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Spring is here. It’s time to garden.

You may have noticed there have been no seed starting/winter sowing posts this year.  No mid February excitement about tiny leaves popping up.  No posts about Opie knocking dirt everywhere.

This year we changed it up a bit for a two main reasons. First, with Lincoln taking up a good chunk of my time I wanted to make it a little easier on myself.  Maybe next year he can help me and start learning about gardening but this year I just gave myself a break.  This whole mother thing is a lot of work and a lot of guilt.  Guilt for not getting everything done on my list.  So I decided to take one thing off my list.

The second reason is the things we decided to plant didn’t need the head start inside.  Every year we grow tomatoes and they take over the whole garden no matter how much I prune (i.e hack the crap out of it).  We had tons of tomatoes last year and TB couldn’t eat them all.  I don’t really like tomatoes so it was a lot of space in a garden to devote to something that only one of us eats.  Plus my gardening friend Sarah has got a great garden and will share some of hers so we should be covered.  The peppers are in the same category of I don’t eat them/Sarah will share.  So TB and I decided to leave them out this year too.  The other seeds we usually start inside are the herbs and some lettuce which get a head start inside but can also be started outside too.

So in choosing this years crop we:

  • took out the things that we haven’t had good luck with like broccoli (never grew well) and beets (grew well but didn’t taste that great last year)
  • added in things that Lincoln will be eating that I can make into baby food (we are starting next week!!)
  • took out things we grew but didn’t really use (tomatoes)
  • added in things I missed last year (cucumbers!)

So  here is this year’s lineup:

Asparagus:  This is the second year (and we bought 2 year crowns) and the first we get to pick some!  They are already growing like crazy and we picked a few the other day.  It was the best asparagus I have ever eaten.

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This was April 23rd. That’s my 16 oz. coffee cup for scale.  Please excuse the weeds!

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This is this morning. They are now 5 feet tall.

Shallots & Garlic:  We planted these in the fall and they are growing very well.  I was so excited to not be pregnant and be able to work in the garden that I may have planted 50 heads of hardneck garlic.  It won’t go to waste and the garlic scape pesto  is something we have been looking forward to since we ate it all last year.  We have 11 shallot plants which means 1 didn’t come up or I left it out to make room for lettuce.  I really can’t remember (I had a newborn!)

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Shallots on the left, garlic on the right.

Lettuce: We started three kinds of lettuce: arugula, fresh heart (romaine) and a gourmet blend.  The arugula and the gourmet did very well last year and we brought the salad to every dinner part we were invited to last year. The fresh heart was a new whim purchase.

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Gourmet Blend planted all around the shallots

I ran out of my favorite garden marker, tongue depressors, and went looking in the shop for something to use.  I couldn’t depend on my baby melted memory.  I found these shims that had already had their narrow ends used.  I was told to throw them out but I figured I could find a use for them!

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Arugula (rocket) planted in a pot this year.

Green Beans: These are Bush Blue Lake 47 are a new one for us this year.  They are a bush variety and it shouldn’t need supports but after my floppy edamame last year I threw the cucumber trellis in there just in case.

Cucumbers:  I missed cucs last year and brought them back much to TB’s dismay.  They take up a lot of room.  My plan was to stagger the planting so the earlier green beans could use the trellis first.  After they were done the later planted cucumbers could climb up the trellis.  Except I planted them both on the same day.  (See baby melted brain mentioned above)  It should be an interesting mess.

 

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Green beans in the left row, cucs on the right.

Peas:  I grew up hating peas.  They were squishy overcooked things that came out of cans.  While I was pregnant I bought some frozen peas to add to pastas to up my veggie intake.  I discovered if you threw them into the pasta water in the last two minutes of cooking it was easy and also delicious.  We are giving these Karina peas a go.  These are also a bush variety but they can lean on the trellis too if they like.

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Carrots:  These are another veggie I hated.  I grew up riding horses and no matter how hungry I was I could never bring myself to eat a carrot.  I found that when you slow roast them they are pretty awesome.  I am hoping Lincoln thinks so too.   It may not look like much right now but you can see a bunch of tiny plants starting.  There are also a bunch of tiny weeds but I’m waiting to see what’s what before I pull anything.

IMG_4430 Strawberries:  I split the ever bearing strawberries that are on their 3rd year and the June bearing on their 2nd year.  I added a bunch of compost and they seem to be very happy.  The ever bearers seem to do much better and have lots of flowers already.

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The Rest:  The parsley, basil and garlic chive seeds have been planted but have not sprouted yet.  A had some Sweet William flower seeds from last year that I threw in a pot so we will see how those go.  And the edamame will go in once the soil warms up a bunch.  It will go in one of the spots when one of the earlier crops is already done.

I am so excited to be working in the garden and to have so many flowers blooming everywhere.  It was so hard to enjoy the garden last year while being pregnant.  I am also excited to start showing Lincoln all about the process of where his food comes from.

 

 

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