) Also a couple weeks ago N brought two of last year's been teepees out to the community plot and we set them up at either end of what will be the bean bed.  From a distance it makes my plot look as though someone who knows what they're doing is working in there!  And, none of our recent thunderstorms have been able to knock them over, so that's good.
8) My neighbor at the community garden set up a fantastic fence around his three plots, with a neat little gate and everything.  He took down the pieces of small plastic fence that I'd stretched along that side of my plot to keep R out of his cauliflower, and rolled them neatly around my fence posts.  What a sweetie!
9) I'm still debating about how to stake my tomtoes.  I've been hearing a lot of good things about the "florida weave" method lately, but the upfront costs are awfully high.  You need a 7- or 8-foot metal T-post for every two or three plants (I think I could get away with 6 of them at about $8 apiece).  It's true that you can reuse them for many seasons, but I've told myself that about the staking methods I used for the last three years and here I sit, debating trying something new, again...
10) The strawberry flowers have opened and are just starting to turn down.  I'm in a hurry for them this year because I feel like I need to pick them before I go into labor or we might miss the whole season in post-baby sleep deprivation.
11) Lots of flower buds are forming on my unruly raspberry vines.  I hope we get to eat a few raspberries this year!
12) My spinach is starting to grow upward, letting me know its time is limited.  The seeds I planted this spring are still tiny, which makes me think I may not get anything out of them before the heat hits.  We'll see!

Hmm, I think that's it for now.  I'm going to try to get an updated photo of the community garden this week, which - despite the fact that I haven't planted anything in there except one short row of potatoes - is starting to look like a real garden!

More Potatoes at the Community Garden Plot

As of April 1st I officially had access to my community garden plot, and I have been there several evenings this week with R working.  (Words of Mommy wisdom: Snacks help facilitate evening gardening!  Apple slices don't make great garden snacks!) 

So far we have gotten a fence up between my plot and that of my neighbor (David?) who is apparently a long-time veteran of these gardens and has already planted several dozen of what look like cauliflower on his side of the border.  Since I prefer to be a good neighbor and R is not exactly known for watching where he steps, I made this fence my number one priority.  After that we measured out the spaces for most of the planting beds and staked the corners with bamboo stakes N cut for me.  We finished the staking tonight and N came out to help me bury the rest of my seed potatoes in their allotted space.  (I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow if the rain isn't too heavy.)  N also ran some string along the opposite side of the garden, just in case someone moves in to the plot over there.

So far I have met two other gardeners out there.  There is one gentleman, Mario, who is almost always there.  I'm pretty sure I met him in 2009 when I went to scope out the gardens and he offered me some tomatoes from his plot.  He's been very helpful; among his useful tips:

1) There is some leaf mold/compost piled near one end of the park, where they dumped leaves and cuttings from the adjacent soccer field last year, free for the hauling.  You don't want to try to drive over there and get it, though, as a lady got her van stuck in the mud trying that earlier this week.  Some friends tried to haul her out with their pickup, but I guess they didn't succeed.  Then this evening they brought in a tow truck to try to pull her out and...the tow truck got stuck.  Luckily some more friends of hers showed up and after more than an hour they were able to extract her van while the tow company sent another truck to get their first truck out.

2) The parks department has promised to install a 10-ft fence around the gardens this year to keep out the deer.  This is a great thing, since the deer tracks I found in my plot today are pretty darn big.  Tonight I noticed they seem to have installed the fence posts along one side already, so I have hope that they will get this done soon.

Mario's plot is giving me garden envy.  He came out right after they numbered the plots several weeks ago and got to work putting in a bed of strawberries.  He's since added several other plants, including some swiss chard, cauliflower and some kind of largish alliums (onion or garlic).  He seems to have quite the operation going, with lots of boards and straw roughly arranged around the plot, and he is sort of working his way back from the front of the plot, hauling in compost, preparing a bed, planting it, and then laying down boards on the other side so he can prepare the next bed.  I am just hoping to get all my beds prepared and planted before the baby comes - everything that's going into the community garden plot is a late summer crop, so if I can get planted it'll just be weeding and watering for a couple months.

Planting Potatoes and Peas

Viking Purple potatoes.

St. Patrick's Day is the traditional time to plant peas and potatoes in our area.  (Like you needed another reason to love St. Patrick's Day, right?)  I planted both over the weekend.  I've only grown potatoes once before, so I was really surprised when I opened the box I received from Park Seed last week (right on time!) and found a sack of potatoes, instead of the bags of fingerling potatoes I received last time.  I found some random websites that told me to cut the larger potatoes into 1.5-2 oz pieces with at least one eye each and dry them for 24 hours before planting.  I found this more challenging than it sounds, but I persevered.

Recycling bin turned potato planter.

Next I dumped out the soil I used to grow my carrots in last year from this old recycling bin, and filled it with a mixture of 1-year-old and new potting soil to 7".  Then I planted the potatoes and covered with three more inches of potting soil.  Hopefully they will do a little better this year than in 2009, because I only put four pieces in there instead of 6 fingerling potatoes.  They were definitely too crowded last time.

Inoculating the peas.

Since the trellises were already up, the most challenging part of planting the peas was inoculating them.  I've never purchased inoculant for my peas before, but after last year's legume troubles (No Nodules!) I thought it might be worth it.  The instructions give two methods for inoculating the peas; one of them instructs me to combine the 6 oz package of inoculant with 454 ml of water and 55 lbs of seed.  Since I buy my seed peas in 2 oz packages and had less than half a package left, that means I should have used approximately 0.007 oz of inoculant.  Even I'm not pedantic enough to measure that, so I dipped the peas in water and rolled them around on a small saucer of inoculant and called it a day.

ETA: For an explanation of what inoculant is and why someone might want to use it, check out this article at Dave's Garden: To Inoculate, or not to Inoculate.


R helped me plant the peas, which was the most fun I've ever had planting anything.  He helped me reach between the trellises (which was harder than anticipated due to my ever-increasing size) to poke holes in the ground and put peas in them.  He really liked helping.  Afterwards he helped N measure some wood for his ongoing workbench project.  What a cutie.

R helping Daddy measure.