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.

New Garden Pictures

This is my Big Max pumpkin.  One of those that get 500 to 1,000 pounds if you live in the Midwest.  Mine is a whopping 4 inches long from stem to flower.  The leaves are bigger than the pumpkin.

The Brussels sprouts are forming along the main stock of the plant.  They are almost the size of a quarter.  This is supposed to be a 90 day crop.  The seedlings were planted outside on 3/22.  I don't think I will plant them next year.  I have other things I like better than this crop that has so far taken over 5 months to grow and still isn't ready to harvest.

This eggplant doesn't get enough sun.  Not expecting anything from it.  There isn't even any flowers starting.  Oh well it is a pretty plant in an otherwise empty pot.

The lettuce I planted about 3 weeks ago is doing really well.

The lettuce plant from the little barbecue is dead, but the seed didn't finish forming.  I half expected that because the lettuce didn't do well it that tiny container.  I think it got to hot and even in the shade it didn't do well.

I will save the seeds from this lettuce plant now.

 I stopped watering my zucchini from overhead and have been careful to not get the flowers wet also.  I have two zucchinis now.

This is the other zucchini growing straight up.  There is a little spaghetti squash on the ground below the zucchini.

Here are two spaghetti squash.  The cement block is 6 inches wide and 16 inches long almost.  They measure like a 2 x 4 piece of wood does.  Anyway you get an idea of their size.  The front ones is very scratched up for some unknown reason.  I hope they finish developing before the frost gets to them.

This Sugar Pie pumpkin is 3 inches long form stem to flower, but it is bigger around than the Big Max pumpkin.

I dug these tiny potatoes out of the rectangular tote of potatoes, because the plant was almost dead even though it didn't grow as big as it should have.  It never got big enough for the plant to flower.  I was surprised to see holes in the potatoes.  There were only 8 potatoes.  Two other smaller ones had these same holes. I put the potatoes on one of the concrete block after I dug each one up.  When I finished and was starting to pick up the potatoes, I saw tiny tiny ants crawling out of the holes.  I have never seen or heard of that before.

Beets at different sizes.  Some were planted a little over  3 weeks ago and some were planted almost 2 weeks ago.

 This is four tomatillo plants.  It looks like a jungle.

 There are tons of little green husks with the tomatillos developing inside them.

All the tomato plants in the pots look terrible.  Usually when plants die from the bottom up it means too much water or too dry between waterings.  I'm not sure which it is.  The plant water tester always reads that they have a ton of water, but when I put my fingers down in the soil it feels dry.

Not putting tomatoes in pots again.  Especially ones without holes in the bottom.  This is my first year of container gardening.  Not very happy with the tomato results.

Wandering onions AKA Egyptian onions and chives are planted under all of my fruit trees.  These smelly plants help keep the bugs away that like to overwinter in the ground and climb up the trees in the spring.

Close-up of the Wandering onions.  The new onion sets form on the top of the onion stalks.  They will dry up, fall off, and start growing again.  Some will get blown to other parts of the yard and start growing if they get enough water.

Here is a close-up of one of the Wandering onion plants.  One new onion has a cluster of new onions growing off of it.  This happens very often.  I have plenty to share if anyone wants some.

Here is what is left of the ones I dug up and dried two years ago.  As you can see I don't use many onions.  They are little and very mild.

This is one of two parsley plants that are in with the asparagus.  All of the asparagus died and was replanted 2 years ago.  Two parsley plants managed to find their way back.  I am letting them go to seed and spread throughout the asparagus again, hopefully.

What's happening in the garden lately?

Almost all of our asparagus died 2 years ago.  We planted new last year.  Here it is growing with the parsley that managed to survive the tilling and digging.  The big bunch of asparagus in the front is about 14 years old.  Most asparagus lives 10 - 12 years.  Parsley and asparagus are great companions.

Twelve days later and look at how much everything has grown.  The asparagus in the front is almost 6 feet tall.  We do not cut the asparagus fronds.  We leave them to feed the roots.  Next spring we will cut/break them off at ground level.  In years past the fronds have been so dense laying on the ground that they have made a great ground cover and the asparagus has started growing in January.

I took the pink cover off of the end of the broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage bed so you can see how they are growing above the original cover, but this weather is getting to freezing and below still.

A tiny head of broccoli is forming.

Another tiny head.  These plants really are the same color. Don't know what happened.  Now is the time to start seeds indoors for the fall crop, but the spring crop isn't very far along yet.

 Here is one of the heads of cabbage forming.  If the weather ever warms up enough for them to stay uncovered, the cabbage moth will be showing up.  I will be covering these with bridal tulle soon.  Pictures will be posted.

Another cabbage plant.  This should be forming into a head soon.

This bed of potatoes did not get covered a couple of weeks before this picture was taken.  Everything was brown, because it froze.  As you can see now it is coming back.

Another picture from the same potato bed after the freeze.

Now that all the tomatoes and tomatillas have a Wall of Water around each of them and a tomato cage around the plant too, it has become a pain to protect them from frost.  Larry thought of dropping empty buckets (my rain water ones) inside the cages to protect them.  So far it has worked good.  There are 15 of these.  I am all for lazy gardening.

The weather was nice one day about a week ago.  Larry mowed the lawn.  Randy Robison teaches in his classes to add a thick layer of grass (chemical free) or alfalfa pellets around the tomato plants and inside the Wall of Water.  It is to stay there all summer.  We decided to give it a try.  The plants are still little, so the grass is about 3 to 4 inches deep.

Same thing here.  This one is a tomatilla and little taller plant.  I don't think we will add more grass.  Will keep you posted.

Can you see the rhubarb flower?  I can only because I know where to look.  It is center front.  I know that at least 7 flowers have been cut off at the base of 3 plants already.  All these flowers mean that it is time to dig them up and divide them next spring.  Let me now if you want rhubarb.

Here is a closeup of a rhubarb flower.  There are four flowers at different stages of development right now.  This one is the largest.