March 19th and 20th Planting

So according to the Old Farmer's 2014 Almanac March 19th, 20th, 28th, and 29th are the ideal dates for planting below ground crops.

I planted my garlic on the 19th.  I usually plant this in the fall, but not this year or last year.  Last year is grew the same as if it had been in the ground all winter.  I also planted shallots and Wandering/Egyptian Onions.  I couldn't decide if I wanted onions or not.  I really do hate the smell and taste of them.  Finally I decided that the Wandering onions are mild and the purple tint to the outside is so pretty dried that I would plant them this year.

Here are the Wandering Onions on the right growing from last year.  I keep onions and chives under all of my fruit trees.  They help keep the bugs away that like to live under the ground all winter and move into the fruit in the summer.  The Wandering Onions make new onion bulbs on top of stocks.  You can see the beige colored dead stocks and the tan bulbs at the end of the stocks (if you look closely).  I went around the yard Wednesday collecting the onions and planted the ones that were still firm.

March 20th my husband and I planted potatoes.  This year we added soil sulfur to the potato beds.  The bottom of the trenches are about 6 inches down from the top of the block.

These are the Russet Norkodah, which I have never heard of before.  We will see how well they do.

Hubby cut them into 3 pieces each.  Some people like to let the cut edges dry before planting.  I haven't found that it makes a difference freshly cut or not.  We planted them right away.  I will say that this is the first time we have ever cut them in thirds.  It will be interesting to see how the center piece of each potato does.

We evenly spaced out the potatoes and then dug down another couple of inches down and placed the potatoes in the holes.  Then covered them level with the original trench depth.

There are 2 rows of potatoes in each bed.  This bed shows the ones waiting to go in the ground and the ones ready to be covered.  We planted Red Pontiac (pictured), All Blue, Yukon Gold, Russet Norkodah, and Cal White.  While digging the trenches you see in this picture we found 2 tiny potatoes.  I got out last years map and found out that the potatoes we found were Cal White.  We had more potatoes than we could use last year so we left this bed of potatoes in the ground.  We forgot to cover them and they rotted.  We decided to plant potatoes in the same bed as last year to see what would happen.

Here is a picture of my garden map that I use every year.  This is my main garden area.  I created this in Auto CAD years ago.  I needed the practice, but you can make any kind of a map.  It really helps with rotating crops and knowing the name of the vegetable you like best when making comparisons.

Here is a picture of my messy garden.  As usual everything is covered with screens.  I have to keep the cat out of the soft soil now and later I have to keep all the other critters out.  The front bed is potatoes.  The one behind it on the left is potatoes.  The center one is garlic.  The two with the glass doors partially covering them in the back are carrots from last year enjoying the warm weather.

Speaking of carrots:

Here are some more carrots I picked on March 19th.  It is interesting to see the parts on the two carrots that were not covered by soil or carrot leaves rotted.

While checking to see how some of the other garden areas were doing I found these two asparagus growing.

This is my asparagus and parsley jungle.  The two asparagus in the above picture are by the black bucket in the back left corner of this picture.  All the green is parsley growing.  I wonder how much asparagus is growing under that mess.

Here is a close-up of the parsley growing just behind and to the right of the red pot in the above picture.

Sorry asparagus, but it is going to be at least two more weeks before I get a chance to clean up your area.