May 12, 2012

Backyard Garden 2012: Seedlings

For the last month or so, the garden space has been just a pile of dirt and Merritt and Roscoe have enjoyed digging for worms, rolling around in it, and driving their cars through it.

One morning early last week, Roscoe and I planted seedlings and now their dirt playground is off limits. Based on the antics of last week, I anticipate our biggest challenge this season to be to keep the kids and their trucks from trampling our food.

In the background is Andy's latest project: a playhouse for the boys!
This year's garden represents a modified version of what I had planned for, as we are still learning. We purchased most of our plants from the spring plant sale at Lewis Ginter. The farmers and gardeners were happy to share their knowledge and I learned that veggies like pole beans and sweet peas that I had planned to plant in May will likely bolt this late into the season, and that we'll have better luck planting them as fall crops in the late summer. Also, lettuce greens and carrots are best started from seed and planted in succession so that harvesting can occur on a weekly basis year round. The salad greens we have now may last for only a month or so, which will make room for something else as the season progresses. 

Herb pots
I like that gardening is an ongoing learning process, and I look forward to eventually cultivating a reliable combination of planting methods and crop variations to grow the kinds of food that we enjoy most, in predictable cycles throughout the year.

For now we have cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, salad greens (tatsoi, mizuna, mixed leaf, and arugala), alpine strawberries; and herb pots brimming with mojito mint, peppermint, spearmint, dill, sage, parsley, basil, and rosemary.

1 comment:

  1. You are awesome to have planted with Roscoe! That must have been an exciting morning :-) As years go by and your gardening skills sharpen maybe you would consider adding the master gardener program to your skills set. I think this is the closest to you http://www.nnmg.org/ I'm hoping to persuade Griff to do the same. You are taught all this advanced knowledge and all you have to do is volunteer to teach that knowledge in return. They have a similar master naturalist program. Something to conisder when we are older... :-)

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